– Can anyone explain the difference between computer display “hertz”, “refresh rate” and how it corresponds to “FPS”?

Question

I really should know this, but I never really “groked” the concepts as they interrelate.

Thanks for taking the time.

In: 12

Answer 1

Hertz is a unit of frequency – basically the number of cycles per second.

A 60Hz display refreshes the screen 60 times per second. A 120Hz display refreshes the screen 120Hz per second. This is the refresh rate. This is the display’s functional cap on FPS – an application’s actual FPS will also rely on the computer being able to output that many frames per second – if you have a potato computer hooked up to a 144Hz display, chances are it’s going to be running at less than 144 FPS for most games.

The RESPONSE TIME is the time it takes a given pixel to change color and is expressed in ms.