FRAPS used to chew up my framerate like baby food until I got my new laptop.

I have the 5750 model and found that you can only use the HDMI slot in certain configs, which does not include dual DVI.  In a dual DVI config, you'll need to have an active DP adapter (or a monitor with a native DP connection).  The adapter runs about $100 and can be found on Amazon.com.  (Found all of this out the hard way after purchase.) 

Grab any game that runs above 60FPS at all times, play it with vsync on and off. If you can actually SEE the difference, you'll probably note that vsync off seems more jerky (screen tearing), even if it's a higher framerate.

With a refreshrate of 60Hz on the monitors you still have only 60FPS visible regardless of how fast the graphicscards renders.

In games where reaction time is significant you do get slightly better responsetime with framerates higher than 60 though, simply because the images actually displayed will be at most 1/120th of a second old at 120FPS while at 60FPS it'll be 1/60th. It may seem like a very short time, but it makes a difference (it's basically an 8ms reduction in latency (ping)). You can't actually see this difference, but it'll make the game feel more responsive.

5870 is overkill right now. I got 4870 and run latests games (Mass efect 2 bioshock 2 Demigod ) at 1650x1050 with full details (AA, deep of field etc etc maxed) without dropping below 40 fps. The only problem i had was Anno Dawn of discovery.

Unless you want to run 2 games at same time its really no point to buy it now (when the price is so freakin high). Wait fev months till Nvida release cunter product and when price war starts then u can get this card for 40% of its original price.

Lol at 100+ fps when you eye can only catch 26-30 fps.

On other note its funny that you need to spent over 2500$ for pc parts to get the same gaming expierience as you would get from 700-500$ PS3. Not to mention you dont need to worry about latest drives, dirext updates or security softwares like tages or securerom that can cause your computer to crash or make it impossible to use compies of your disks (which you have right to make!!!).

You just simply put the blueray disc in and play at the best possible settings. Not to mention that most new games are designed for either ps3 or xbox360 and pc users get lousy ports (GTA 4 is the best example here, New AvP looks like next example of it).

The only reason I stick with PC games is beacuse i like RTS and shooters and i just cant imagine playing it on joystick. Also thank to pirates and torrents, prices of PC tiltles are more competive then PS3 games (many developers decides to drop prices of their products to figh piratede copies).

Playing any online first person shooter at 30 FPS will give you a significant disadvantage against a player who plays at 120FPS. Doesn't matter if you can actually see the difference or not. At 30fps it takes 33.4ms to render a screen, during that time a lot of things happen regarding to position of the enemies. Let's say you have a 100ms ping response to the server, which is fairly good, that makes you end up with 30% more lag only because of your graphics card. It may not sound like too much, but at "pro" level it makes a HUGE difference. At 100FPS there's only a 10ms lag caused by the rendering, which should be quite close to negligible.

That should end this discussion, because there's really no opposing this basic fact. Higher FPS will affect your gameplay. Seeing the difference or not is completely irrelevant.

I seriously doubt that anyone would gain anything from going higher than 120FPS though (120FPS seems ideal to me, because it would be nicely synced with a 60Hz screen refresh rate).

So... 60ms lag. That is not even 1/100 of second. I bet pro like you can cast 5 pots and 3 fireballs in Wow or other Pro game .

What else do you recomend?? Should I cut my keyboard and monitor  cable to 100 mm so it will have better response time? that will give another 1/100 second advantage againts those pros. And maybe i should sit closer to monitor so i will see the action faster again.

I also heard that when you graphic card can render over 500 fps you can actually see what other players do before they even decide to do it. Its so worth it to get latest 5870 x2 and put them in 4x SLI so i will get 8 gpu working same time.

Back to original post. I really think it is no point to get the 'latest' graphic cards when there is no games to fully utilize its power and potential.

It's best to have a handle on maths when attempting to make a point.  60milliseconds is 60 one-thousandths of a second.

Divide 60 by 1000 and you get.....?  

Good question.

