PowerPoint animation frame rate

There are no frames in a PowerPoint animation, so a frame rate doesn't apply. What problem are you trying to solve, what job are you trying to get done?

You can't have animation without frames and those frames have to get produced at a certain rate.

It's either a locked rate internally (like 30fps) or it's rendering to the speed of the display settings. I've always assumed animation frame rate happens at the speed of the monitor but I'm seeing other posts where it's saying it's "locked, can't be changed" which leads me to believe it's 30 FPS since that's what PowerPoint can export for video.

A PowerPoint animation has no frames and thus no frame rate. That's why you can't find anything on the internet on the subject. Frame rates apply only to imported or exported video.

That doesn't make sense. You can't do animation without frames.

But I think you've answered my question in a round about way.

If PowerPoint is moving an object from A to B over time and it doesn't care about frame rate then the answer is: the frame rate of the animation is the display frame rate for live slides. A refresh rate of 60 gets you 60 frames of animation per second. Rendering slides to video will result in a 30 FPS video and 30 FPS animations.

I did a screen capture of live slides with the monitor forced to 30 and 60 FPS. The 30 looks the same as a PowerPoint video export = kinda choppy. Expected at 30 FPS. The 60 looks very smooth. Again, as expected.