microstutter / stutter 100% FIX!

All these comparisons to video/film are pointless. Think how fast you can rotate your viewpoint 180deg. in an FPS. 1/4 second? Less? I check my 'six' constantly while playing battlefield and other games. It's just a quick flick of the mouse back and forth. Now, at 30 fps I would see massive strobing as my view changed 180 deg. and only a handful of frames were drawn on the screen.

Back in crt days we played on 19" monitors (trust me they were Gigantic back then!) at 100 to 120hz with voodoo cards that could output 150fps. Then 60hz lcds ushered in the dark ages for a few years until 120hz monitors reappeared.

If you spent any amount of time playing at 120 fps and then tried to go back to 60 you wouldn't like it. Individual mileage may vary but for me anything over 90 feels smooth, below that I notice. And yes I think 60 is playable for sure it's just the strobing is very noticable. 30fps - no way. Third person games on a PS3 at 30 are fine on a tv but not for FPS. FPS games are a special case that need high frames because of the unbelievably fast viewpoint changes that are possible and common.

I would always lower graphic settings to maintain high frame rate in any fps.

I'm curious whether you see that "strobing" effect when locked at 60FPS (assuming your monitor is 60hz). I think a lot of people think 120fps is better than 60fps just because they are normally sitting somewhere in-between 60-120fps, where your FPS are out-of-sync with the monitor (which produces that "strobing" effect). Locking your fps at 60fps will always appear smoother than say 85fps due to that effect (regardless of whether you use v-sync to lock). In addition, once you hit 120+fps your FPS are high enough that the monitor refresh rate doesn't create that effect any more (so 120, 150, 180 will all be just as smooth). Again this is all assuming a 60hz monitor. I assume 120hz is different and haven't had the opportunity to test it like I have with multiple 60hz monitors and rigs.

While yes 60+ fps is defiantly better, this program sure helps smooth out anything below that. Before I couldn't play games that dropped below 50 fps because of bad stuttering. Now all my games are playable.

Just set your fps limiter in the program to your desired fps cap but watch it eliminate the stuttering in your games.

For whatever reason this is true (in my case at least). The FPS limiter is resolving some sort of driver bug causing the stuttering. Dunno why.
 
What's with all the flames? If this helps some people then great. If you do not have anything constructive to say then SHUT IT! Nobody is forcing you guys to use this, so this guy offers an alternative bandaid fix for certain users. And as it was posted set it to 45, 60, 90, 120 whatever your rig can handle. I might try this by setting it to 45FPS in bf3 at 2560x1600, that's what I play at and i never dip below 48-50 fps.
 
I'm curious whether you see that "strobing" effect when locked at 60FPS (assuming your monitor is 60hz). I think a lot of people think 120fps is better than 60fps just because they are normally sitting somewhere in-between 60-120fps, where your FPS are out-of-sync with the monitor (which produces that "strobing" effect). Locking your fps at 60fps will always appear smoother than say 85fps due to that effect (regardless of whether you use v-sync to lock). In addition, once you hit 120+fps your FPS are high enough that the monitor refresh rate doesn't create that effect any more (so 120, 150, 180 will all be just as smooth). Again this is all assuming a 60hz monitor. I assume 120hz is different and haven't had the opportunity to test it like I have with multiple 60hz monitors and rigs.



For whatever reason this is true (in my case at least). The FPS limiter is resolving some sort of driver bug causing the stuttering. Dunno why.

I'm using a 120hz monitor, and I was interchanging 'strobing' for 'stuttering', also using vsync on a 60hz monitor will prevent tearing if your card is producing >60fps but has no impact on stuttering. i.e. greater fps than your monitors refresh rate doesn't cause a stutter but can cause tearing.

Here is a blurb on vsync:

There is however a more fundamental problem with enabling VSync, and that is it can significantly reduce your overall framerate, often dropping your FPS to exactly 50% of the refresh rate. This is a difficult concept to explain, but it just has to do with timing. When VSync is enabled, your graphics card becomes a slave to your monitor. If at any time your FPS falls just below your refresh rate, each frame starts taking your graphics card longer to draw than the time it takes for your monitor to refresh itself. So every 2nd refresh, your graphics card just misses completing a new whole frame in time. This means that both its primary and secondary frame buffers are filled, it has nowhere to put any new information, so it has to sit idle and wait for the next refresh to come around before it can unload its recently completed frame, and start work on a new one in the newly cleared secondary buffer. This results in exactly half the framerate of the refresh rate whenever your FPS falls below the refresh rate.

