[Melatonic]

I think people were saying 60fps was the limit but still I agree

That being said in the quake days I dont think monitors could go over 60hz anyways so even at 120FPS you were not gaining a similar advantage from what we have today. From what I remember however there were other advantages to high FPS in games like Counterstrike as well in terms of player movement - the monitor might have "smoothed" the motion back down to 60 fps but it still resulted in a more accurate experience.

I forget how refresh rate worked on CRT's though - maybe those could higher than 60?

And of course you can overclock an LCD monitor quite easily - most will not do much but there are some that I got to 90hz which (in my opinion) is a massive improvement compared to 60 and the 30hz difference is a much, much larger jump than the next jump from 90 to 120hz.

[badsectoracula]

> I forget how refresh rate worked on CRT's though - maybe those could higher than 60?

Yes, even the standard VGA 13h mode (320x200x8) is 70Hz and many CRTs could do 85Hz. By Quake 3's time CRTs that could do 120Hz and above were very common. Personally i have such a CRT as well as another that can do 160Hz.

Also FWIW the refresh rate is only part of the story - CRTs have practically instant "response time" so 120Hz on a CRT vs 120Hz on a LCD feels very different (in favor of the CRT). Supposedly OLED could be made to be close but personally i haven't seen such a case (and people who have both OLED and CRTs still say that CRTs are better there). I have a 165Hz LCD and doesn't hold a candle to the CRTs i have around in terms of motion feel.

Nowadays you can find small-ish CRTs for dirt cheap on Facebook Marketplace, etc (some even give them for free) - i recommend trying to find one that can do 120Hz if for no other reason than to experience the liquid butter smoothness of FPS motion (and join us in the lamenting its loss in modern monitor tech :-P). Also kinda amusing that when those were new chances are the PCs they were used with couldn't do high framerates (and low framerates do not feel as bad on a CRT as on an LCD, but i'm not sure if it is related).

[formerly_proven]

A large reason why CRTs are rather excellent in regards to motion is because they're not sample and hold displays resulting in very low duty cycles (dominated by the phosphor's fall time of somewhere between 200-1000 µs, as rise time is basically instant at <20 ns or so and video bandwidth is well above 100 MHz). That's the main reason why a 240 Hz LCD using BFI for strobing (D=0.5) can't compete with a 120 Hz CRT (D~0.05 or so).

[pvg]

'quake days' were CRT days and typical computer CRTs were over 60 Hz. 75 Hz minimum used to be a health recommendation/standard for computer displays.

[snovv_crash]

My dad had a big old 19" Nokia CRT that did 90Hz. Of course resolution was capped because this was all being controlled from VGA.

[Melatonic]

Interesting - I had a nice high end 21" CRT at one point I got for free when some tech company went under and told the building maintenance to just trash all of the brand new equipment. Luckily my uncle was that maintenance guy and I got free pick of whatever parts I wanted before it went to the landfill.

I do remember being VERY good at the original counterstrike (pre v1.5) comparatively - I know CRT's have very low input lag - I wonder if I was playing at higher fps / hz and didnt even realize it!

From what I remember VGA could actually do some decent resolutions (SVGA and whatnot were more limited) and DVI was starting to rear its head around that time as well. I vaguely using a resolution like 1900 x 1200 which is about what a modern 1080P HD is doing (slightly higher in fact)

Now this is making me wonder how my plasma TV actually compares - from what I remember plasmas do not have a "hertz" so to say but also werent really coveted for gaming (although burn in may to be to blame for that). Input lag on it seems decent but I would guess might be its big limitation. Surprisingly it does do 10 bit video and while it wont accept an HDR signal I suspect the display itself is capable of showing more dynamic range than many of the cheaper "HDR" LCD's

[TacticalCoder]

I'm pretty sure I was playing Counter Strike at, as reported by the game, 99 fps on my Sony Trinitron back then (2000?). We'd use "low poly" mods (simplified 3D characater models) to speed everything up and reach these speeds.

There are still messages on message boards from this era where several people mention reaching that same 99 fps.

It was two decades ago but I'm pretty sure it was 1024x768 @ 99 fps (19" Sony Trinitron). I may be mistaken on the monitor though.