Higher fps than monitors refresh rate?

[tombman]

hi,
I read on some article that when the frame rate of a game is higher than your refresh rate the extra frames are "dropped" what does it mean and how are they dropped??

[Birdie]

The Refresh Rate and the FPS are closely related, and intimately entwined. To understand both we need to examine what they are and how to maximize our enjoyment of our equipment. Also, if you are planning on upgrading, knowing this stuff lets you buy right! Firstly we need to know what affects the maximum FPS, and what the human eye can and can't detect.

The color depth chosen in 3D games over rides the windows settings and affects your Refresh Rate. 32 bit colour takes twice the processing power of 16 Bit colour. Most young humans can resolve almost 20 million RGB colour values. This is a strong argument for 32 bit colour depth over 16 bit colour. However, 32 bit is 4.2 billion colours, and clearly overkill. 16 Bit colour equals 65,536 colors - hardly ideal, but much better than 256 colors (8 Bit)

[ApPy10]

Refresh Rate: The rate at which your video card is sending complete screens from its frame buffer memory to your monitor, and the corresponding rate at which the monitor refreshes the whole image. 60hz = 60 complete refreshes per second.

FPS: Frames Per Second, the rate at which your video card is drawing frames to its frame buffer. If the FPS is higher than than the refresh rate, then the extra frames are lost and tearing could occur.

[kiLLer]

having a higher FPS depending on your settings will make it worse. If you do really want higher FPS setting make sure the higher is exacly 50%-100% higher than the refresh rate. Like you have 60hz, you could do 90 or 120 FPS, but I don't know how much that will help. Also worth mentioning, if anyone has issues with getting their monitors at a certain refresh rate (I know there is a command, but it doesn't always work) there's a nifty little program called refresh lock. This will override your OS/Program limitations on hz.