I just checked, and with 372.70 fast sync is now a vsync option in NVCP for Maxwell cards! (or at least with 980 Ti's) No more dicking around with Nvidia Profile Inspector.
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Why Aren't More People Talking About Fast-Sync?
- Thread starter cybereality
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I just checked, and with 372.70 fast sync is now a vsync option in NVCP for Maxwell cards! (or at least with 980 Ti's) No more dicking around with Nvidia Profile Inspector.
Daniel_Chang
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Decided to give it a try.
I play World of Warcraft with Adaptive Vsync turned on. I maintain 60fps with occasional dips to around 55fps, and the tearing is noticeable. I turned on Fast Sync expecting Vsync quality or worse. I was shocked, it was actually smoother. No tearing (as expected), and no real noticeable stutter. This doesn't make sense given my understanding of how Fast-Sync works. So, I decided to raise the settings from "7" to "10" (WoW has foregone the low/med/high/ultra game in favor of numbers 1-10 for graphics settings). Now my average fps was around 42. Let me tell you this - 42fps with Fast Sync is horrendous, making 30fps Vsync look smooth by comparison. I had to force Vsync to 20fps to get it as bad as 42fps with Fast Sync.
What I think is happening here with Fast Sync near refresh is that the occasional dropped frame goes largely unnoticed as opposed to that huge tear across the screen with adaptive. But, fall more than that and it becomes readily apparent. Conclusion? If it works for you, or even if you think it works for you, then go for it.
I play World of Warcraft with Adaptive Vsync turned on. I maintain 60fps with occasional dips to around 55fps, and the tearing is noticeable. I turned on Fast Sync expecting Vsync quality or worse. I was shocked, it was actually smoother. No tearing (as expected), and no real noticeable stutter. This doesn't make sense given my understanding of how Fast-Sync works. So, I decided to raise the settings from "7" to "10" (WoW has foregone the low/med/high/ultra game in favor of numbers 1-10 for graphics settings). Now my average fps was around 42. Let me tell you this - 42fps with Fast Sync is horrendous, making 30fps Vsync look smooth by comparison. I had to force Vsync to 20fps to get it as bad as 42fps with Fast Sync.
What I think is happening here with Fast Sync near refresh is that the occasional dropped frame goes largely unnoticed as opposed to that huge tear across the screen with adaptive. But, fall more than that and it becomes readily apparent. Conclusion? If it works for you, or even if you think it works for you, then go for it.
TaintedSquirrel
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You shouldn't have any problems getting good enough fps for fast sync in WoW. Disable SSAA maybe?
In fact I would say WoW is the #1 app for fast sync. Textbook.
In fact I would say WoW is the #1 app for fast sync. Textbook.
Daniel_Chang
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I run at 4k. And I target 60fps. Don't care about going over.
Armenius
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For what it's worth, my experience mirrors OP's. I run G-Sync with Fast Sync enabled at 144 Hz, and there is no stutter or judder in games running 160-200 FPS. If I turn off G-Sync and just run Fast Sync then the stutter, tearing and judder are insane in any game running under the refresh rate, especially Deus Ex: MD. NVIDIA is probably right in that the maximum benefit comes from doubling the refresh rate in framerate, but there is clearly a benefit to be had with certain hardware configurations at any framerate above the refresh rate. That is the thing with PC: you can't account for every possible configuration out there, so one user's experience isn't going to be universal. This is actually why I've grown to hate TB's port reports...
cybereality
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OK, so I did some more tests. I may have been mistaken, just not in the way that you may think.
I wrote a script that moves the mouse a small amount to the side every frame, to get a stable experiment. Then I ran a few different games w/ Fast Sync and recorded them with the slo-mo mode on my phone (120fps).
First was Left4Dead, which can run safely at over 200fps (3x refresh rate). In this test everything was smooth in the resulting video, as you would expect. I tried Far Cry 3, which was getting in the 90fps range. The video was not as smooth as L4D (obviously) but had fairly consistent movement. Meaning not many hitches or stalls. But with Deus Ex MD the video was hitching pretty heavily. Every few seconds there would be a slight stall or jump in the movement (since this is in slo-mo, it would translate to hitching every half second or so in real-time). So not great. But, the interesting thing, I tried DXMD again with both V-Sync On and V-Sync Off, and both options still resulted in hitching in the videos as well. The behavior was slightly different, though. V-Sync On still had some choppiness, but more regular and not as erratic as Fast Sync. V-Sync Off was a mess of screen tearing, and still had the stalls but less frequent than V-Sync On or Fast Sync.
It seems, at least for this game and my setup, that playing at ~60fps is just not perfectly smooth at any option and maybe Fast Sync is the lesser of the evils.
I wrote a script that moves the mouse a small amount to the side every frame, to get a stable experiment. Then I ran a few different games w/ Fast Sync and recorded them with the slo-mo mode on my phone (120fps).
First was Left4Dead, which can run safely at over 200fps (3x refresh rate). In this test everything was smooth in the resulting video, as you would expect. I tried Far Cry 3, which was getting in the 90fps range. The video was not as smooth as L4D (obviously) but had fairly consistent movement. Meaning not many hitches or stalls. But with Deus Ex MD the video was hitching pretty heavily. Every few seconds there would be a slight stall or jump in the movement (since this is in slo-mo, it would translate to hitching every half second or so in real-time). So not great. But, the interesting thing, I tried DXMD again with both V-Sync On and V-Sync Off, and both options still resulted in hitching in the videos as well. The behavior was slightly different, though. V-Sync On still had some choppiness, but more regular and not as erratic as Fast Sync. V-Sync Off was a mess of screen tearing, and still had the stalls but less frequent than V-Sync On or Fast Sync.
