Should I play my PC games with a KB/M at 60FPS or a controller at 30FPS?

[Themarcshark]

I'm not exactly new to PC gaming, but I've never had a particularly high end PC capable of maxing out anything modern, that is still the case. However, after discovering that many of my Steam games actually have built in controller support, I was wondering if I should sacrifice 60fps and high mouse precision in favor of better graphics in games locked at 30fps with a controller? Im currently running Intel HD graphics, but I can still run games decently, like Fallout 3 GOTY at 1280x720 at mostly medium settings, some high, some low, and I usually never go below 30fps outdoors, and this is with plenty of mods installed as well. However, with Fallout, I notice that if I go below 60fos (only outdoors for some reason) I get massive mouse
lag. This is nly a problem because of the high precision of a mouse, whereas controllers use accelerated motion, which makes the input lag practically non existent. Or something like Borderlands, I pretty much have to play it at 640x480 with almost all settings off or low to maintain 60fps, is it worth it when I could just lock it at 30, bring up to 1280x720 and max out nearly everything and play it at a solid 30fps with a controller? Lemme know what you think!

New here btw, I've visited the site often but just joined today so I could ask this question!

 

[James Mason]

Intel HD graphics won't really run anything good, they're aren't meant for games, they are meant for low cost web browsing, word processing, ect.

 

[Themarcshark]

That didn't answer my question at all lol. I know it's no substitute for a dedicated GPU, but it's all I have right now and, like I stated above, it runs games pretty decently. I've been playing Fallout 3 and NV on it for a while now at pretty much the same graphical settings and resolution as the console versions and I never dip below 30FPS. My problem is the mouse lag that comes with FPS under 60 in those games and if I should use a controller instead to effectively mask the unbearable mouse lag I've been getting.

 

[James Mason]

What graphics settings are you using to play them?
Some graphics settings unfairly tax your system, like shadows and AA/FXAA/ect

 

[joho5]

mouse / kb vs controller has nothing to do with lag or which machine you have or should get. That's a personal preference on how you should control the game.

A controller on pc will be hard fought to keep up with on first person shooters vs a keyboard and mouse. On bigger games like battlefield you can maneuver yourself well enough to make up some of the difference, but in a fast pace shoot em up game that's small...key and mouse will prob win.

 

[Themarcshark]

Both Fallout 3 and NV I'm running with the same settings which is 1280x720, AA off, 4xAF, no HDR or bloom(although neither made the game unplayable, I just prefer the 10 or so FPS increase I get with them disabled), all water effects on except soft and high res reflections, all view distance sliders on a mix of medium to high, all LOD sliders on a mix of medium to high, shadows and shadow filtering at medium with 2 shadows max indoors and outdoors. One thing I did though that greatly improved performance was increase the grass size value in the .ini to 180 i believe so there would be significantly less grass, but still enough as to not look weird. I also have around 30 plus mods installed on both games, including weather mods and such

 

[Themarcshark]

mouse / kb vs controller has nothing to do with lag or which machine you have or should get. That's a personal preference on how you should control the game.

A controller on pc will be hard fought to keep up with on first person shooters vs a keyboard and mouse. On bigger games like battlefield you can maneuver yourself well enough to make up some of the difference, but in a fast pace shoot em up game that's small...key and mouse will prob win.

I'm talking strictly single player games, Bethesda games in particular give me horrid mouse lag when below 60fps, but since using a controller uses accelerated movement for camera panning as opposed to the more raw input of a mouse, a controller makes the lag practically non existent. And the only multiplayer game i play on PC really is TF2, which I used a kb/m on and have no problems because it maintains 60+fps easily

 

[James Mason]

turn off the AF completely. And turn off the shadows completely as well. Try that and see how it performs, you can play with the other ones, like high textures and such.

 

[bystander]

A controller doesn't make lag go away at all, but a controller does not have the same direct connection of your hand on a mouse, so you forgive the latency a lot easier. A mouse is just a more sensitive input device, so latency is harder to ignore.

Skyrim is one of the worst games for latency, in part because it forces V-sync on, and easily to max out at 60 FPS. You can get rid of some of the latency by using a FPS limit of 59.

 

[Themarcshark]

I've messed with both of those but I found that the engine used in Fallout 3 and NV actually doesn't render any shadows whatsoever except for those cast by character models, so turning off the shadows only gave me literally less than a 5fps increase, same with AF, there was barely a difference at all, I messed with both of these settings pretty extensively.

 

[Themarcshark]

A controller doesn't make lag go away at all, but a controller does not have the same direct connection of your hand on a mouse, so you forgive the latency a lot easier. A mouse is just a more sensitive input device, so latency is harder to ignore.

Skyrim is one of the worst games for latency, in part because it forces V-sync on, and easily to max out at 60 FPS. You can get rid of some of the latency by using a FPS limit of 59.

This is what I'm saying. I know that the controller doesn't take away the lag, but the nature of it's functionality mostly hides it.

 

[James Mason]

Well, there's also the slow and ponderous "What's really causing my graphics lag problem" fix, where you drop all the settings to barest minimums, and then increase them one at a time to see what kills your performance.

If you really want to play these games, Someone on one these forums (make a seperate thread clearly stating your needs and budgetary limits) can probably recommend you a good system/build for around $500-700, depending on what you need to buy or not (i.e monitor, OS, mouse and keyboard, ect)
Because it sounds like you have an office computer meant for doing work, not play games.
(like this HP Elitebook 8470p I'm using because I'm at work )