Is gaming at 30FPS really that bad? 

Lock the framerate to 25FPS for 3 days. Then play on 30 FPS. Everything will feel butter smooth.

While trying it for myself on pc, I noticed that using an fps limiter to cap at 30 rather than using half refresh rate in control panel, is considerably more responsive. And even more responsive is having vsync off while capping at 30 fps. Even when you run the game at 30 hz output rather than rate limiting, having vsync off is very responsive.

I think if you're playing a more story driven game on a controller, 30 FPS is tolerable. But in any competitive game, I believe it isn't enough. Great video as always mate!

the thing is, if you're already used with more higher fps like 60 or even 120++ then you'll notice the huge difference when i don't have pc and play on ps4, i'm perfectly fine with 30fps

As long as you're enjoying the game I think that's all that matters. And Stray was such a great find for myself. I initially purchased the game for me and the kids to play, only to get hooked on it myself.

Something I feel like is worth mentioning is that it feels a lot different playing a 30fps game with a controller compared to mouse and keyboard

Most important thing is to allow your eyes time to adjust when locking the framerate lower. The immediate effect is a shock to the system, but after about 30 minutes of playing I perceive it as smoother. It certainly helps as a fallback when games are poorly optimized. Same thing happens with 60fps if I've been playing a game at 120. I go back and it suddenly looks framey until I give it some time.

Should have used rtss with passive wait turned off and possibly front edge sync for better frame pacing

When i was about 14-16 years old. All i cared about was getting top frames without dropping at highest resolutions. As i grew older i realized allc that mindset was doing was tarnishing my love for actually focusing on playing and enjoying games. I would awlays spend money on upgrades I didnt need and tell myself i needed them. It was reallt bad, and then I grew up even more. Im 24 now and dince 18 years old ive been playing half my games at 30fps locked ultra and its fantastic. I dont know how the younger me couldnt handle the lower framerates. But its really not even inching close to how bad people make it out to be. It was weird for the first 3 days of playing 30fps adter playing at 144hz, then my eyes adjusted and now to me 30 and 60 are the best of both worlds. 60 now looks like how 144 did years ago for me. And 30 is well, 30... its noticable but beyond enjoyable and beyond playable.

You need to use Riva Turner RTSS to cap the FPS so those Frametimes are locked. Next you want a Variable Refresh Rate monitor set at 120hz for the best input. The reality is on ps5 on a 120hz display the games will be running at 40 not 30. 144hz set FPS to 36. Off Camera I Play on a 32 inch 4K display 144hz VRR capable Adaptive sync on RTSS Cap at 36 High settings with DLSS Quality 4060ti i3 13100f xbox controller and ingame motion Blur on and every demanding Game there are no issues. 4k low power on a budget.

I have the impression that limiting frames in the game settings are always the best. If it is not comfortable, limiting through the drive might be better for 40 fps or something a little bit higher

Call me weird, but sometimes i get motionsick in some games where's happening really fast movements. So chopping fps in half sometimes help.

I experience that 30 fps on warzone 2.0 new maps i7 8700. I decided to re ramp my whole rig. R5 5500 with Rx 6600 no more issue worth the upgrade.

My inner snob is about to present itself… yeah, I really struggle with thirty frames. I can even notice a considerable difference between thirty and forty frames. Cool video!

While 60fps is ideal, most games are playable between 20 and 45 ish FPS. It also depends on your standards and how bad do you wan to play, I remember I used tonplay WoW on my potato laptop at 8-15 FPS when I was younger 😂. Nowadays I can play most games between 30-60 FPS and even some at high FPS (100+). Tbh the smoothness of movement is really nice and worth more than graphics fidelity. To me the priority for s game goes something like this: FPS (45+), Resolution, G.Quality. If FPS low then I lower the graphics first, if at lowest settings still can't get a dwcen framerate then I lower the resolution slightly and move the quality settings until I get the FPS I want to. Ideally nothing gets lower than 900p, but some games can be played ok at 720p, lower than that and I would just skip the game, is not worth it.

This might sound crazy but i think the intended idea of how motion blur works with 30fps on a big TV screen is the user is mostly looking at the center of the screen focusing on the character. Its only when you sit yhe camera and the game really comes to life with the motion blured framerate and animation work with a still camera

As a console player, I prefer higher visual fidelity at the cost of FPS on single players games. Mutiplayer, minimum of 60 is necessary IMO. On my Series X with my LG OLED I play Warzone at 120fps and its very enjoyable!

Casual game/story mode type of games yes i prefer 30 fps but for competitive games i prefer 60

What's absolutely hilarious is even if it does drop down to 30 frames you're not going to know unless you have the frame counter up.