It seems, at least for this game and my setup, that playing at ~60fps is just not perfectly smooth at any option and maybe Fast Sync is the lesser of the evils.
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I've been playing WoW lately (for the first time actually) and it is very demanding if you push the settings. Fully maxed (preset 10 + forced some options) with just AA and supersampling disabled my 980 ti/4790k in 1440p frequently drop below 60 in some zones (I'm only playing in the new zones that probably matters as they look quite good). And I'm not even talking about very populated places where I've seen numbers as low as 35.
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cybereality
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After doing some more play-testing (comparing VSync On, VSync Off, Fast Sync, and Adaptive Sync), it seems having VSync On may, indeed, be the best option for when the game is getting around the 60 FPS mark. I still think Fast Sync is interesting, especially in the cases where FPS is really high, as people here have recommended. I was excited to try something new, and it was working for me in some sense. However normal VSync seems to be the safer and more solid choice for 60FPS gaming.
well fast sync ist just a triple buffering where the third buffer is constnat updated and hidden from the game.
Triplebuffering was a well known methodology combined with vsync if you didn't want vsync dropped fps. so kinda make sense people are suggesting it.
Your fps drops under vsync only happen because you run out of framebuffers and the gpu has to sit and wait for refresh, with a third buffer it doesnt have to. so you gain a speedup in fps.
It's got stated in a NV-Interview sometime ago :
G-Sync for FPS under the refresh rate of the Monitor
Fast-Sync for the FPS above the Refreh Rate of the Monitor.
So everyone who has 90fps (as example) on a 60hz Monitor, will benefit from it.
Fast-Sync is around 1ms more to V-Sync off in many enviroments isn't it ?
But what i cannot understand : Many are playing on Catastophic (Contrast, Colors, Brightness, ergonomics) Monitors with AOU Panels..and they talk about Picture Quality ?
G-Sync for FPS under the refresh rate of the Monitor
Fast-Sync for the FPS above the Refreh Rate of the Monitor.
So everyone who has 90fps (as example) on a 60hz Monitor, will benefit from it.
Fast-Sync is around 1ms more to V-Sync off in many enviroments isn't it ?
But what i cannot understand : Many are playing on Catastophic (Contrast, Colors, Brightness, ergonomics) Monitors with AOU Panels..and they talk about Picture Quality ?
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Armenius
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I'm more annoyed by the quality control of AUO panels than the image quality, but we're talking about fast framerates and smoothness here. Stutter, tearing and judder are not dependent on the quality of the panel, yet all of them are detrimental to motion clarity.
They're not "catastrophic" by any stretch of the imagination, though. I mean contrast could certainly be better. But regarding my PG278Q, which uses an AUO TN panel:
+ Real 8-bit panel (no dithering) with RGB subpixel layout
+ Brightness ranges from 90 - 450 nits
= Contrast around 900:1 when calibrated
= W-LED backlight
- Pixel inversion that is not noticeable during gameplay
+ Joystick control, button response and UI is actually considered one of the best out there right now, but this is dependent on the monitor manufacturer (not the panel manufacturer).
+ Stand allows monitor to rotate and elevate with ease, which again is dependent on the monitor manufacturer.
That makes perfect sense if you have g-sync monitor
Fastsync aka new way of doing triple buffering will stutter slightly more than gsync due to Picture duplication when fps is lower than hz.
eg if you are having a 20ms frame render time with a 16.6ms (60hz) refresh cycle it will have to go 33.3ms 16.6ms 16.6ms 16.6ms 16.6ms 33.3ms 16.6ms etc etc
Where gsync vil slow the refresh cycle from 16.6 down to 20ms and go 20ms 20ms 20ms etc etc
(offcause you never have exactly the same framer render time but it still illustrates the minor stutter)
so Gsync > Fast sync > Vsync dbl bufferede. When fps is lower than HZ ff you want to avoid tearing. Vsync off beats everything in regards to input lag if you can take the horror of tearing
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spine
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That's basically been my experience with it. The only places I've had it work well was in games where I didn't care about input lag so much. Which kinda defeats the purpose.
What some people don't seem to realise about v-sync off @ say 60hz when your actual FPS is alot higher, is that you do actually benefit from rendering the new information faster, since you're dropping half an old frame for half a new one. I've personally never had a problem with my screen being torn up to pieces, just as long as I'm getting the very latest info, then that'll make it feel less laggy and allow me to interpret the scene in '4' dimensions more accurately and faster.
But Fast sync doesn't help in this way.
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I like it best with a framecap at refresh. Takes care of tearing without latency, and doesn't have the dramatic framedrops of double buffered V-Sync when framerates drop below refresh.
It only really feels smooth at multiples of the refresh, because of the frame timings, and my rig is more likely to produce consistent framerates around my refresh anyway.
It only really feels smooth at multiples of the refresh, because of the frame timings, and my rig is more likely to produce consistent framerates around my refresh anyway.
D
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This is what I do as well and it works great. I've been running at 165hz though which has oddly caused issues with some games like Forza Horizon 3 crashing.
I use GSYNC with Fast Sync as the limiter.
A good way to think about it is that VSYNC cuts your FPS to 60 or 30, Adaptive Sync stuffs frames where needed, and Fast Sync dumps frames above your monitors refresh rate.
Furious_Styles
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Pretty much exact same for me, love having so many options.