It's always interested me what people will accept as a playable frame rate for their games. It's almost an intrinsic part of being a PC gamer, because most of us have had to live with compromise for our entire gaming lives. If you're Scrooge McDuck, swimming through piles of cash and can drop five grand on a gaming PC, sure, you don't have to worry about digging around in the settings screen to find a balance of frame rate and fidelity you will accept. But for the rest of us, that's just the way of things.
And so each of us has to decide where they make that compromise, knowing our hardware is not going to be able to nail 4K/240 on the regular. For a long time, it was 30 fps as the target sweet spot for PC gaming, but that's because I'm an old man, and then it shifted to 60 fps with the advent of more modern console generations. But hell, I'm so old I keenly remember playing through Operation Flashpoint on a weakheart PC at maybe 18 fps max and loving it.
So, I wanted to know what that level was now, and is even 60 fps considered too low a frame rate to be comfortable? For the past week, we've been asking: What is the minimum frame rate you consider actually playable for your games?
What is the minimum frame rate you consider actually playable for your games?
Votes (%)
60 fps5030 fps2045 fps12120 fps1124 fps like da movies4240 fps + cos I'm super competitive2
| Product | Value |
|---|---|
| 60 fps | 50 |
| 30 fps | 20 |
| 45 fps | 12 |
| 120 fps | 11 |
| 24 fps like da movies | 4 |
| 240 fps + cos I'm super competitive | 2 |
And the results are that, yes, 60 fps is still widely considered the gold standard for whether a game is running at a playable level or not. With a solid 50% of PC Gamer readers putting that down as the minimum performance they will accept from their games and their gaming rig.
It's still interesting that 36% of readers—more than a third—are happy to accept a lower frame rate, sometimes much lower. Talk to any console developer right now, and there's a good chance they'll tell you that 30 fps is fine, and so will 20% of readers.
But I wouldn't be surprised if a good portion of the 12% citing 45 fps as their minimum are people coming from Steam Deck or handheld gaming PCs, or even sporting high-performing iGPUs in their laptops. There has become far greater acceptance of lower frame rates in return for the convenience of a mobile, gaming-capable platform.
Then you have the elites. Those with the gaming monitors and raw graphical grunt in their PCs to be able to say that 120 fps is their line in the sand, or even 240 fps. What a world to live in.
Where do you stand in the minimum frame rate debate? Are you in the high frame rate or be damned crew, or willing to compromise on 45 fps? Let us know in the comments below.
This week we're interested in your ship of Theseus: what's inside your PC and just how old is the oldest part inside it. So, we're asking: What is the oldest component inside your current gaming PC?
