Frame Rate Limit

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

Please add an in-game frame rate limiter.

There used to be an interval setting that allowed to limit frame rate to an integer fraction of the monitor’s. The return of this feature would be appreciated.

Modern displays support high refresh rates, which most games, including EVE, cannot maintain, leading to inconsistent frame rates, excessive power consumption and heat generation. Many games provide ways to limit their frame rate to target a stable value that keeps the system cool and improves the experience.

There are external tools available to limit frame rates for games, some of which are provided by driver software from the graphics hardware manufacturer, but work poorly.

On my computer there is AMD Chill, which allows to limit the maximum frame rate to a range, but it introduces unpleasant stuttering as a side effect.

AMD also provides Frame Rate Target Control, which works with EVE if only one client is open and set to run in fullscreen mode.

Manual tinkering with the AMD Adrenalin software is needed to get EVE Online to be detected, and for Chill to work.

At the moment EVE runs fine if the monitor refresh rate is set to its lowest value (60 FPS). Frame times are consistent then, but I forfeit the benefits of having a high refresh rate display.

I hope this persuades you that having a frame rate limit setting available in-game is a necessary feature for EVE.

2 Likes
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Hmm, the games I know only allow vsync on or off, EvE used to have a more elaborate setting (nobody understood) but is now using the vsync toggle as well …

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i put freesync on and limit fps to 60 in the graphics driver so games dont go over that. With free sync on 60 fps feels like 120+

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Set your screen refresh rate in windows display settings.

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These are the things I have done:

Set FreeSync on. This is is really good, especially when the display is set to high refresh rates, as it will follow the rate at which the game can generate frames and remain relatively smooth, but the selection of maximum frame rates is limited to the options provided by the display.

Set my display refresh rate in Windows. The selection of maximum refresh rates is small for my display, with none between 60 and 100 Hz. At 60 Hz it’s fine, I guess, but my graphics card could do better. At 100 Hz it consumes too much powe, the fans rev up and the room’s temperature reaches 30°C in the middle of Winter without other heating sources.

Adjust graphics settings in-game. Degrading some visuals, especially shaders, leads to much better performance. The game can sustain 100 FPS without generating too much heat. The game looks ugly though.

Use a frame rate limiter from the graphics card drivers. AMD Frame Rate Target Control works if I launch a single EVE client in full screen mode. Else it stops working. AMD provides another frame limit option, Chill, which causes significant stuttering on EVE. It isn’t good.

Other games that I play provide options in-game to limit frame rate:

  • Microsoft Flight Simulator
  • Destiny 2
  • Stray
  • Elite Dangerous
  • X-Plane

Most graphically-intensive games include a frame rate limit setting. If EVE Online had one, even the interval option it used to have, it would improve my experience, as I could set it to the highest value that EVE can consistently deliver.

Microsoft Flight Simulator’s frame rate limit option is exactly like interval in older versions of EVE Online, but instead of calling it that, they called it Refresh Rate, and instead of values 1-3, they named it 100%, 50%, 33%, which makes it easier to understand what it does. FreeSync stops working when using that though, but it is smoother than alternatives.

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I’m a little confued, why not just set it to 60Hz and be done with?

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You need to use v-sync as well if you dont want the game to render faster than the monitor refresh rate.

So assuming you have a free-sync capable monitor imo its better to limit the rendering to for example 60 in the graphics driver and then also put free-sync on. Then you can enjoy smooth af 60 fps gameplay while having reasonable energy consumption for the most part.

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Yes, I have FreeSync, which works great when the refresh rate is set high. When it is set to 60 FPS, not so much. I explain: the lowest refresh rate that my monitor can do is 48 Hz, which is the case for most displays. It is not uncommon to encounter situations in the game where frame rate drops below this value. One of them is docking at a citadel with a large ship, another is being close to the Jita trade hub, and another is when doing activities on a fleet with more than twenty people.

My AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card has a driver-provided feature called Low Framerate Compensation (LFC), which doubles refresh rate and duplicates frames if the framerate dips below the minimum FreeSync frame rate that the display can handle, which is 48 Hz. For this to work, the display must be set to refresh at least 2.5 times the minimum, or 120 Hz.

A frame rate limit setting in-game would cap the maximum refresh rate, keep the graphics card cool, and permit LFC to maintain a functional FreeSync when the frame rate dips below 48 Hz, which is arguably when it is needed the most.

1 Like
9

All I’m reading in this post is that your GPU has a feature that creates more problems than it solves.

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