I have a lot of older gog games that I play on my existing laptop. I want to buy a new laptop but I read that the display on the new gaming laptops run at 120 - 144 Hz IPS-Level which will conflict with these games making them unplayable. Anyone have any insights into this before I buy anything?

1) Most games don't care about framerate (as long as it's within reasonable bounds), let alone refresh rate 2) Usually there's some way to cap framerate for the few games that do mind, so it shouldn't be a problem. I haven't had any issues with my 144Hz freesync monitor, though I haven't played that many games with it anyway.

The oldest of games (think DOS era) most certainly shouldn't mind, especially if you run them in dosbox. Mid-to-late 90s to early 2000s, people still used CRTs whose refresh rates very often were something other than 60Hz (for example, I ran 1600x1200 @85Hz in the early 2000s), so most of these games should just work fine.

I wouldn't be surprised if mid-to-late 2000s console developers fucked things up though (is there anything they did not fuck up?). With these things, if your display doesn't offer a 60Hz mode, then you can try to cap FPS from graphics drivers or a wrapper around the 3D library.

Thanks for your insights Clarry. This is the quote I was referring to when I was looking into buying a specific 120hz laptop...

." I mostly play older games (A few from 2017 but most older than 2011) and many have had compatibility issues with the 120hz display in this. Many have required convoluted workarounds to get running. Even when plugged into an external source like my 60hz 1080p TV I cannot get them to work normally. If somehow I do get the incompatible games to play they will slow down and play at 50% speed at 30fps or double speed at 120fps. Only one game I play is new enough to take advantage of the 120hz and I barely notice the difference from 60hz. You can also not set this display to 60hz, only 120 and 48. I imagine the 120hz refresh rate would be noticeable for newer FPS titles but for the platformers I play it's been negligible".....

Any other thoughts or do you still think I'm okay with this...I do mostly play the older dos games. Sound like it's worth a shot. I could always keep the former laptop if need be. Also, as you say, most of my games are dosbox pre mid 2000.
Thanks!

It'd be more useful if the author of that snippet had at least mentioned which games they were having problems with.. the other thing is, what constitutes a convoluted workaround? Is capping FPS via the usual means too convoluted for them?

I don't doubt that there are some games that will need workarounds (and that may not work right), but whether that's a problem for you or not depends really just on you.. I, personally, don't care too much. If a game doesn't work, well, I have a thousand other games to play. So I move on and enjoy my 144Hz freesync. (But this is my personal bias; I enjoy first person shooters and I hate the input latency in 60Hz vsync-locked games.. I also hate tearing)

Using a 120 Hz display for about 4 years now and never ran into a problem and this is the first time I heared about someone having problems, guess this guy had other problems than the display.

Edit: Btw, all 120Hz Laptops I had could be set to 60Hz in Windows, if you wanted, too.

Depends on what you are looking playing. I have an acer predator Helios, which is great but the screen is always quite dark. And I have a gpd win 2, great for quite a lot of games. If your playing dis games and talking about 120hz refresh rates your talking two very different worlds. Also, is this for piping out to a big screen or just the laptop screen?

Well said. Again, many thanks. Thank you for your insights sir. This is just for the laptop screen. I have some older gog dos games which work thru dosbox I guess. Thanks for your help!

If you think might have problems, just make sure the screen on the laptop you want have a variable refresh rate technology, like g-sync or freesync, most do and this means they are not locked to 120 or 144Hz but can run on a range of frequencies, typical 50-60 to 120-144Hz, auto-adjusting or locked by the user.

What are those "usual means"? Are there some universal ways to force (older) games to run at 60 fps max, or limit the refresh rate to 60Hz on 120 or 144Hz monitors (so that vsync alone would fix that problem)? Or does each game have to have such "framerate limiter" built-in?

I am asking because I am also concerned whether buying a over-60Hz monitor (or laptop) will cause problems for some older games. It is becoming increasingly hard to find a gaming laptop which doesn't have a 120Hz or 144Hz screen.

EDIT: Ok someone said that Windows should offer an option to limit refresh rate to 60Hz on 120Hz displays; is that true also for 144Hz displays, so you can limit them to 60Hz refresh rate if needed?

