Monitors operate by flashing dozens of still images ("frames") one after the other, creating the illusion of movement of the images across the screen. However, "frame rate" is actually not a direct property of a monitor. Rather, “frame rate” directly refers to how many frames per second ("FPS") your graphics card ("GPU") is sending to your monitor. The more frames per second your graphics card sends, the smoother your gameplay can *potentially* look (less change in between frames).