60fps with 120hz

If I buy a monitor with 120hz but only get 60 fps, graphically will it be better than having a monitor with 60 hz and getting 60 fps?
as I am confused

yep....if the Xbox pumps out 60 frames every second, gameplay will be smoother on a 60Hz display rather than a 120Hz...the same analogy applies

this sounds nuts to me.

sounds nuts. what is there to explain? I don't see where a 120hz monitor would hamper anything.

I'm with swifty here. You guys are nuts. There is no stutter if you are maintaining 60 FPS on a 120hz monitor with v-sync on. With v-sync off, there is absolutely no question, the 120hz monitor will do better, so I have to assume we are assuming v-sync, since you mentioned stuttering.

So, if you are locked at 60 FPS on a 120hz monitor, the result is every frame will occupy the length of 2 refreshes, resulting in the same result as a 60hz monitor. If your FPS are below 60 FPS, then there could be stuttering, but it would be less on the 120hz monitor, because each refresh missed does not add 16.7ms to the frame, and instead adds 8.3ms to the delay, reducing the stuttering. The only time you may gain a little stuttering is if you have v-sync on and above 60 FPS and below 120 FPS, but you also gain FPS for more response, this has a little bonus and a little disadvantage too.

In short:
With v-sync and 60 FPS, they are the same
With v-sync and less than 60 FPS, 120hz is better.
With v-sync and over 60 FPS, 120hz can be better, but can be worse in ways. The higher the FPS, the more it is better.
Without v-sync, 120hz is always better.

I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that. If the monitor is refreshing faster than the GPU can put out frames on a game, the monitor is going to have duplicate frames to fill those spaces in. So effectively, I would think you would only be getting 30 FPS effectively because 120/60=2 and 60/2=30 although it probably is not as cut and dry as this this is just a guess. If he was on PC this wouldn't be an issue because he could just turn the refresh rate down. Since he's on an Xbox One that can only run 30 FPS anyway, it's probably gonna look even worse. One of the vast reasons I don't console game and only play PC.

I apologize for maybe using the wrong terms, what i had meant by 'stuttering' was not the 'breaking' in fps as you may say that vsync prevents. What i had meant by stuttering was frame latency. Anything above 60 fps on a 60hz display (and anything above 120 fps on 120hz display) will cause uneven frame latency, sometimes being 16.7 ms (as bystander mentioned) and sometimes as high as 30 or so ms, this will cause a 'hesitation' feeling where gameplay wont feel as smooth as it should. This is the problem G-sync (and adaptive v-sync and lately amd's free-sync idea) also solves, by syncing the gpu and display, no such random frame latencies occur. http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2013/12/23/nvidia-g-sync-review/2 ...V-sync is for a similar purpose however since it caps frames to the monitors refresh rate, what happens when the gpu cant deliver 60 or 120fps?......

You seem to be confusing 2 different phenomena, or just describing it poorly.

There are two different things you are talking about here, and the way you described it, would suggest that the 60hz monitor would be far worse.

Let's break this down.

60 FPS on a 60hz monitor with v-sync will not cause uneven frame delivery. However it will cause additional latency due to how DirectX forces every frame to be displayed. You'll end up with 16.7ms of latency that should not be there, because it ends up treating rendered frames as a look ahead system.

60 FPS on a 120hz monitor with v-sync will not have that look ahead frame buffer, if achieved with a FPS limiter. If you just let the FPS land randomly, so you are not at a solid 60 FPS, then this is the only time there may be some frame time delivery issues, which may stutter a bit. This can be controlled with adaptive v-sync (half refresh) or a FPS limiter.

Without v-sync, the 120hz monitor will be superior in every way. There is no latency added to the frames in either case. I do not know where you got that idea.

With a 60hz monitor, every frame will have a tear. Part of the frame will show instantly, and part of it will wait until the next refresh. It will likely move a bit, up and down the screen, where that break is, as they never sync up. Perhaps that is the part you are confused about. There is no syncing of frames and refreshes, even if the FPS and hz match, unless you use v-sync or g-sync.

With a 120hz monitor, every frame will have a tear, with part of it showing up instantly, and the 2nd half waiting for the next refresh, but instead of waiting 16.7ms to show the 2nd part, it waits only 8.3ms. Then another refresh happens, that does not happen with the 60hz monitor, which will show both parts of the image at the same time, without a tear, followed by another frame with a tear. The result is the tear lasts half as long, and the time it takes the whole image to show up takes half as long. Most people claim to not see tearing as a result of the speed, but I do, just not as easily.

everything i've talked about until now, most of it has come from this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdSQl64J0I8 ...i might've misunderstood it. does stutter then only occur if v-sync is turned on?...as frames dip below the monitor's refresh rate?....

but did you ever really notice it until gsync came along?............ or does this have anything to do with frame pacing or frame latency........... can't remember what it was anymore. for a while reviewers were adding in the performance charts how slow the frames were being rendered.... blah, blah..............??? getting senile here. ( graphics cards )