- The smartphone display, the television or the gaming monitor if you take any type of display, the frame rate and refresh rate are the two terms which are quite often used with these displays and many times people find two terms bit confusing.
- So let’s start with the frame rate, so the frame rate is define for the content which is going to be shown on this displays, so if you take the case of any video, then it consists of the multiple frames or the still images which are slightly different from one another and when this different frame are shown sequential in a very short interval then it gives the human eye and illusion of the motion.
- So the framerate defines the rate at which the frame appears on the display and it is defined as the number of frames per second or simply by the FPS.
- And if you see worldwide the different type of content are display at different frame rate. For example the movies are displayed at 24 frames per second while if you see the standard television shows then they are display at either 25 frames per second or at the 30 frames per second.
- And here the frame rate differ from country to country. So the country which follows the NTSC standard, the standard frame rate in this country is 30 frames per second while the countries which follow the PAL standard in these countries the frame rate is 25 FPS.
- Apart from these television shows, if we talk about the high action sport or some live broadcast, then it is broadcasted at 60 FPS and apart from that if we talk about the games then usually they are played at 60 or higher frame rates and the content provided by the video sharing or the streaming services on the internet varies from 24 FPS to 60 FPS.
- So as you can see the different type of content is provided at different frame for second and when we watch or interact with this content on on our smartphone display or on the television then the refresh rate come into the picture.
- The refresh rate defines how many times per second the display is getting updated so for some television display if the refresh rate is 60 Hz then it means that the display will get updated at 60 time for second.
- So the typical refresh rate of today’s monitor and television is 60 hertz but there are some displays are also available at higher refresh rate and usually there is a belief that the higher refresh rate gives a better viewing experience but actually it depends on the frame rate of the content which is going to be shown on the display.
- For example if you watch 30 FPS contained on either 60 Hz or 120 Hz display, then you won’t feel much difference in terms of the viewing experience or in case of the 60 Hz display, the same frame is displayed twice per second while in case of the 120 Hz display the same frame will be display 4 times per second.
- On the other end, if you are watching any movie which is filmed at 24 frames per second then on the 60 Hz display it is shown using the pull-down technique. That means every alternate frame is display three time and the two time respectively on the display screen and accept some few panning shots this technique won’t get noticed by the human eye.
- On other end, if the same film is display on 120 Hz display then each frame is display 5 times per second, so in short, to get better viewing experience, the refresh rate of the display should be more than the frame rate of the content.
- So if you watch 30 Hz FPS content on 60 Hz or 120 Hz TV, then it won’t make much difference in terms of the viewing experience but these high refresh rate display will be very useful when you are interacting with the content which is displayed on the screen.
- For example, with high refresh rate display on the smartphone when you are scrolling the screen or the interacting with the screen then it gives you a smoother experience or even when you are playing game with the high frame rate on such screen it gives you a smoother experience.
- So let’s say you are playing some game on the PC which render the frame rate at 120 FPS. So to play sach game the native refresh rate of the display should be at least 120 Hz. So if you play sach game on the 60 Hz monitor then it can show only 60 frames per second.
- On other and let’s say you have a 120 Hz display and the PC is able to output the frame at the 90 FPS so if there is no synchronisation between the monitor and the graphic card then you might see a screen tearing while playing the game that means the information of two or more frames will get display on the same frame so to avoid such screen screen tearing the different synchronisation techniques like the G-sync and the freesync can be used.
- So to use such technology both monitor and the graphic card should support this technology. So in case of the G-sync there is some special chip in the display which communicate with the graphic card and in a way it let the monitor to vary its refresh rate to make the frame rate of the graphic card or vice versa the graphic card can match its frame rate based on maximum refresh rate of the display.
- So this AMD’s free-sync is similar to the G-sync technology but it doesn’t require the priority chip in the monitor and instead this free-sync relies on the display port’s adaptive synchronisation specialisation.
- Using this synchronisation technology it is possible to use even lower refresh rate monitor with the high end in GPUs or vice versa the higher refresh rate monitor with the low end GPU. But of course with the high refresh rate monitor the gaming experience would be much smoother.
- Today not only 120 Hz but even 240 or 480 Hz display are also available and this display claim to provide the motion blur viewing experience with the high frame rates. So for this display the native refresh rate is still either 60 or 120 Hz, but using the different techniques like interpolation and black frame insertion, virtually they increase the frame rate of the display and using this they try to reduce the motion blur so in case of the interpolation based on the current frame and the next frame the display itself generate the intermediate frame. While in case of the black frame insertion to reduce the motion blur the alternate black frame is inserted between the regular frame. So using this few technique, TV manufacturers market high refresh rate display.
