Frame limiter and vsync

[Pandamonia]

im talking about when the frames go slightly above 60fps because the refresh of the monitor isnt exactly 60hz.

Most openGL games perform like crap anyway. Cross platform rubbish normally.

 

[toyota]

Even when the xbox 360 was locked at 30fps it had a lot of noticeable tearing in some games. Vsync would keep doing its job even below max allowable monitor rate.

if vsync is off then of course there is tearing.

 

[blackened23]

I've used SLI for some time and noticed hitching in only older games when adaptive power management is turned on. I'm talking like, games from 2007 and prior with really low level graphics.

With modern AAA titles, i've never used frame limiters; i've always used adaptive vsync and the framerate sticks right at 60. Similarly, with using a secondary lightboost screen...no problems with hitching to speak of. I turn vsync off in that situation of course. Just depends on what type of game i'm playing. I use MSI Afterburner's overlay so I can see the framerate in real time and all that sort of thing.

The thing with adaptive power management is that it (from what I gather) estimates required GPU horsepower based on the level of GPU demand that is being thrown at the GPU. Playing an old game such as Dead Space 1, that will obviously not require a lot of power and the GPU boost clockspeeds won't be as high. Simply because it isn't needed for such an undemanding game. Anyway, back with my 680s I found that such games would cause slight hitching based on (my theory) adaptive power management underestimating the power required. But when I switched to maximum performance, the framerate always stuck at 60 fps. Now, again, this was only an issue with really old games. With demanding games such as Crysis level type of stuff, your GPU boost will always be at maximum and GPU load will be at near 100%. So then it's a non issue because adaptive power management isn't sitting there guessing what type of GPU power to throw out. It's just always 100%. (again, this is my theory based on my use)

I also use adaptive vsync. Anyway, that has been my experience. I now use maximum performance as the global setting, and I make program profiles for all of my desktop apps and system tray apps to use adaptive. This has removed any problems in this regard for me in conjunction with SLI.

Of course if frame rate limiters work for you, have at it. Just use whatever works.

 

[toyota]

I would never recommend using maximum performance globally. it makes the gpu run at high speeds just doing simple things. and browsers now use the gpu for many things so you will be running high clocks all the time for nothing.

I have never had a game hitch from using adaptive power management. Dead Space 1 and 2 and any other games I have tried play fine with no hitching at all and are pegged at 60 fps. That was on my 660 ti.

now adaptive vsync as made some games hitch which seems odd. in Metro 2033 using it would make the game very choppy in spots where as it played perfectly fine in those same spots with regular vsync. to be clear I was testing on settings that never dipped below 60 fps. now that could have been a driver issue but i know it was there for at least two sets of drivers.

 

[blackened23]

Maximum performance globally doesn't run the GPU at high speeds if you do what I said. If you create "adaptive" program profiles for all of your desktop apps, browsers, mouse software, system tray apps, then it won't. Problem is, when you use GPU acceleration in browsers that will sometimes cause 3d clocks to kick in. Same story for mouse software; razer mouse software and logitech mouse software will cause 3d clocks to kick in. But what you do is make program profiles for all of these programs to specify adaptive power management for THOSE programs. And use maximum performance as the global setting.

I have done this for over a year. And my desktop GPU speeds always idle properly. I do not ever get 3d clocks on the desktop doing this method, when I have adaptive power management profiles for most of my desktop apps. Now not all desktop apps require it, but some do. Mouse software for whatever reason can cause 3d clocks. I don't understand that, but it happens.

Of course, this is what worked for me. If you don't like that, then you can use whatever you want. I'm just saying. Adaptive power management can make old games hitch. If so, then make a profile for it. You have two ways to do this, you can do what I've said earlier or you can make a maximum performance profile for the game itself.

Or you can just do what you do and completely ignore what I said. Just do whatever works best for you. Everyone has different preferences for this sort of thing. Or it could be something as the cause entirely, depending on the game. But in general I've had great success with the above method. Just a suggestion, maybe it'll help someone, but as always if something else works better for you by all means do that instead.

Oh yeah. As far as Metro 2033 goes. That game was strange in terms of performance, what I found was that MSAA had a big performance hit as well as ADOF. I always turned those two settings off. Oh yeah. Physx in metro 2033 is not a good setting to use. Physx is good in some games, metro 2033 is not one of them. ADOF didn't even make a visual difference in the game from what I saw, unless my 20/20 failed me. Physx as well. I turned physx on a few times in Metro 2033 and didn't see any difference. I don't even know what physx effects it used, but I only noticed extreme choppiness when turning physx on for whatever reason. I dunno. Just a very strange game in terms of performance. Some of the settings have performance hits that doesn't even make a bit of sense. Surprisingly , I felt that Metro: LL was more optimized than Metro 2033 was for the various settings.