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Framerate and pacing How the GoldenEye 007 PC port holds a steady 60 fps and keeps per-frame game timing correct on a fast CPU. 2026-10-05 2026-10-05

Framerate and pacing

The port targets a steady 60 fps with VSync and an optional 30/60 frame cap, including on low-end GPUs.

The N64's game code assumed a 60 Hz vertical-interrupt tick — it ran a few ticks per displayed frame. On a PC the CPU is far faster, so left alone the game logic would race ahead. The port handles this in two places:

  • Frame pacing happens in port/src/video.c on the render thread (the software RSP thread), which paces the frame and does the swap and FPS accounting.
  • Per-frame counters in the game are gated with portN64FrameStep() so they advance at the display rate, not the CPU rate. Getting this wrong is a recurring class of subtle timing bug (a counter that ticks too fast, a stall that isn't real) — the porting notes track these (for example D13, D22 and D486).

On very weak integrated GPUs (Atom/Celeron class) the first launch writes lighter values for draw distance, LOD distance and anti-aliasing into ge007.ini so the game still holds 60 fps.

More: porting notes — the timing-related findings (D13, D22, D486).