Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
Originally posted by: taltamir
lyssword made a funny... he has a point but most LCDs can only ouput 60 fps max... anymore and its just not being displayed. (your monitors refresh rate in Hz is how many FPS it can do).
my LCD can do 1280x1024 75Hz
Your framerate can exceed your refresh rate, but it causes screen tearing. To avoid this you enable v-sync. Which locks the fps to your refresh rate.
How do you think the tearing happens exactly? the extra frames are not displayed. Your screen refreshes 75 times a second. If you sent it more frames then that it will still only refresh 75 times a second, however it will display parts of different frames.
SIMPLIFIED NON TECHNICAL example:
Frame 1 is sent to the monitor.
Frame 1 is received
Screen refresh: frame 1 displayed.
Frame 2 is sent to monitor.
Frame 2 is received
Frame 3 is sent to monitor, overwriting the undisplayed frame 2.
Screen refresh: only half of frame 3 was received, thus the top part of the monitor displays what it already got of frame3, and the bottom part displays part of frame 2. Causing a tear. (and wasting two half frames, for one whole frame wasted total if added up)
Frame 3 is received.
Frame 4 is sent to monitor.
frame 4 is received.
Screen refresh: frame 4 displayed...
in this example you had 4 frames sent, but displayed only 3. However, you actually displayed 2 frames properly (1 and 4), while for 2 and 3 got spliced together, half of each was wasted and the other halfs got combined and displayed.