Diff between refresh rate and FPS

[wongb18c]

Can someone give me a basic explination of what the difference between refresh rate and FPS output by a video/graphics card is?

 

[Tr0n]

Wrong forum...

This goes to hardware/software which is the 3rd one below this one.

 

[bliink]

* Moved

 

[Snakebyte]

FPS is how many frames per second your gfx card is drawing, and refresh rate is how often your monitor's image is being updated.
If your FPS is higher than your refresh rate you might see some "tearing" in your games (where your gfx card and monitor are out of sync, and you can see some visual glitches because of this). Vsync prevents this by limiting your fps to your monitors refresh rate. As long as your monitor has a decent refresh rate this shouldn't limit your fps by much. Hope this is a clear enough explaination.

 

[PunisherUSA]

Good read on the subject
http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

Tests with Air force pilots have shown, that they could identify the plane on a flashed picture that was flashed only for 1/220th of a second.