umm, as high as possible?

121

^ this. But with a 60hz monitor, the ideal situation is that you never are below ~120 fps. I'd say that 60fps (60hz-60fps) would be the minimum you'd ever want to be at. I use a 60hz, but I can 100% tell the difference when my frames drop below 100.

Thank you.
Now time to lower my graphics settings

Capping your frame rate is a good thing to do, as it's better to have consistent fps than to have a bouncing one. I use an fps cap, but I don't use the fps_max command built into the tf2 engine. This is because it is known to cause stuttering and other weird things. I use MSI afterburners fps limiter. It works great.

the game is far smoother for me with an uncapped FPS than with 120 or 240 constant max on a 60hz monitor

There is no reason to cap your fps, your monitor is just going to grab the next available frame, it's not going to stack them up in a queue. The only reason to cap is if you're having heat issues.

no vsync. vsync bad.

I play on a laptop, so the heat thing is indeed important. But I also have this thing in the back of my mind that tells me I'll consistently get closer to 120 fps if my processor isn't trying to render an unnecessary of frames. Which I guess is the same thing as the laptop getting hot.

As people have said, no cap is fine. If your framerate has huge drops you wan't to cap it close to your minimum, but if your pc is decent there really isn't much need.

I played at fps_max 121 for the longest time and when i switched to fps_max 0 it felt a lot smoother and had less tearing

I prefer to cap my FPS, as I think it helps with performance issues. For a 60 hz monitor I would cap at 132, and for 120 hz I'd cap at 264.

.

capping jitters for some people but doesn't jitter for others
it's hardware or OS related

Isn't it better to cap your fps if you use accell?

honestly if you manage to get 500+ FPS, it'll be like the game is in slow-mo and you'll move slower, so shoot for 121 - 300.

I turned it off now, why is it bad?

V sync prevents screen tearing by limiting your fps to quite low levels, often times its about 60. Its usually unnecessary and just gives you shitty frames,

For me, capping it results in a bit of jittering, so I uncap it.
V-sync always off (check vga drivers and in-game settings) because I want more than 60 fps.

OS: Win7 Pro 64bits
VGA: Radeon 4890 Vapor-X

vsync almost always causes input lag in directx games

yes, if you use ingame accell you need to cap at or below the lowest framerate you hit during fights or the accell will fuck up

I don't understand how people can even ask if vsynch is bad after having tried it just for one second. When I had it one once out of curiosity it felt like the zoomcam in minecraft.
I would move my mouse and like 2 seconds later the camera would slowly start moving, then accelerate, then slow down and reach its destination a few seconds later.

What

#21 on some weird setups vsync doesn't cause much noticeable input lag at high framerates. so it's worth the benefit of the doubt

#imdone

.

I'm thinking of getting a 120Hz monitor. How much fps should I sustain at all times for it to feel smooth, 240 fps then?

#24
There's a bunch of source engine technical shit that's important, but the most obvious and plain reason is that disabling vsync (which you *should* do in a game this fast) allows for tearing, and the higher your framerate is the less visible tearing objectively is (because there's less time between any two frames that are torn together).

You can tell. Just because it can't render the extra frames, hitscan registration and other things in the source engine use the extra fps.

If your pc is good, play at fps_max 241 or even 121 for a couple days, and then go back to fps_max 61. You will feel the difference.