"Jeroen Wenting" jwenting at hornet dot demon dot nl wrote in message
...
I've seen stutter free gameplay at 10fps, and heavy stutters at 100fps.
The reverse can also happen.
There is NO generic link between the two phenomenons.

So what? That has nothing to do with whether the two are related.

First of all, the original poster never attempted to try to imply that the
two problems were one and the same. He didn't even try to say they were
related (even though they are). What he said is he wants to minimize
stutter and improve his frame rate.

Secondly, your particular example is especially flawed. Many stutters have
to do with getting data to the video card, either because of disk access or
moving texture data to the card (and some other things). If the frame rate
is already low, you are much less likley to notice stutters than if the
frame rate is high.

Thirdly, even if your example wasn't flawed, it is still true that
stuttering can and does reduce frame rate. Any stutter means that the frame
rate is momentarily reduced. BY DEFINITION.

And that, my friend, is the main reason I replied to your post. To say that
the two have NOTHING to do with each other is simply wrong. They are not
unrelated, they in fact often have a lot to do with each other.

Does that mean that one always is the cause of the other? No, of course
not. Does it mean you will always have one if you have the other? No, of
course not. It just means one ought to be a little more careful about
throwing around absolute statements like "stutters have nothing to do with
framerates".

At least, if you use the FS framerate counter which is what all the fps
junks use to see their framerates.

Irrelevant.

That counter is after all generated in the CPU while stutters occur in the
GPU which doesn't change that counter

Stutters occur in a variety of places. And just because it's the CPU
tracking the frame rate, that doesn't mean that it doesn't know when the
video card stutters. Frame rate is usually calculated based on how many
"flips" in a given second happen. If the video card stutters, the number of
flips is reduced. Since the CPU is tracking the flips, it has immediate
feedback regarding stutter, even when the cause is entirely in the video
card (and it often is not).

So the fps counter is a theoretical number showing how many frames of
animation the system can display as a maximum.

Wrong. Very wrong. The FPS counter is the *actual* number of frames being
displayed in a given second. Depending on the implementation of the
counter, it may be averaged over the last few seconds, which reduces the
instantaneous accuracy. But it is still directly measuring the video card
performance.

Pete