Is there any performance difference on a TV which supports 50hz and 60hz?

Question

At the start of Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny and Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm there is a dialog asking you to select some sort of video mode with 4 options on the menu

• Start the Game
• Switch to 50hz
• Switch to 60hz
• Test for 60hz

When I do the test option I can see the screen resize so it's a bit taller and fits my widescreen TV. I remember reading the whole 50/60hz thing was used by game to determine screen support and 50hz was standard for PAL region games and 60hz was stanarded for NTSC region games. I can only assume that the reason why Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana didn't have this menu was that between the release of the first 2 games PAL/NTSC Gamers was able to get TVs which could support both 50hz and 60hz.

Since my TV can support both, by default the games are set to 50hz and I don't particularly care if the screen is smaller, I am wondering if there is any noticeable changes performance wise?

NOTE: Neither one of these games, to my knowledge, use any rendered graphics if it matters

Answer 1

50hz is not the original format. 60hz is, unless the game is released in Pal first. Therefore most games are better played in 60hz. and yes there is a very noticeable difference between the modes. atelier iris 2 and 3 are bordered 50hz, which means the game does not take advantage of 576i. Full screen 50hz games are 576i vs 480i NTSC. Therefore the picture looks better, but the framerate is significantly worse.

Answer 2

If you play at 50 Hz, the highest framerate the TV will be able to display is 50 frames per second.

If you play at 60 Hz, the highest framerate the TV will be able to display is 60 frames per second.

Both of those games appear to be using sprites so most likely you will not notice any loss in animation smoothness.

At the most you may experience a tiny amount of input lag between 50 Hz and 60 Hz, but it's doubtful you would notice the difference.