My main problem with 30 is that I find it genuinely hard to look at as it can make my eyes ache

As someone who prefers graphics mode, it really depends on the game, the quality of the animation and other features such as motion blur can help a lot. I have found some games are quite choppy in graphics mode, and these cases, I will use performance mode; while other games look and feel really smooth in graphics mode.

for me, the only thing make the 30fps pc experience like the console 30fps is when i increased the controller sensitivity in game menu, in any game

PS5 is around RX 6700 non XT in terms of gpu power and Ryzen 7 3700X in terms of cpu power. I think the 30fps cap in demanding games is alright for that kind of hardware.. I'm not sure how powerful Xbox Series X gpu is, but i've heard it's a little bit faster than PS5.

24fps is typically a cinematic framerate and I use 30fps for filming action-type sequences. It actually looks fine at 30 even with action shots.

My issue is with my LG OLED.. It's fast and smooth but I notice REALLY bad stretching?? If I look at objects and pan left to right, the object doubles and it's very irritating... It's almost like ghosting, but worse in my opinion... Any suggestions? I've basically shut down all the HDR and Dolby and allm on my consoles in other to use my TV to utilize De-jutter.. t helps but it's just not right .. What monitors or TV is capable of playing 30fps smoothly?? And also be able to utilize the newer consoles fully??

Nah, back in time it was different approach to games. So we didn't feel that drastically low FPS, because game mechanics was different. But nowadays it is insanely hard to me to hop on 30 fps after 60 fps +. I'm keep struggling to play Bloodborne after DS for example. Not to mention racing games... I'm still trying to enjoy Driveclub with 30 fps... But, when I'm playing PS1 Need For Speed Porsche, which I still have it feels absolutely amazing, because mechanics, graphics and approach to the games was different

I've been playing Elden Ring on my PS4 for over a hundred hours, I'm on my third playthrough going for the platinum thropy. Yes it stutter sometimes but not game braking, it's a smooth 30fps most of the time. It's not perfect but it's playable for me.

Console 30fps uses half vsync, you can use this in nvidia gpu by using nvidia inspector and set the frame rate to 1/2 refresh rate. It will give perfect frame pacing and no stuttering but you have to use controller because input lag with mouse is unbearable

Without watching this video 30fps has been the standard for many years and was never an issue as we didn't complain about it. And its a silly debate saying game is unplayable when its perfectly fine

i believe the problem with 30fps is the slow controler responce...if increase the sensitivity in game menu the experience is much better

I've been a PC/mac gamer since 2001 and I've always aimed for 60-100 fps and anything less I didn't like. I got the Series X last month and I still refuse to play anything under 60 fps. I tried Lies Of P in 30 fps mode and hated it. I've never tried 120 fps but I think 60 fps should be minimum going forward.

for me playing at 60 fps or higher is to save me from motion sickness i was not into consoles when they were capped at 30. and each time a game comes out on xbox series X and ps5 i always always always choose performance mode. no matter what to keep that 60 fps to not get sick. and yes i also have this issue on pc and have to turn off headbob and so on :P

Depends on the division by refresh rate. On a 165Hz monitor is is a disaster, on a 60Hz screen it's fine. Obviously it's very game dependent. A story driven walking simulator is fine, but something like Doom: Eternal should be illegal at 30fps.

I heard that using a controller makes PC games feel much smoother, since a mouse's precision can pick up all the jitters that work their way into the camera movement.

I honestly don't mind games being 30 fps because if the game functions fine, then theres no problem from my end.

My monitor is old and cannot do adaptive sync. I wish radeon has half vsync like nvidia.

You should add wattage on afterburner to highlight on of the perk to game @ 30fps especially with a nicely efficient RX 6600 👌Also i got flat frame graph and no stutter on most solo games using RivaTuner instead of ingame option or Radeon Chill.

You have no idea… how hard it is to beat Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3 with an FPS BELOW 30! 😭

Short answer: Absolutely playable, when its locked in an application called River Tuner. But make sure that the game gets 30+ all of the time. Thats what I used to play every games on my 60hz monitor by either locking it to 30 or 40 or 60...Its perfectly playable when its not dropping from our expected value..

Recently played Arkham Knight for the first time on my PS5. That game is a perfect example of 30 fps done right.

Most games with a controller don't feel badbat 30fps. Assuming there isn't a problem with the frame pacing. But 40fps on 120rz display is the sweet spot for me.

Personally for me, I don’t think 30FPS is not a bad thing for me. 40FPS is the sweet spot for me. And 60FPS for me is so freaking awesome.

60 is fine. 30 feels rough to me personally. Nice vid .

