I never completely understood how the displayed framerate is tied to the actual gamespeed in DF, basically the difference between g_fps and fps sorta eludes me, so please excuse how I will abuse the vocabulary in the following post:
I mean, a game like this could run at 25 frames per second, you wouldnt really notice it doesnt run fluid. The fastest dwarves at a proper gamespeed wouldnt look like they are lagging around. The real question is ... how long does stuff take ingame. When your computer is fast enough to calculate all the stuff that is going on, so the things that are happening dont appear slow, it's fine.
I believe a videocard that renders 200 frames per second, even simple ones like you get from DF runs at a higher temperature than one that draws only 60 or even 30 frames. So, I bet, in the long run, it shortens the lifespan of the vidcard 
The reason is dwarf fortress does all the calculations for a frame, then sends it to be drawn, then draws another one.
The FPS cap is really a main loop speed cap.
The GFPS cap is just for when the main loop creates more frames than the cap, the graphics subsystem throws the information away and waits till it can display another one before using it again.
I personally like a 50 FPS main loop speed cap. But my dwarfs usually slog about at under 10 frames per second as the pathfinding and jobfinding of a large fortress kills my processor. The GFPS cap is very useful if you have bad openGL drivers as you can cap Graphics updates potentially allowing dwarf fortress to run much faster.
*as a side note, I have checked with fraps, and dwarf fortress really follows the GFPS cap, if you set GFPS to 1 frame per second, your video card will update at 1 frame per second.
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Topic: What is the correct fps? (Read 2786 times)