Alternative to V-Sync? What the hell..

[imported_Apophis]

My 6800GT runs fine, I get 63FPS 1600x1200 in Doom3, high quality... the works. I am happy pretty much. I have noticed, though, that sometimes I get the usal tears or inconsistancies that go horizontally across the monitor. It is my understanding that this happens when your FPS goes higher than your monitor's refresh rate? I usually play at 85hz, but this problem has really become irritating in the Tribes: Vengeance beta. In Doom3 it was only in rare places, like where the demons are in the lab on display through the glass casings, and you could see the tearing by strafing back and forth. Why would this happen when the game is capped at 60FPS and my refresh rate was 85??? I don't get what's going on here, or what I should do. I can run 1280x1024 at 100hz, but when I do it rapes my framerate, and I have no idea why. I'm using 66.00 drivers but I've had this issue even after formatting, using latest drivers, etc. I have also seen other people post about the problem. What the heck is the end all solution for this? Or perhaps, what the hell is going on in the first place? My monitor is a Sony G410 btw.

 

[nitromullet]

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...1&threadid=1366517

 

[Schadenfroh]

do you have the V-Sync enabled in the video settings in Doom and in in your drivers?

 

[imported_Apophis]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
do you have the V-Sync enabled in the video settings in Doom and in in your drivers?

I DON'T want to use v-sync if possible, it kills my framerates.

 

[Avalon]

V-sync isn't going to "kill" your framerates. You're only getting 63 FPS average. What's a couple FPS to turn v-sync on? You aren't going to go "OMG I'm getting 60 instead of 63 fps now, and it's horrible!" I'd certainly do it, over playing with tearing, which I can't stand and is bad on my monitor without vsync enabled in my games.

I went and read that link, Nitromullet. You know the reason why vsync scores are lower than when it's turned off? In the time demo with it off, you can get more than 60 FPS. With it on, it'll be capped at 60 FPS. So, when you're running the demo, your max is going to be 60. Your min will still be the same. Imagine you dip to 20 fps as often as you reach 60. Your average is going to be 40 FPS. Now imagine you can reach more than 60 when you get smooth streaks, and your average is going to be noticeably higher, but only number wise. The game *should* be running at the same playability, not counting any smoothness you'd get from lack of tearing/ripping whatever borks you may encounter with vsync on/off.

 

[kylebisme]

The problem is that if you are geting 63fps, and you turn on vsync while running a refresh rate of 85hz you wind up with 42fps; and if you can't get 42fps you wind up with 28fps which really sucks. But that is only a problem when you can't use triple buffering like in opengl with a nvidia card as is the case with Doom3. In Tribes Vengance you should be able to find a setting for triple buffering in the .ini file, at least it is there in other unreal engine games.


Oh and there is no alternative to vsync. tearing happens whenever your frame buffer flipes are not syncornized with your refresh rate, not just when your framerate passes your refresh rate as you belived, so the only solution is vsync.

 

[BFG10K]

V-sync isn't going to "kill" your framerates.

Yes it will.

Your min will still be the same.

No it won't.

 

[kylebisme]

but only if you can't use triple buffering.

 

[imported_Apophis]

Basically what BFG10k said. The guy he's replying to is totally wrong.

Snowman: thanks for the tip, I didn't know nvidia even supported triple buffering, I'll dig around in the INI.

 

[Avalon]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
The problem is that if you are geting 63fps, and you turn on vsync while running a refresh rate of 85hz you wind up with 42fps; and if you can't get 42fps you wind up with 28fps which really sucks. But that is only a problem when you can't use triple buffering like in opengl with a nvidia card as is the case with Doom3. In Tribes Vengance you should be able to find a setting for triple buffering in the .ini file, at least it is there in other unreal engine games.


Oh and there is no alternative to vsync. tearing happens whenever your frame buffer flipes are not syncornized with your refresh rate, not just when your framerate passes your refresh rate as you belived, so the only solution is vsync.

Informative, unlike BFG. I guess it's not hard to become a lifer if you only post yes or no replies.
:thumbsup:
I guess for some reason I was assuming the OP could turn down the refresh rate of his monitor. Don't ask, I don't know why.

