Why dont people use vsync?

[Serpico]

If your FPS is over 60 you *CAN'T* see a difference between vsync on and off (and there isn't any lag, either).

My performance in TF2 is totally affected if I play with vsync on than without it, and with vsync on my framerate is pinned over 60fps at all times. The difference feels absolutely massive, even if the game does look a little better with vsync on.

Again, great for single player games, no so hot for fast action multiplayer.

 

[tpfaff]

I disable vsync in CS:S only because double-buffering incurs a slight input latency hit. That's the only time it's ever disabled.

ditto

 

[Frostex]

Simple...Vsync, and especially tripple buffering (or greater) cause latency between input and rendering the image which makes accurate aiming a LOT harder.

 

[Dende]

Simple...Vsync, and especially tripple buffering (or greater) cause latency between input and rendering the image which makes accurate aiming a LOT harder.

Actualy your half right Vsync doesn't cause any input latency but buffering does. You can use Vsync without buffering and that will take out the input lag. Lets face it hardware is SO fast now days that if you have a new system with a 9800 level card then there is NO reasion NOT to use Vsync on a LCD. I never see anything less then 60fps on the games I play including CSS and I never have any input lag. I also use tripple buffering in addition to Vsync. A friend of mine at OSU invited me to his house once. I brought my system with my 22in LCD and we played CSS all night. His system was using a 19 inch CRT and he could not get over how much better my system looked and played. He even played on my system for a while and he said that my system was WAY faster then his and he had vsync off on his system. I had to show him that it was turned on for him to beleve me hehe.

 

[jags2ooo]

Everything just looks smoother at 100 fps, even though my eyes can't even view it.

 

[S-B]

Everything just looks smoother at 100 fps, even though my eyes can't even view it.

It's called the placebo effect. It's not that your eyes can't "view" 100 Fps, it's that your screen won't. Even CRTs have a hard time delivering 100 Hz at native or better resolutions.

 

[Redwin]

People who are debating v-sync on or off because of input-lag issues versus frame tearing (which looks horrible to me and is noticeable in almost all games, but many people say they can't see it at all. so to each his own).. have good points and lots of room for healthy debate. Vsync off in FPS's to help your aim at the cost of image quality is a perfectly viable way to play. (Though I personally tend to put vsync on, can't stand the tearing)

People who are claiming they can SEE more detail and fast action and such because 100fps looks different than 60fps on a 60hz LCD in any way besides the little "FPS: XX" number in the corner, simply aren't understanding how monitor refresh rates and video card frame rates relate to each other. Even if your card is running at 120 frames per second, the monitor can only DISPLAY 60 frames in a second, so the other 60 frames your video card is producing are *THROWN AWAY* and you cannot ever see it, not matter how much you would like to think you can, your screen is not physically capable of showing it to you, period.

When your LCD (Assuming its 60hz like 99% of lcd's and not some strange nonstandard refresh somehow) is ready to display the next frame on the screen (happens EXACTLY 60 times a second no more no less) It asks the video card for the most recently rendered frame, and displays it. If your video card is doing 30 FPS, then the monitor will wind up getting the SAME frame for 2 refreshes in a row because the GPU wasn't ready with the next frame when the monitor needed it. If your video card is rendering 120 FPS then by the time your monitor asks for the next frame your GPU will have already rendered an entire frame that it just shrugged and threw away because your monitor wasn't ready. You aren't seeing those frames, and you never will.

 

[Dende]

People who are debating v-sync on or off because of input-lag issues versus frame tearing (which looks horrible to me and is noticeable in almost all games, but many people say they can't see it at all. so to each his own).. have good points and lots of room for healthy debate. Vsync off in FPS's to help your aim at the cost of image quality is a perfectly viable way to play. (Though I personally tend to put vsync on, can't stand the tearing)

People who are claiming they can SEE more detail and fast action and such because 100fps looks different than 60fps on a 60hz LCD in any way besides the little "FPS: XX" number in the corner, simply aren't understanding how monitor refresh rates and video card frame rates relate to each other. Even if your card is running at 120 frames per second, the monitor can only DISPLAY 60 frames in a second, so the other 60 frames your video card is producing are *THROWN AWAY* and you cannot ever see it, not matter how much you would like to think you can, your screen is not physically capable of showing it to you, period.

When your LCD (Assuming its 60hz like 99% of lcd's and not some strange nonstandard refresh somehow) is ready to display the next frame on the screen (happens EXACTLY 60 times a second no more no less) It asks the video card for the most recently rendered frame, and displays it. If your video card is doing 30 FPS, then the monitor will wind up getting the SAME frame for 2 refreshes in a row because the GPU wasn't ready with the next frame when the monitor needed it. If your video card is rendering 120 FPS then by the time your monitor asks for the next frame your GPU will have already rendered an entire frame that it just shrugged and threw away because your monitor wasn't ready. You aren't seeing those frames, and you never will.

QFT Nice response

 

[Uberbob102000]

People who are debating v-sync on or off because of input-lag issues versus frame tearing (which looks horrible to me and is noticeable in almost all games, but many people say they can't see it at all. so to each his own).. have good points and lots of room for healthy debate. Vsync off in FPS's to help your aim at the cost of image quality is a perfectly viable way to play. (Though I personally tend to put vsync on, can't stand the tearing)

People who are claiming they can SEE more detail and fast action and such because 100fps looks different than 60fps on a 60hz LCD in any way besides the little "FPS: XX" number in the corner, simply aren't understanding how monitor refresh rates and video card frame rates relate to each other. Even if your card is running at 120 frames per second, the monitor can only DISPLAY 60 frames in a second, so the other 60 frames your video card is producing are *THROWN AWAY* and you cannot ever see it, not matter how much you would like to think you can, your screen is not physically capable of showing it to you, period.

When your LCD (Assuming its 60hz like 99% of lcd's and not some strange nonstandard refresh somehow) is ready to display the next frame on the screen (happens EXACTLY 60 times a second no more no less) It asks the video card for the most recently rendered frame, and displays it. If your video card is doing 30 FPS, then the monitor will wind up getting the SAME frame for 2 refreshes in a row because the GPU wasn't ready with the next frame when the monitor needed it. If your video card is rendering 120 FPS then by the time your monitor asks for the next frame your GPU will have already rendered an entire frame that it just shrugged and threw away because your monitor wasn't ready. You aren't seeing those frames, and you never will.

QFT!

 

[Captain Picard]

Very good Redwin, I don't think I could have made it clearer myself. On a related note, I'm a fan of v-sync. 60Hz/fps might not be ideal, but for me tearing is the worse of the two options.

 

[Pixelated Taco]

I know that even though my LCD can only refresh at 60hz it matters that I *don't* have Vsync on when for example playing Quake 3. On one of the tourney maps you can literally jump higher (not just one map but all of them because of the game mechanics) onto a ledge you could not do if you didn't set your frames to stop at 125. This miniscule height advantage can be the difference between winning the tourney back then or not. It seems this is why DOOM3 and Quake 4 where throttled to only 60fps so players could not take advantage of quirks in the engine and everyone had a level battlefield.

One game I do play with Vsync on is NFS: Most Wanted. Vsync removes all the tearing and just makes the game run more fluid. But this is a single player game not an online game. Yech..i'm too tired this morning to type more, lol.