This helped remind that 30 fps isn't as bad as i thought. I still think 60 fps is the best middle ground. Ideally games should be optimised to play to 60 fps on pc but if you have older hardware dropping to 30 is an option with up to date hardware should be able to play at least 90 fps on 4k. In the end to will depend but with graphics cards increasing in price so much I find that more focus should be on performance then perfect image quality. Having a good art style direction is much more appealing for both performance and visuals.

I play or use some games, 30 FPS is enough for me, depending on the game, it's just as fluid as 60 FPS for me, but it doesn't matter with which hardware FSR, DLSS, DLAA, and what the other functions are all called, just like ray tracing and 2K and 4K is at in every game, so I always turn it off by hand because I find DLSS etc. to be useless for me, the same as raytracing, the same and therefore turn off the function because I like the old form better

30 is fine. I'm still playing retro games like this and they're great.

Great video - but i want to see more Flight sim locked at 30fps :)😬

if you really want to compare the two you have to have constant 30 fps with motion blur and controller and have to sit bit far from your screen only then you will get the feel of how console player play on 30fps.

nothing wrong with 30fps. The only thing is if you taste 60fps or even higher it's hard to go back

y'all Really complaining on 30 fps?? 💀 Try playing at 20 fp and you'll see how smooth 30 fps is

After having played at way higher fps, I really can not go back to 30 fps. To me it looks horrible.

Xbro here. Yes. My comrades don't seem to mind, but they are blind. My eyes have been opened. 30 FPS is an unacceptable frame rate. I don't care about 4k resolution if the game runs like a flash game. 1080p is what most people have anyways.

In the old days, most console games ran at 60fps. Then 3D happened, and we've been stuck with 30fps ever since.

Hundreds of millions of console players already proved that 30fps is fine. I don't mind it either. And i have a gaming pc with rx6600xt.

Gaming at 30fps is perfectly fine for the vast majority of games and its kind of mandatory for some games with bad pc ports like Elden Ring or those that run on UE4. Capping games that do shader compilation on the fly will drastically help with making the game feel more stable and relying on in-game frame limiters isn't ideal because they don't ever give you consistent frametimes which will make the game feel awful to control and look jittery in motion even if your fps counter is showing a locked 30fps in busy scenes. The video demonstrates this at 4:15 by showing the frametime graph going nuts when turning the camera, granted it doesn't last long but will creep back up the more you play. This is why gamers think 30fps plays and looks like hot garbage on pc but can strangely tolerate it on console. If you limit your framerate with a separate program like RTSS and change the frame limiting mode from async to back edge sync you will get perfectly even frametimes. Using RTSS like this will give you something comparable to console like smoothness. I have a 6800xt and a 5800x3D which was a hand me down from a friend who needed a threadripper for work. Even with that gpu/cpu pairing I had issues with spellcaster enemies making the game have a stroke. They would cause a very brief but annoying stutter that wasn't due to shader compilation, must be something with the engine idk. Exploring the swamps after the first merchant in Liurnia was hell because that entire first part of the swamp is crawling with mages that cast black/gold bolts constantly. After about 6 months I reinstalled ER and capped the game to 30 immediately. Sure it took me about 15 minutes to get used to 30fps but it was totally worth it since ER played flawlessly. It almost felt like Fromsoft optimized it pretty well for 30 but they had issues with getting it to run at 60 without issues on all platforms.

Driver based FPS limiter is crap on AMD. Even some games that have FPS limiters built in arent that good: - frame pacing is often jittery and inconsistent. Instead I recommend using MSI Afterburner & Riva Tuner Statistics Server combo, and limit FPS in Riva tuner (and DISABLE Passive Waiting in RTSS options for best results). Nvidia users can use FPS limiter in Nvidia control panel. but you can't change FPS cap on the fly, you must restart the game, minus that you don't have "disable passive mode" option to begin with. Riva Tuner is the golden standard for FPS cap

what can we do with screan tearing at 30 fps?

I trued playing RDR2. I got to the first town and just couldn’t do it anymore. Feels so old and dated. Game needs a 60 fps patch like stat.

30fps in CS is death

When limiting Fps with Rivatuner instead and having good motion blur, 30fps is a bit better. 40 is noticable smoother and kinda almost enjoyable

The problem is once u go up u cant go down, i typically expect at least 200 now 😆

What people unknowingly hate about 30 FPS is not the actual 30 FPS. It's (un)responsiveness. You have to sweat a bit to make that input lag go as low as possible and this includes a bit of tinker that not everyone does. You have to turn off vsync wherever you see that option, you have to install rtss and use the limiter and not in-game limiters because rtss has super stable frametimes. Sometimes rtss introduces bad tearing no matter what so you need to use in-game limiters or mods where you get stutters but those frametime stutters are more tolerable than tearing or other kinds of stutters and they almost disappear if playing with mouse keyboard instead of gamepad. 60 FPS kills immersion for me most of the time so this is what I do on both steam deck and desktop (controller or kbm). This is not the ps3/360 27fps era no more and we have so many options and so much freedom. Make that 30 fps rock solid and watch how much more time you spend gaming that one session.

