What are Framerates?

When you're watching a video or playing a game, you may not realize exactly what you're looking at. Back at the advent of the film industry, the hurdle they had to cross was how to take a moving picture. At the time, it was possible to capture a single image on a frame of film, basically taking a photograph in order to capture a second in time. But we soon realized that calling it a ‘second’ was actually being generous. On a roll of film, there are multiple cells next to each other. When you take a picture, it captures the image, moves onto the next one, and then waits for the next image to imprint. Now, what we discovered is if we have film capturing images continuously, then we can capture images in sequence together to create the illusion of a moving picture.

Now, obviously, we don’t use physical pictures on our computers; frames simply refer to a still image that is captured and shown in a sequence that creates the illusion of motion. The more frames that are in a second, the smoother the motion seems; this is why most people aim for a high framerate for smoother gameplay. If the framerate goes lower than 24, then it can appear choppy, even like stop motion.

Commonly, there are three framerates which people look at, and they depend entirely on the medium which they’re working in.

 24 fps is for films since they offer directors and editors. Content creators and videographers aim for a natural 30fps, and most modern games aim to hit a framerate of 60 fps; this may sound easy, but there are many factors to consider when trying to reach this benchmark. First and foremost are the graphical settings; modern computers don’t strain to reach higher framerates for games whose graphics don’t require extra computing power to render. Some games lean into this with stylized design, but most aim for a realistic approach, which requires greater graphic fidelity to achieve a smooth 60fps.

Now you might think that to achieve high frame rates, you need to upgrade a number of components. When in fact the solution can just be a software tweak instead of a hardware replacement. The reason that people upgrade their GPU’s to get better frame rate is due to the graphics they want to achieve; the easier it is for a compute to create (or render) an image, the faster it can render, the higher the frame rate. So, if you want more frames, the solution is to give it less to render by tweaking the graphics settings.

But if you want to have the best graphical quality for your system and maintain steady frame rates, then that’s when upgrading your system should be considered. This is why we offer our customers the option to upgrade their systems, helping them achieve smoother frame rates, stronger performance, and the visual quality they’re looking for. Visit our website at AVAdirect.com to explore upgrade options and find the best fit for your setup