 

[imported_Apophis]

Originally posted by: Avalon

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
The problem is that if you are geting 63fps, and you turn on vsync while running a refresh rate of 85hz you wind up with 42fps; and if you can't get 42fps you wind up with 28fps which really sucks. But that is only a problem when you can't use triple buffering like in opengl with a nvidia card as is the case with Doom3. In Tribes Vengance you should be able to find a setting for triple buffering in the .ini file, at least it is there in other unreal engine games.


Oh and there is no alternative to vsync. tearing happens whenever your frame buffer flipes are not syncornized with your refresh rate, not just when your framerate passes your refresh rate as you belived, so the only solution is vsync.

Informative, unlike BFG. I guess it's not hard to become a lifer if you only post yes or no replies.
:thumbsup:
I guess for some reason I was assuming the OP could turn down the refresh rate of his monitor. Don't ask, I don't know why.

Turning down the refresh rate doesn't do anything ace. BFG is completely correct in his repsonses and there's really no reason to back them up as it is pretty much common knowledge that vsync will kill framerates.

 

[kylebisme]

Well, surely you can turn down the refresh rate of your monitor; but even though 60hz will keep you at 30fps when you can pull at least 30fps but not 60fps, the next step down from 30fps would be 20fps and that is just horrible. besides, 60hz is hard on the eyes for many people and it takes 85hz to give the impression of "flicker free."

As for Nvidia's support for triple buffering, it is required by d3d so they don't really have a choice there; but,unlike ati, nvidia chooses not to give the option to force triple buffering in opengl. Opengl doesn't have a call for triple buffering so the only option is to force it though the drivers, and MS doesn't allow drivers to force triple buffering in d3d as it requires the application to be aloud to toggle it.

Also, best I can tell, ati defaults triple buffering to on in d3d while nvidia defaults it to off. I say this because I have found d3d games were there is no triple buffering setting in the configuration and yet triple buffering is used on a radeon while with a geforce it is not.

 

[imported_Apophis]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
Well, surely you can turn down the refresh rate of your monitor; but even though 60hz will keep you at 30fps when you can pull at least 30fps but not 60fps, the next step down from 30fps would be 20fps and that is just horrible. besides, 60hz is hard on the eyes for many people and it takes 85hz to give the impression of "flicker free."

As for Nvidia's support for triple buffering, it is required by d3d so they don't really have a choice there; but,unlike ati, nvidia chooses not to give the option to force triple buffering in opengl. Opengl doesn't have a call for triple buffering so the only option is to force it though the drivers, and MS doesn't allow drivers to force triple buffering in d3d as it requires the application to be aloud to toggle it.

Also, best I can tell, ati defaults triple buffering to on in d3d while nvidia defaults it to off. I say this because I have found d3d games were there is no triple buffering setting in the configuration and yet triple buffering is used on a radeon while with a geforce it is not.

Wow even better than the last post, thanks for the info. Also as you said, I was able to find a triplebuffering option in the tribes config INI and I set it to true. It helped out a lot, but I can still notice stuff because I just notice every little thing like that... I've read triple buffering doesn't catch all tears but it doesn't kill one's framerate nearly as bad and that's why... so I guess I'll deal. Thanks again

 

[kylebisme]

It seems I wasn't quite clear enough; vsync is the only thing that will stop the tearing, but triple buffering allows vsync to do so without impacting your minimum framerate. so you need to turn on vsnyc as well as triple buffering and then you will get nice synchronized frames without the nasty drops in fps. I'm pretty sure you can find a setting for vsync in the ini file as well and you can just set it there while leaving it to application controlled in the nvidia control panel so it doesn't interfere with games were triple buffering isn't an option.

 

[Avalon]

Originally posted by: Apophis

Originally posted by: Avalon

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
The problem is that if you are geting 63fps, and you turn on vsync while running a refresh rate of 85hz you wind up with 42fps; and if you can't get 42fps you wind up with 28fps which really sucks. But that is only a problem when you can't use triple buffering like in opengl with a nvidia card as is the case with Doom3. In Tribes Vengance you should be able to find a setting for triple buffering in the .ini file, at least it is there in other unreal engine games.


Oh and there is no alternative to vsync. tearing happens whenever your frame buffer flipes are not syncornized with your refresh rate, not just when your framerate passes your refresh rate as you belived, so the only solution is vsync.

Informative, unlike BFG. I guess it's not hard to become a lifer if you only post yes or no replies.
:thumbsup:
I guess for some reason I was assuming the OP could turn down the refresh rate of his monitor. Don't ask, I don't know why.