After like 3 minutes 30fps look kind of the same as 60 but more motion blur. If it is a shooter or playing with mouse then 60+fps is the way. For something not that camera sensitive then i like 30fps no problem. Frame have to be stable tho,i would prefer stable 30fps over 60 fps that goes down to 55fps during the game.

i just realized i have been playing games at 15 to maybe 30 fps

Stray looks not jittery on my series x what’s going on

It's so stuttery, wdym smooth?

Yes games are basically broken with 30 fps. Whenever i try it it becomes unplayable instantly. In shooters i can't even land a single hit anymore and i wouldn't call myself a bad player.

I'd rather not play at all than play at 30 or less

IMO 30 fps is fine in most types of games *if* you are using a dual analog controller. I find that turning the camera with a mouse (or with Steam Controller trackpads or Flick Stick) is simply too laggy at 30 fps to be enjoyable. I also find that most first person games (even with a controller) feel a bit too laggy unless I'm running at at least 50 fps. But in the majority of games I play (mostly 3rd person action-adventure and RPG type games), 30 fps with a controller is totally fine and I'm happy to play that way if it saves me some money.

It does depend on the game for me. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom's performance doesn't bother me.

Until Unless you never experienced higher fps

Hello, my name is Sebby and I play all my PC Games at 30fps when possible.

Yes. Is bad. Anything below 60 is bad.

for me user low end laptop 30 fps is already great even

What is this FPS counter called?

Having grown up with games that dipped below 20 fps, I think a locked 30 fps is nice. 60 fps is just being spoiled.

30 is fine with a smeer of motion blur, I don’t know what’s with other people!! Motion blur polishes it alll!!!!!!!!!

If I want stable fps at high graphics settings, it will be perfect for me.

Nope, I would never pay $1000 dollars or more for a PC that becomes worthless after a short period of time. And depreciates like crazy. I have a One X which does beautiful 4k 30fps (some 60fps) gaming. Something you'll pay like $1000 or so to do on a PC. Most in the range can barely do 1440p Ultra. Also the Series X/PS5 for WAY less are much better deals. I like casual PC gaming as I have a 1660 TI in my Dell Inspiron which works just fine and never overheats. Which is great considering it's not even a GAMING PC. I get sick of all the tests, and benchmarks. Maybe I've lost my NERD (then again I'm 48) not 18. lol

Zelda Ocaria of Time runs at 20fps..... If that was playable, everything above that is

Just watching this video gave me a headache 😂

If you're sticking with the 360 or ps3

All I have to say is vr is locked at nothing less then 90 sooo

In shooters if your even vaguely competitive you are going to get owned by the sweaty teen gods out there with lightening reflexes at anything less than 90 fps. 120 is what I try for as the minimum 1% and don't care what the game looks like to get it because death screens look bad no matter the graphics settings :)

Yes it is

Yes 30fps is horrible.

Definitely playable I'm okay with it especially for console gaming but 60 fps obviously better

Idk why it feels so bad and slow on pc but very smooth on ps4 wtf 😂

Having the game run at 40 fps but drop down to 30 should be a better experience.

On my oled tv 30 fps is absolutely unplayable. On crt it is fine.

30 fps is more than enough for me and im limit almost every game i play at 30 fps because of stable fps . My pc not be able to keep 60 fps stable for new gen games at max settings

Bro if I get 30 fps in game iam more than happy...

30 fps can be smooth. Stop using Framecap in the Game. Use just the Driver settings or Afterburner/Riva Tuner. Youre Frametime is out of hell in your test.

It’s a PC nerd problem really lol. Average console gamers I think just don’t notice this. I think it has to blatantly bad like stuttering to slow loading but if that’s not happening then it’s fine.

yes...

As a person who owns a pc and console, this is not at all indicative of how console plays. 30fps feels way different on actual console hardware.

I’ll never understand the kids and gamers nowadays that want to complain about a game being 30 FPS. PS3 runs 30FPS, PS4 the same thing. We’ve been playing games at 30FPS for two console generations and now on this one obviously some games still run at 30. I don’t think it’s bad thing. 30 is fine for me. I can appreciate a game that runs at 60 but I really have no preference. I’m a guy that grew up on N64, PS1, PS2. I can still go back and play those consoles today. I’ll just never get how a frame rate ruins a game for some people. If I’m having fun playing the game, if it’s single player and has a good story, I don’t care how it runs or looks graphically. That has never mattered to me.😊

you can play it, it's just a bad experience.

It's not bad nor good ( playable but kinda laggy )

console 30fps and pc 30 fps is way different