gaming on a 120hz hdtv effects?

i know that gaming on a 120hz 1080p monitor will basically half my performance (compared to gaming on my 60hz hd laptop screen).
i asked the tv rep if this would be the same if i bought his 120hz led hd tv. he said it wont, since 120hz in tv's are not the same, and only refer to certain smoothing techniques used on tv. there was only no way for the tv to 'downclock' to 60hz.

sounds like bull. he was lying right or at least misinformed? afaik led tv are exactly the same as pc monitors, unless i did miss something...

 

why would playing on a 120hz monitor halve your performance? That doesn't make sense, and lcd tvs and monitors do use the same kind of technology when it comes to the panel.

 

I think its because 60hz has a max of 60fps without screen tearing and 120hz has 120fps, so playing games with 60fps would be indeed half the performance output. Thats just my 2 cents though.

 

what nikolai said

 

120Hz TV's dont have a refresh rate of 120Hz, they are 60Hz TV's that take two frames and calculate what image should be inbetween them only smoothing the image. It doesnt require extra processing on the gaming end because its the TV itself doing it.
I connect my desktop to my 240Hz LED TV and while the frames are the same on my TV and monitor (because they are both 1080p resolutions) the smoothing the TV does makes things look nicer, not to mention the contrast and colors are better on my TV.

 

so the rep was actually telling the truth?

so there is a difference between a 120hz external monitor and a 120hz hd tv?
can anyone else confirm this?

 

If your gaming on the same resolution (regardless of size) it should be the same performance. The GPU is rendering the pixels, a 46" 1080p TV and a 22" 1080p monitor have the same amount of pixels.
That "120Hz" just reduces motion blur.

 

I seriously thought 120hz monitors could display 120 frames per second. But I don't know too much about hooking up external monitors, which is why i am going to ask this question. This is kind of a side topic but it involves TVs hooked up to laptops. So I hook up my M15x to the 120hz 1080p tv through the firewire converter to hdmi and it starts displaying what is on my laptop screen. But then the problem is that there is lag of like half a second between what happens on my computer and on the screen. It was very disappointing and impossible to play games or even click buttons in an internet browser. Does anybody know how to fix this?

 

120 Hz stuff is a useless gimmick unless you are constantly using 3D technology.

 

False. There ARE TVs with real 120hz refresh rate. Hell, there are TVs with higher refreshrate.

The problem was that they advertised that gimmick of Motion Interpolation as "120hz" refreshrate on the first set of 120hz tvs. Only newer Tvs have that real refresh rate.

And it doesn't halve your performance. Performance should be the same, but you will have a higher ceiling for max framerate being displayed. But you won't really notice much of a difference unless you have fast paced game with highenough framerate. And that your TV actually has real 120hz refreshrate.

Don't use the firewire port, use an HDMI, DVI or even the good old VGA out. Real 120hz monitors ARE capable of displaying up to 120 frames per second. But only if you can run anything in such high fps.

 

This. Think about it, if you used a 30hz tv would you get double the framerate? No, it would just max out at 30 before you get screen tearing or w/e. Same for 120hz.

 

Current movies are filmed at 24 fps. What do you think your 120hz/240hz TV does?

That's right, it just displays the exact same image 5-10 times.

3D actually displays multiple images, so it does show different frames needed for the 3D effect in between each new picture.

I hook my G73 up to my 120hz LG constantly, and I have seen no difference in performance over the built in monitor (other than it looks way bigger).

 

I had this problem but found an easy fix. Make sure you are in 'game' mode on the TV and not like 'theater' or 'home' etc.. (might also be called PC mode or something like that) This makes the TV process the input differently (or alot less) and thus almost eliminates any lag. I have two laptops connected to my 37" 1080 120hz LCD, one by DVI and one by HDMI, this fixed the lag on both.
cheers

 

ok thanks that kinda cleared up some things. the reason i asked is because ive seen many monitor threads in the accessories section with guys saying that a 120hz monitor will force your pc to 120fps.
ok so if i had vsync turned on on a true 120hz hd tv, it would downscale to 60hz to avoid tearing?


also, how would you determine whether an hdtv has true 120hz or not.

 

i was looking at a 2011 flatscreen 32" LG led, and it had motion interpolation settings and didnt seem to be true 120hz as the rep and stickers said. it was in fact the model that made me start this thread.
are you sure your lg is a tru 120hz tv?

 

Vsync works at different sets of framerate caps. Some work, lets say at 30, 45 and 60. Meaning that if you run an game over 60fps, the game caps it at 60 but if it falls below that figure, it caps it down to 45 to avoid tearing. It really depends on how they implemented it.

If you use vsync and have a 120hz monitor, then you will still run the game at the nearest number that can prevent tearing. It could still be 60, or perhaps higher.

Check your HDTV manual and specifications for the real refreshrate. Most common, cheap TVs advertise 120hz but in reality they mean Motion Interpolation, which goes by different names like "TruMotion, RealMotion" etc etc. You can even check online for the real hz it is capable of.

for example, some AoC tvs advertised with 120hz are in reality 70hz only.

 

thanks again. so what happens to a 120hz monitor when vsync is turned off and the source pc cannot output to that frequency/fps?
afaik tearing goes both ways (with vsync off)- if your output is way above; or below the frequency of the monitor. eg you can have tearing if your pc can only output 70fps on a 120hz screen (vsync off).
why do i ask? because the next vsync cap might be too low, like 24fps. with most 60hz laptop monitors/gpus, i think thats the standard cap after 60hz. i dont know what limits the vsync cap the monitor or the gpu. it would suck to have a 120hz monitor suddenly cap to 24 with vsync on.

 

My definition of tearing is that the screen receive a new fram before it's done drawing the previous, hence the tear. With Vsync off nothing would happen on a 120hz since it can refresh faster than you gpu sends frame as long as you are under 120fps.

 

Thanks I have seen game mode on my TV I will have to try this.
I have a VGA port too but no VGA>HDMI cable and those are probably expensive anyways. It looked fine the way it was, will it look better through VGA?

 

I play my movies on my laptop with frame interpolation (so movies which have natively 24 fps now play at 48 fps with a new intermediate frame generated between 2 frames), it looks as "smooth" and "home-recorded-ish effect" as the 120hz TVs, because there IS NO DIFFERENCE, all those TVs do is also just double the framerate of movies to 48 fps which all 60hz screens and older TVs can easily handle.

 

Vsync doesn't really have "frame caps" as such, it just waits for a full frame to be rendered and then passes it off to the monitor as soon as it's ready. Think of it like a ticking clock. Each time the clock ticks represents each potential frame the monitor could display. As an example, on the first tick, the frame hasn't finished rendering so it soldiers on rendering and the disaplay will carry on outputting what it has already. If by the time the next tick comes around the frame has finished rendering then it will send it off to the monitor all at once and so it will display a whole new frame.

This coincidentally locks the frame rate to factors of the monitors refresh rate (if you have a 60Hz monitor then 30, 20, 15, 12, 10, 6 would all be possible "frame rates"). When Vsync isn't enabled, each time the clock ticks the monitor will still take what the graphics has managed to render already. If this is only half a frame then you will end up with half a frame stuck over the top of the old one.

As for wondering whether you'll be able to output at 120Hz, usually the graphics will let you output at whatever the monitor supports. If you're on the desktop then you should be able to pull off 120Hz without a problem.