FPS vs Fire Rate Revisited (01/2005)

Written by [FOoM]Slash

Someone recently (a few months ago) did testing on how frames per second (FPS) effects rate of fire (ROF), if at all. The commonly held notion is that higher FPS will give you a faster ROF. I wrote about this not too long ago, however I used statistics already on the FOoM site, probably from before TF1.5, so they could be outdated or completely wrong. Anyways, have a look at this report:

http://www.fortress-forever.com/fpsreport/

It's findings are very peculiar to say the least. These results should raise an eyebrow. For one, this isn't very good testing procedure. It's good that he made a mod for exact numbers, however he is using Windows, and god knows what things it could be doing during the time of testing. Clearly, he SHOULD have focused more on testing the same FPS setting at least 15 times each, dropping the high and low values, and rounding off the rest.

Ok, so his methods might be flawed, but is there any reason to suspect these effected the results? Yes. Of course. Look at the results. They seem completely absurd. This is exactly what the results conclude:

Best FPS Setting: 20fps
Worst FPS Setting: 21fps

Does this make any sense? How could 1 FPS make such a huge difference? The difference between them is more than 2 seconds. Thats huge . Is it possible that his computer could have lagged for that test, producing such a wild result? Perhaps... But FPS limiting isn't perfect. You could set your FPS to 20 and jump around from 19 to 21 from time to time. It just doesn't make sense.

However, let's just assume that his results are correct. The average time it takes to unload a MP5 in HL is a little more than 5 seconds, as we can see in the test. And between 20fps and 21fps there is a 2 second difference. Therefore, we can say generally speaking : the difference between 20fps and 21fps is about 2 seconds per 20fps 5 second interval.

Now, taking into consideration that an average estimate of how long it takes to unload a HWG's AC is a little over 20 seconds, we can predict how much difference should be between 20fps and 21fps when firing the HWG's AC in TFC. The AC takes about 4 times longer than the mp5, so the difference between 20fps and 21fps should be about 4 times as well. So, it's quite simple to see that the difference in HWG's AC fire should be about 8 seconds when switching from 20fps to 21fps.

Now let's stop right here.

8 seconds is a massive difference. It's not even remotely a negligable difference. It is a noticeable difference when playing. It's borderline hacks to have such a massive advantage against someone with 21fps. This can't be right. The poor testing procedure must be the reason for why these results seem so wrong... Sure, some HWG's seem a lot better than others, but 8 seconds faster?

This should be easy to disprove. Even without exact measurements, we should be able to see a difference. A stopwatch will do just fine. Hell, you could count in your head one-onethousand, two-onethousand and see a difference, if it really is 8 seconds .

So I go to test it out this morning. If it really is a huge difference, then the results are most likely right. If I can't tell a difference, or the difference is only a few seconds, then we can say the results are wrong, but we need more exact testing to reach further conclusions. This is only a trial to test the authenticity of the above results and nothing more. .

I have a stopwatch on my wristwatch and I fired at the same location, into the same direction for each of these tests. I started the timer as I pressed the fire button, and stopped it when the ammo count reached 0. I would alternate between FPS settings and performed the tests numerous times.

Results:

20 fps
21.06 seconds
21.17 seconds
21.21 seconds
20.98 seconds
21 fps
29.23 seconds
29.37 seconds
28.85 seconds
29.15 seconds

All I can say is

The results fall exactly in line with what the fpsreport predicted. For the hell of it, I did some more tests on a few other FPS settings. 50fps because this was the second best FPS setting according to the report, very close to 20fps performance. 60fps because a lot of people probably run at 60fps because HL is set to 60hz by default and a lot of people run vsync. Finally I tried 72fps because that's the default max_fps. I suspect the majority of HL players are running at 60 fps and 72 fps.


Results:

50 fps
21.09
21.26
21.28
60 fps
24.05
23.80
24.06
72 fps
23.48
23.12
23.51

Again, these only prove that the fpsreport was correct.

In conclusion, the rate of firing as dependant on FPS is confirmed in STEAM HL Mods