As long as your graphics card can always render a frame faster than your monitor can refresh itself, enabling VSync will not reduce your average framerate. All that will happen is that your FPS will be capped to a maximum equivalent to the refresh rate. But since most recent monitors refresh at 60Hz, and in many recent games it is difficult to achieve 60FPS consistently at your desired resolution and settings, enabling VSync usually ends up reducing your overall FPS. Fortunately, because this problem is pretty much caused by the frame buffers becoming filled up, there is a solution: enable a third frame buffer to allow more headroom. However this is not a straightforward solution, and to read more about it see the Triple Buffering section of this guide.
 
I'm using a 120hz monitor, and I was interchanging 'strobing' for 'stuttering', also using vsync on a 60hz monitor will prevent tearing if your card is producing >60fps but has no impact on stuttering. i.e. greater fps than your monitors refresh rate doesn't cause a stutter but can cause tearing.

Here is a blurb on vsync:

Ah, 120hz, so yea my comment doesn't apply (would be interested in the results of my test below @ 120hz though).

For the issue I brought up with 60hz monitors, I'm not referring to tearing which vsync fixes or stuttering which is a different issue. At >60fps you should see a "strobing" or "frameskip" effect which will get worse to a point (@ ~80fps) then better up to ~120fps (where it's gone, same as 60fps). Certain monitors will be worse than others.

To test, use Dxtory to limit your FPS in a game, cap it at your monitors refresh rate (using 60hz for the example = 59/60fps). This should smooth out the game equal to vsync (ignore the tearing). Strafe back and forth with something like a pillar moving across the screen, again it should "glide" smoothly. Now, cap your fps at ~80fps. Strafe back and forth again, notice the object "strobes" or "jitters" across the screen. That's what I'm referring to.
 
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This right here is a quality post about microstuttering and explaining why 45 fps appears to stutter.

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1037865815&postcount=23

The advantage of using a frame rate limiter over just turning on vsync is that you prevent vsync from potentially jumping you between two levels. For example, if your game ran at an average frame rate of 50 fps but was often above 60 then vysnc would be jumping you between 30fps and 60fps which can be quite jarring.
 
So I gave this a shot and am basing my comparison on Skyrim, but 45-fps appears to be a lot smoother than 30-fps to me. 30-fps just isn't enough for smooth game play when you are turning in my opinion.
 
I'm using a 120hz monitor, and I was interchanging 'strobing' for 'stuttering', also using vsync on a 60hz monitor will prevent tearing if your card is producing >60fps but has no impact on stuttering. i.e. greater fps than your monitors refresh rate doesn't cause a stutter but can cause tearing.

Here is a blurb on vsync:
you got that from tweakguides.com

Each scene is rendered in the background in a separate buffer. As soon as its rendering is completed, the background buffer is switched to the foreground so you can see its contents.
If this switching takes place while the monitor is just displaying a frame, you have the effect that one part of the image is still showing the previous frame, while the other part is already showing the new frame.
As long as the scene doesn't change, this effect does not matter at all. But as soon as the player moves, especially if you make a horizontal pan, you will see a "tearing" effect, i.e. parts of the image seem to move separately.
The shot on the right is an attempt to illustrate that effect. It shows a scene while the player is doing a horizontal pan. There are three parts, each showing the scene from a slighlty different angel. The marked spots contain areas, where the tearing effect is especially well visible.
This tearing effect makes the moving scene hard to look at, some people even get a headache because of it. Also, it makes the movement seem unnatural and somewhat uneven.
To avoid this tearing effect, you can enable the Vertical Synchronisation or VSync. VSync means that the switching between the background buffer and the foreground buffer can only take place, after the monitor has completed displaying one complete frame.
The disadvantage of VSync is, that the total frame rate can never exceed the refresh rate of the monitor. So if your system is set to use 60 Hz in the given resolution, the frame rate can never exceed 60 frames per second. But since the monitor isn't capable of displaying more than 60 distinct images per second, a higher frame rate doesn't do much good anyway.
Another disadvantage is, that if the game doesn't use three buffers for rendering the scene (a so called triple buffer), the frame rate cannot fluctuate freely. Only integer fractions of the monitor's refresh rate (i.e. 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5 etc.) are possible. In the case of the refresh rate of 60Hz, the only possible framerates would be 60fps, 30fps, 20fps, 15fps, 12fps...
VSync.png
Thats the tearing
 
Why do you guys think todays games only use double buffering? It might not be triple buffering via the driver, but other queue techniques (render ahead) or triple buffering via the game itself. In the last 5+ years I have never ever seen a jump between 60 and 30fps due to vsync. Never.
 
