More Far Cry, 6800GT, playability.

[TheRapture]

OK, found out something interesting last night. I am sure one of you vid card gurus will explain why this is, so here goes...


since I use an LCD, I typically lock my framerate to 60 in my games, and use triple buffering. Well, I have been having low frame rates in outdoor scenes especially, and strangely enough, it seems to stick around 30fps most of the time....and go up to 60 in darker areas or when looking into the ground, etc.

In my control panel I had my Vsync set to "ALWAYS ON". Well, last night I turned it to "OFF" .

WOW....now it runs around 40-55fps most of the time and goes up to 75 max, since the game config is set to 75 using the system.cfg. SMOOTHNESS went through the roof and is creamy now, instead of semi-framey....benchmark scores are the same though, which is fine, and now I get to see the real power of this card...all of my D3D games are running smoother with higher average framerates...

Why would setting vsync to ON in the control panel make the game try to run at 30fps all the time? ...which is odd since that is half of my LCD's "refresh" rate...

 

[burningrave101]

Here is some info on it.

It definitely looks much better. However, if you have a graphically intensive game that varies greatly in fps, it might appear that your display is stuttering somewhat. What I mean is, since I usually run at a refresh rate of 85hz, if the card can manage at least 85fps it'll lock it at that. However, if it were to dip down below 85, v-sync will lock it at 1/2 that, say 42 for sake of argument, to avoid that "tearing" effect. This leads to what I see as a stuttering effect. For this reason I usually use it only on older games.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=25303&highlight=v-sync

i try to explain
at 50Hz, monitor draws to screen every 1/50 second, 1/50s = 0.02s = 20ms
the monitor will draw at these intervals:
20ms, 40ms, 60ms, 80ms, 100ms .... or
1/50s, 2/50s, 3/50s, 4/50s .....
the problem is your cpu/game draws frames at different speed than monitor.
when you put v-synv on, the monitor will wait for the game to finish a frame before it draws it AT NEXT INTERVAL.
if your game renders frames faster than monitor, you still get 50Hz because the game WAIT for these 1/50s intervals.
if your game renders frames slower than 50Hz, things get interesting. e.g. if the game/cpu draws frames at 40Hz, 40Hz = 1/40s = 25ms
game:25ms,50ms,75ms,100ms...
monitor:20ms,40ms,60ms,80ms...
what would happen is the game/cpu need to wait for new monitor interval and draws new frame to monitor at 40ms,80ms,120ms.... result is 25Hz, that is half of 50Hz. if the game/cpu draws even slower and need more than 2 monitor intervals, e.g. >40ms, it will draw new frame at every THIRD monitor interval, then the framerate would be 50/3Hz.
so for 85Hz monitors, v-sync enabled games will give you fps switching between 85Hz,85/2Hz,85/3Hz,85/4Hz...
hope this helps
correct me if i am wrong

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=14773&page=2&highlight=v-sync

Simply put, if your FPS isn't as high as your monitors refresh rate, your FPS will be cut in half when v-sync is enabled. If you get more FPS then your monitors refresh rate can handle then your FPS is just capped at your refresh rate.

I'm not sure how refresh rate translates into FPS though. I figure its close to 85Hz = 85 fps. I'm not certain how many FPS you can still detect if your monitors refresh rate is only 85Hz.

 

[TheRapture]

Thanks burninggrave....awesome info and links...

 

[burningrave101]

Thanks burninggrave....awesome info and links...

In some games you can limit the max FPS in the config file. For Morrowind i can just go into the Morrowind.ini file and set my max FPS to 85 fps and get the same effect as v-sync except it doesn't chop my frame rates in half when i dip below 85 fps. And most people dont get over 30-40 fps max in the exterior parts of Morrowind.