I recall someone mentioning e.g. KOTOR 1 or 2 having issues at 120 or 144Hz, but I am unsure if he was able to fix it (by somehow limiting it to 60Hz or less).

It seems the same thing all over again where some older games started having physics problems on too fast CPUs. Mechwarrior 3 is one such game, then there was Shattered Steel where some weapons would not hit enemies anymore if the game run "too fast" (this can be fixed by slowing the game down within DOSBox), or Interstate'76 where the flamethrower didn't work correctly anymore and there were some physics problems too while driving.

Hmm, i play both Kotors every now and then again (especially 2) and what I recall is, they have problems with Intel Videocards, but not with 120Hz. I did never have to set screen refresh rate manually to 60Hz for the games I played and it worked flawless for all (many old games, too). Surely this isnt all games and it could be, but then you can set refresh to 60Hz. So I think most problems come from other sources like Windows incompatibility, drivers, special software and so on and then are mapped to what people think it could be the reason.

The most "universal" thing would probably be your graphics drivers, if they support such a thing. Otherwise, there are things like

https://github.com/ThirteenAG/d3d9-wrapper
https://github.com/ThirteenAG/d3d8-wrapper
https://gitlab.com/torkel104/libstrangle It's been a while since I looked into this but the modes *may* offered by the monitor rather than by Windows itself; in that case, if you're unlucky enough, it's theoretically possible that a monitor wouldn't offer those modes for you (like my 16:10 monitor does not offer any 16:9 modes).

The problem is this EDID mess.. it's a standard from the CRT era, with analog signals, and supported modes are defined in terms of pixel clock + a handful of parameters. Except that it's been extended to support various "standard" modes, which your monitor may or may not advertise. And based on advertised clocks, your graphics driver may or may not deduce support for lower modes that don't exceed the maximum clocks. If your graphics driver does deduce such support, it may or may not actually work because your modern monitor is not an electron beam..

Here's what my 16:9 144Hz monitor seems to support (I haven't actually tested all of those modes):

DisplayPort-1 connected 2560x1440+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 597mm x 336mm
2560x1440 144.00*+ 120.00 99.90 59.95
1920x1200 144.00
1920x1080 74.98 60.00 60.00 50.00 59.94
1600x1200 144.00
1680x1050 59.95
1600x900 60.00
1280x1024 75.02 60.02
1440x900 144.00
1280x800 59.81
1152x864 59.97
1280x720 60.00 50.00 59.94
1024x768 75.03 60.00
800x600 75.00 60.32
720x480 60.00 59.94
640x480 75.00 60.00 59.94

It depends on the monitor controller itself, what kind of refresh rates they register. Most modern monitors should be able to go to 59 or 60 Hz, as it still the standard. To set up Windows refresh rate on non-Windows10 versions go to resolution change panel and click advanced options.

There is a utility to reate custom resolutions and frequencies, named Custom Resolution Utility (cru) however modern GPU control panels have this function built in but are somewhat limited. CRU is the utility used to overclock dysplays.

For limiting the framerate the most used software is by far MSI Afterburner/Riva Tuner SS, is a freaking awsome tool and simple to use, however it's built to modern-ish games in mind, so anything that wont run Dx 7 and up or OpenGL might have some trouble to work properly. For exemple games built on Adobe AIR won´t show statistics or limit framerate.
There is some alternative software, in particular a very simple program that I´ve used anddoes the job very well but can't remember the name, will check my old Windows install disk and edit this post.
Edit: the tool was D3dOverrider.
Limiting the framerate can also be done in GPU control panel, both nVidia and AMD have some features.

For older/smaller indie games to work, the desktop resolution and refresh rate must be set to what you want to use(say 1920x1080 @ 60Hz), as most games without built in resolution changer just follow what is set on the desktop.

Tons of games, especially from the 2000 era go bonkers if you go above the intended framerate (usually either 30 or 60) and you get the game running faster than it should or sound desyncs, physics acting weird etc. Basically every time the game logic is bound to FPS.

The solution is of course either v-sync (if the game has it) or capping the framerate. Doable through drivers or other software.

Just yesterday, I started playing BloodRayne and in the default GOG settings, the game runs at 60 FPS which causes sounds and voices to cut cut off regularly. After I capped it at 30, all the issues were gone.