Likely memory considerations. sure triple buffering is only a couple of hundred megs if you include AA and other techniques in the process, but the cards also have to store textures multiple times depending on the amount of cards in the system. Yes we have cards that have 2gb of memory today but then again, not really when sli/crossfire is put into the mix.
 
Lots of hate in this thread and I don't understand why. It makes perfect sense to me. Giving this a shot...
 
In the end it's subjective and depends on what you are used to. Most of the people saying that 30fps is fine probably come from console systems where that's the target. The people who want better are the die hard PC people where it's always been possible.

Think of it this way, the contention that's always been between iPhone and Android people on smoothness. both camps have different expectations on how it feels but no one wants to admit that they may not be exactly right.
 
Let me bump this.

My way to fix microstutter is to limit fps to 60 with msi afterburden osd.
Skyrim and other games where it is most noticable tend to render more frames than 60, even tho vsync is enabled. Vsync does not mean REAL fps cap.

With fps cap enabled the microstutter is completly gone. Fallout and skyrim play like different games :p

So now I play all games with vsync and separate 60fps cap.

Notice - it also removes vsync lag in controlls
 
Let me bump this.

My way to fix microstutter is to limit fps to 60 with msi afterburden osd.
Skyrim and other games where it is most noticable tend to render more frames than 60, even tho vsync is enabled. Vsync does not mean REAL fps cap.

With fps cap enabled the microstutter is completly gone. Fallout and skyrim play like different games :p

So now I play all games with vsync and separate 60fps cap.

Notice - it also removes vsync lag in controlls

Huh thought this was common knowledge.....Guess i should of posted in this thread earlier.
 
Its not common. Most people dont even notice the microstutter.
Vsync does a shitty job capping fps and the game tries to render to much frames ahead without the 60cap. This causes it.
 
Its not common. Most people dont even notice the microstutter.
Vsync does a shitty job capping fps and the game tries to render to much frames ahead without the 60cap. This causes it.

Totally agree, although the only game I had this issue with was skyrim.

All other games where fine. (and I cant cap it at 60 since I have a 120hz monitor)
 
Normally I use a 125fps cap with no vsync @ 120hz for online fps like BF3.

On my 1440p 60hz display, again a 125fps cap with no vsync, or a 59fps cap with regular vsync which usually fixes the absolute worst of games, but occasionaly some games prefer a 60 or no cap plus regular vsync.

.
 
blown away the troll got so much attention. ashamed of H right now

Why?

Although he obviously didn't know what micro stutter was and went with 30fps caps his point and solution works.

Cap frame rate at 59
Turn on vsync

No stuttering, no input lag and no tearing. It is ridiculous how many people do not realize this. Even Brent and Kyle didn't know about this until recently.

It's so simple AMD should have it selectable as a check mark in CCC.
 
While his program didn't fix my issue - Afterburner's OSD (which is very similar in nature) DID, so I'm actually glad he posted this. I set mine to 60 and it fixed every game I own, even some that were borderline unplayable like Darksiders 2 and the older Source games.
It's kind of funny to see more and more posts about video stuttering lately.
Clearly there's something going on these days to cause more and more of it. I'm not sure if it's a 64 bit OS or simply the move to quad core processors and stronger GPUs, but I started having stuttering issues back when when I got my 5870, and i7 920, and Win7 x64.
 
Why?

Although he obviously didn't know what micro stutter was and went with 30fps caps his point and solution works.

Cap frame rate at 59
Turn on vsync

No stuttering, no input lag and no tearing. It is ridiculous how many people do not realize this. Even Brent and Kyle didn't know about this until recently.

It's so simple AMD should have it selectable as a check mark in CCC.

Yup, this is how I play almost every game these days. Its amazing just how much of a difference that it makes in some games. I wish that I had tried this a long time ago.

Normally I use a 125fps cap with no vsync @ 120hz for online fps like BF3.

On my 1440p 60hz display, again a 125fps cap with no vsync, or a 59fps cap with regular vsync which usually fixes the absolute worst of games,


This is the guy that I found out about this from. Listen to the man. I'm sure that the 125fps cap with no vsync great too.

but occasionaly some games prefer a 60 or no cap plus regular vsync.

.

What difference do you notice in those games? I just want to know what to look out for.
 
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