I see absolutely no difference with VRR

[Nebell]

I don't understand this. Everyone is praising VRR but I'm just not seeing it.

I went from
3080 and Asus 4k/120hz monitor (Freesync, but not activated)
to
3080 with LG C1 4k/120hz TV (G-sync, activated).

Aaaaand no change in fluidity. I'm 100% sure G-sync is active.
At least I know that I won't need to think about combining cards with Freesync/G-sync in the future.

 

[Captain Newmackwa]

VRR is supposed to get rid of screen tearing without the caveats of traditional V-Sync.

 

[auntjemima]

I don't understand this. Everyone is praising VRR but I'm just not seeing it.

I went from
3080 and Asus 4k/120hz monitor (Freesync, but not activated)
to
3080 with LG C1 4k/120hz TV (G-sync, activated).

Aaaaand no change in fluidity. I'm 100% sure G-sync is active.
At least I know that I won't need to think about combining cards with Freesync/G-sync in the future.

I'm the same. I bought my son a 240hz freesync monitor for Christmas and opened the box to test after buying. Went from 23" 60hz to 24" 240hz and freesync and I didn't notice anything.

Maybe I'm just trash.

 

[NukeDukem]

VRR makes a huge difference in some titles, less so in others. Depends on how much that frame rate fluctuates beneath the refresh rate of your display, the quirks of the game engine, how much you personally notice stuttering, tearing, etc..

It's going to be a subjective experience, but I consider VRR to be essential. When it isn't working properly, I can tell almost immediately. Along with high refresh, it's one of those things I wouldn't go without in a modern gaming display.

 

[MaZa]

I don't understand this. Everyone is praising VRR but I'm just not seeing it.

I went from
3080 and Asus 4k/120hz monitor (Freesync, but not activated)
to
3080 with LG C1 4k/120hz TV (G-sync, activated).

Aaaaand no change in fluidity. I'm 100% sure G-sync is active.
At least I know that I won't need to think about combining cards with Freesync/G-sync in the future.

You are missing the point, it does not magically make everything smoother. What it does is it makes the motion smoother when you are unable to keep the framerate at max. With normal V-Sync the framerate gets halved instantly from 120hz to 60hz and even if that is too hard then to down to 30hz. With Triple Buffered Vsync the jumps are not as big (fps gets cut in 1/3 increments, IIRC) but then you get judder because the framerate does not divide evenly with monitor refresh rate. GPU is sending 90fps but monitor is still displaying in 120hz, frames are not equal in length. And there is even more lag than normal Vsync.

GSync and Freesync solves both issues, GPU framerate and monitor refresh rate are no longer separate entities as the monitor refresh rate can now follow GPU's framerate within its range accurately. If your framerate drops to 90fps then the monitor also drops down to 90hz and shows each frame with equal pacing, no judder. All this with low lag.

Since you have 3080 you will probably get consistent 120fps in many games. In this situation Gsync and Freesync does nothing. When you framerate does start to fluctuate down a lot, then they can do their magic. With VSync and Triple Buffering it can look jarring, with Freesync and Gsync you may not even notice that the framerate is going down until it gets really low.

 

[kalston]

Besides the tearing thing, if your monitor has a fixed refresh rate and the game sends a framerate that is not strictly equal or an integer multiple of that number, you will get dropped or repeated frames, in other words, stutters. That's just physics. No ifs and no buts. I'm not talking big frame freezes though, it's more like "micro" stutters if you wish, a certain permanent jerkiness.

VRR gives you the freedom to play with any framerate you want (or can afford) without having to worry about latency, smoothness or tearing. Any framerate that falls in the range of your monitor capabilities will look and feel as good as is physically possible (so it's not like 30 or 60fps will suddenly feel as good as 120fps - but with VRR you get the best 30 fps experience possible, or the best 69fps experience possible, as long as your monitor is capable of displaying that many hz or more).

If you are not sensitive at all to that kind of stutter (a lot of people are not, just like a lot of people don't seem to mind how jerky 24 fps movies actually are), then yea VRR won't do much for you. It's still pretty much a lagless solution to tearing however which should be easier to notice (v-sync is very laggy, although it's possible to reduce the latency greatly when you have a lot of performance headroom).

VRR was a major gaming revolution for me, because I was extremely sensitive to tearing, input lag and mismatched fps/refresh rate long before the technology even existed. I played a lot of games like Quake and Unreal Tournament in my younger years, and those ran at any framerate you asked them to - so I basically educated myself on the subject by messing around with framerate caps and refresh rate settings. Blurbusters did not exist yet and it was hard to find good info on v-sync, refresh rate etc.

Fun fact I was convinced that LCD could never do VRR due to their inherent slowness, especially at the time (aka before 2014), but then one day nvidia came out of nowhere and demoed the g-sync module on a LCD and my mind was blown (and I was sold). And then blurbusters came out with very accessible articles explaining how it all works in clear terms and great details (and why I was wrong to doubt LCDs!).