'Slower' Refresh Rate

I have got an FX5900XT 128meg and have increased the refresh rate from 85 to 100Hz (on the advce of a freind) but now the display seems to be slower especially when watching 'Live WebCams' the 'Times Square' one in particular.
Is this normal? I was told that increasing the refresh rate would increase the quatity of the displayed image?
It seems to do that but at the expense of slowing the card down.

The rest of my system is as follows:

400W power supply
AMD Athlon 3000+ CPU
1Gig of RAM
Windows XP Pro

Is this normal or have I got something else set wrong?

Any help/comments would be appreciated

Regards
Duncan

128meg and have increased the refresh rate from 85 to 100Hz

85 is a good refresh rate, 100 is really not needed. You might use 100 Hz if
you were trying to get 100 frames per second in a 3D game and you had the Vsync
on for your graphic card.
Some consider higher better, but that depends on a few things. Some monitors
can do higher refresh rates well, but some can not. Higher then 85 can shorten
the life of a monitor and can also cause text to get blurry with higher
resolutions.
A lot depends on how good the monitor is.

If you had no trouble at 85 then I would put it back to 85. Your not gaining
anything with a webcam by having it at 100. In fact your screen is probably not
as clear and it puts more strain on your monitor to display at 100Hz.

Why, exactly, did your friend tell you to increase your refresh rate to
100Hz? This setting places a much heavier load on your video card, and thus
causes it to slow down. I would set it back to 85Hz.

--
DaveW



"Web Child" wrote in message
...
I have got an FX5900XT 128meg and have increased the refresh rate from 85
to 100Hz (on the advce of a freind) but now the display seems to be slower
especially when watching 'Live WebCams' the 'Times Square' one in
particular.
Is this normal? I was told that increasing the refresh rate would increase
the quatity of the displayed image?
It seems to do that but at the expense of slowing the card down.

The rest of my system is as follows:

400W power supply
AMD Athlon 3000+ CPU
1Gig of RAM
Windows XP Pro

Is this normal or have I got something else set wrong?

Any help/comments would be appreciated

Regards
Duncan

This setting places a much heavier load on your video card, and thus
causes it to slow down. I would set it back to 85Hz.

The graphic card will only put out what it is capable of putting out. It will
not work harder trying to match a high refresh rate of a monitor.


If Vsync is on, then the video card will match the refresh rate of the monitor
if it can. If it can't then the framerate will be lowered to half the refresh
rate. If it can't match half then it will be a third of the refresh rate. If
Vsync is off then the video does whatever it can do. If it's more then the
refresh rate then you will see graphic tearing in the display which won't hurt
anything, but it's not easy on the eyes.


Most monitors even though they list 100+ refresh rates do not do higher then
85Hz very well. Higher then 85 will strain a lot of monitors.

Web Child wrote:

I have got an FX5900XT 128meg and have increased the refresh rate from 85 to 100Hz (on the advce of a freind) but now the display seems to be slower especially when watching 'Live WebCams' the 'Times Square' one in particular.
Is this normal? I was told that increasing the refresh rate would increase the quatity of the displayed image?
It seems to do that but at the expense of slowing the card down.
snip

Use the slowest refresh rate that does not produce visible flicker. That
will give you the best video performance. This rate is typically between
72 and 85Hz.