Anyway, I've been looking forward to upgrading for quite a while, but I've recently come across reports from a sizeable number of people whose 5xxx cards suffer from the "gray screen crash" issue which still hasn't been resolved. I'll probably wait a bit longer and see how the situation unfolds. 

Jafo

Thanks for correcting me. If only stardock team was soo good in math when it comes to demigod lua (minons sumoned with half hp for example). Thanks mate great work

NP, BTW....60ms, or about 1/16th of a second would be well and truly noticed....

more close to 1/17th. Sure mate if you can react in that amount of time (recive information, anylyze, decide what action to take and transfer it onto keyboard) then you must veery 'special'. I wonder in which department Brad keeps such a special people???

It's an Antec 500w I believe.

I'm strictly talking about first person shooters here. WOW is not a FPS.

Imagine this scenario. You have a fairly small target moving across the screen, it takes 1 second for it to cross it. If every frame shows you where the target was 8ms ago, you have a very much higher probability of clicking on it than if you see where the target was 33ms ago.

If I had any talent in coding, I'd make small game to test it. Just have a 4x4pixel dot moving over the screen in 1 second, the aim of the game would be to click as fast and accurately on the dot as possible. 9 runs should be done, random order on the FPS but 3 times on each framerate (30, 60 and 120FPS, framerate not revealed to the player). Then just show the average distance the clicks was from the dot for every framerate. I'm confident that the difference would be quite apparent.

(I figured out a better way to do this test, but as I don't think anyone is really going to take a crack at doing it, I won't bother with changing this.. )

Electrical signals travel at the speed of light, there's no way you can cut a cable and have anywhere near a 1/100th of a second gain.

I'm pretty sure that if you use the 9.12 hotfix version drivers this is a nonissue. The drivers are somewhat awful atm. 10.1 9.11 F-.

the i7 with an ati 260 seems to run real nice for me.  Demigod in full tilt.  sins though will slow down on large maps about mid to late game, but that has been the case for some time with sins, regardless of the rig

In 1/16th of a second an F1 car will have travelled about 18 feet.  On start/finish in 1995 F1 GP Adelaide [the last one] I worked out the view-angle of the car numbers on the sidepod.....I had 0.2 seconds 'window of opportunity' to recognise the car...locate the number position and read/register the number.  It was my job to let Race Control know when [and the car number of] the last car before the chequered and the first car to receive it [win]. [It was Hill, BTW]. 'Terminal' speed at S/F in Adelaide is about 160mph or about 234 feet per second.

Next weekend it's the World Superbikes at Phillip Island....where the fastest terminal speed [front straight] was recorded at 336kph [MotoGP].  Being a Comms Observer for the FIA/FIM is not a job for a 3 toed sloth ....

I have an interesting situation because my LCD monitor actually refreshes at 120hz regardless of my computer's refresh rate setting (apparently it was designed to reduce the "ghosting" effect some lower-end LCD's have).

I figure that having a 60hz refresh rate set on my computer is actually limiting the framerate.  True, the game itself may actually be running at 75+ FPS, but if the monitor is only refreshing 60 times per second, then your framerate is effectively reduced to 60, right?

With that in mind, of course you would hardly be able to tell the difference between 100 FPS and 30 FPS on a monitor, because the monitor is displaying a solid 60-75hz anyway.  I believe the main contributor to playback smoothness would be V-Sync, to make sure the action moves at a constant speed.

To make my point, all DVD's are recorded at 24 FPS, yet the action looks smooth enough because of motion blur.  Yes, you would be able to tell a difference between 24 and 60 FPS, because action sequences (or anything involving fast movement) would look much cleaner at 60 FPS, due to less motion blur being needed to simulate the same effect.  However, in my opinion FPS rates above 60 don't make as much of a difference when talking about fluid motion, but rather makes movement seem clearer.

Don't get me wrong though.  Games in my opinion require at least 60 FPS to display smoothly.  I don't think it's because of the actual framerate though, but rather the lack of motion blur.

Not quite right.... there's Pal and then there's NTSC ....

Oh, true.  I guess what I meant to say was that film is generally encoded at 24 FPS (though animated films are 30 FPS).