Turning down the refresh rate doesn't do anything ace. BFG is completely correct in his repsonses and there's really no reason to back them up as it is pretty much common knowledge that vsync will kill framerates.

Ace? Excuse me?
I was only aware that vsync killed benchmarking, not your gaming. That's the "common knowledge" i've been used to seeing on these forums. Obviously, if I'm wrong, you just MAY want to correct me with more than a "No you're wrong" answer, as that certainly isn't going to convince me.


Bah, not a good night. I'm sorry.

 

[imported_Apophis]

Originally posted by: Avalon

Originally posted by: Apophis

Originally posted by: Avalon

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
The problem is that if you are geting 63fps, and you turn on vsync while running a refresh rate of 85hz you wind up with 42fps; and if you can't get 42fps you wind up with 28fps which really sucks. But that is only a problem when you can't use triple buffering like in opengl with a nvidia card as is the case with Doom3. In Tribes Vengance you should be able to find a setting for triple buffering in the .ini file, at least it is there in other unreal engine games.


Oh and there is no alternative to vsync. tearing happens whenever your frame buffer flipes are not syncornized with your refresh rate, not just when your framerate passes your refresh rate as you belived, so the only solution is vsync.

Informative, unlike BFG. I guess it's not hard to become a lifer if you only post yes or no replies.
:thumbsup:
I guess for some reason I was assuming the OP could turn down the refresh rate of his monitor. Don't ask, I don't know why.

Turning down the refresh rate doesn't do anything ace. BFG is completely correct in his repsonses and there's really no reason to back them up as it is pretty much common knowledge that vsync will kill framerates.

Ace? Excuse me?
I was only aware that vsync killed benchmarking, not your gaming. That's the "common knowledge" i've been used to seeing on these forums. Obviously, if I'm wrong, you just MAY want to correct me with more than a "No you're wrong" answer, as that certainly isn't going to convince me.


Bah, not a good night. I'm sorry.

No problem, I've just seen this "V-sync doesn't kill framerates!" stuff spread around a lot latey, and I'm really not sure why but it irritates me... I guess because I can see it in actual gameplay. I just wish this entire problem would magically go away in the first place lol.

 

[BFG10K]

Informative, unlike BFG. I guess it's not hard to become a lifer if you only post yes or no replies.

The effects of vsync have been discussed at length many times before.

Also triple buffering only decreases the chance of the fractional framerate problem happening plus it also waste VRAM and increases input lag by up to 50%.

 

[kylebisme]

It doesn't decrease the problem, it eleminates it; and nothing in the way it works incresases input lag any more than normal vsync. As for the vram, sure it uses one frame buffer's worth which is just 8MB at 1600x1200.

 

[BFG10K]

It doesn't decrease the problem, it eleminates it;

It reduces the chance of the problem happening because the chance of two buffers being unready is far less likely than just one. But it's still possible.

and nothing in the way it works incresases input lag any more than normal vsync.

Of course it does. Instead of waiting for two buffers to see the results of your action you now have to wait for three.

As for the vram, sure it uses one frame buffer's worth which is just 8MB at 1600x1200.

Actually its 15 MB with a 32 bit Z/stencil.

 

[kylebisme]

But you only need one buffer done to do a flip, the third one is just there to give the videocard a place to write to instead of waiting idle for the flip. Also, holding the extra frame buffer only costs its weight in pixels and color depth; the memory requirements for rendering don't apply to anything but the buffer being rendered to.

 

[Avalon]

No problem, I've just seen this "V-sync doesn't kill framerates!" stuff spread around a lot latey, and I'm really not sure why but it irritates me... I guess because I can see it in actual gameplay. I just wish this entire problem would magically go away in the first place lol

Hmm. It's what I mostly see when browsing. I only use v-sync when playing Natural Selection, and at 10x7 w/6X AA and 16X AF Quality, I can hold my own at 85 FPS steady, which is what I did with it off, so to me the claims of it not killing framerates seemed to true to me.

The effects of vsync have been discussed at length many times before.

That's all fine and dandy, BFG, but I've not seen a full discussion in this forum specifically on how v-sync kills your framerates. What I always tend to see is a thread titled "Should I use V-Sync?" and replies within the thread responding with "only if you witness tearing". That's about the extent of v-sync discussion I've read here. I'm not always around, so it could either be that I miss such discussions, or that not many occur lately.