FPS test

What 24 to 240 fps looks like

Press Start and the same shape moves at 24, 30, 60, 120, 144 and 240 fps, plus once more at your screen's own refresh rate. Your screen can't show more frames than its refresh rate, so anything faster tops out there. A rate that doesn't divide evenly into your refresh rate, like 60 fps on a 144 Hz screen, stutters a little, and we label it uneven.

The biggest jump is from 30 fps to 60 fps: each frame gets 16.67 ms shorter. The frame rate comparisons put each higher step side by side, and the studies on what gamers can tell apart are in how many fps a human eye can see.

Frame rate and refresh rate

Refresh rate, in hertz, is how many times a second your screen shows a new picture, and the refresh rate test measures it. Frame rate is how many new pictures your game or app makes each second. The screen sets the ceiling: a game can make 200 fps on a 144 Hz monitor, but you only see 144 of them each second.

Why a game runs past your refresh rate and a browser does not

With V-Sync off, a game starts the next frame as soon as the last one is done, so Dota 2 or CS2 can show 200 or 400 fps on a 144 Hz monitor, up to the game's own frame cap. Your screen then shows parts of several frames at once, which is screen tearing. V-Sync, G-SYNC or FreeSync fixes it.

A web page can't do that: your browser gives it one frame per screen refresh, and you can't switch that off. So this test tops out at your refresh rate, while a game's own counter can go higher.

Why the test stops at 60 fps

If your screen is 120 or 144 Hz and the test shows 60, something is holding it back. The usual suspects are a battery saver, Safari's 60 fps default on iPhones, iPads and MacBook Pros with ProMotion, and a 60 Hz main monitor. The refresh rate test checks for these on your device and tells you how to fix each one.

What the FPS test can't see

Counting frames can't spot problems with the panel itself. Check those by eye: dead pixels with the dead pixel test, uneven backlight and poor contrast with the monitor test, and smeared motion with the ghosting test.

The FPS test also runs with your computer mostly idle. To see what happens under load, the GPU stress test works the graphics card, or every CPU core, and shows when frames start to drop. Your screen keeps refreshing at the same rate; it just gets fewer new frames.

Frame time for every common rate

To get the frame time in milliseconds, divide 1,000 by the frame rate. Type any rate to convert it, and the list highlights the matching common rate.

See FPS inside a game

To see your FPS while you play, turn on the counter in your launcher or graphics software.

• Steam Go to Settings > In Game > Performance Monitor. It replaced Steam's old FPS counter in 2025.
• NVIDIA app Press Alt+Z, choose what to show under Statistics, then press Alt+R to turn the overlay on or off.
• AMD Software Press Ctrl+Shift+O to turn the performance overlay on or off.
• Xbox Game Bar on Windows Press Win+G, then pick Performance from the Widget menu.

Many games also have their own frame counter in the video or display settings.

How the FPS test measures

Your browser stamps each frame with the exact time it's shown, and the test records every stamp.

• Steady timing First the test works out how long one refresh of your screen lasts, the same way the refresh rate test does, then checks every frame against it.
• Frame rate The frames shown in the last second. It can't go above your refresh rate, and it isn't rounded: a monitor that runs at 143.98 Hz shows 143.98, not 144.
• Dropped frames A frame that took two or more refreshes counts as one drop for each refresh it missed.
• 1% low Shows up once the run has 1,000 frames: about 7 seconds at 144 Hz, 17 seconds at 60 Hz.
• 99th percentile 99% of your frames were quicker than this.
• Jitter How far frames land from an even beat, in milliseconds. Close to zero means every frame arrived right on its refresh.

The test stops if you play the motion comparison, switch tabs or change the refresh rate, so one result never mixes two rates.