Screen tearing / skipping frames while gaming !

[John123123]

Hello. So i recently got a new computer on this computer i installed Bioshock infinite. I ran fraps to check my fps while i was in game. It turns out that the game was running at 60 on ultra settings. But when i started moving camera around i noticed screen tearing like the game would jump a few frames every few seconds. My fps didn't droped it always stayed at 60 fps exept sometimes it jumped to 58 or 59 fps. I went to options in game and locked my fps. But the problem was still there. If you guys have time woud you help me pls

Thanks a ton

PS: I can pay around 10 dollars or more to the guy who will help me out. (PM me your paypal)

 

[Markbnj]

Screen tearing like that is usually caused by the vertical refresh of the monitor occurring during a frame draw. You can suppress it for most games by enabling "Sync to vertical refresh" or "Limit to 60 FPS" or however they word it. Most players who care about performance prefer the tearing to the frame rate limitation, however I usually enable it.

 

[John123123]

Alright i went and enabled v-sync but nothing worked i also went to nvidia control panel and forced v-sync i also enabled triple buffering in nvidia control panel but nothing helped

 

[mmntech]

Is this just happening on the one game? What graphics card model do you have? Are you running the latest drivers?

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Vsync is designed to stop tearing, it's extremely unusual to enable vsync in the game and it not work, are you sure what you're describing is tearing?

Remember that with drivers you have profiles and you can change default generic driver settings like "force vsync on/off", but if there's a profile for the specific game that profile can override default/generic settings so make sure you check that.

Do you have any other 3rd party video tools that are running that might fiddle/alter vsync?

 

[John123123]

mmntech No this is happening on every game. It says that i have 60 fps sometimes it dropes for 2 fps for like 0.5 sec. When i play the game i notice the tearing like the screen would jump a little. I notice it and its really hard for me to enjoy the game. I have Asus Gtx 970 strix 4gb. I updated all the drivers with nvidia geforce experiance and with motherboard tool which is MSI Update live 6. I also updated some compontents with driver booster 2 i paid for that software.

PrincessFrosty I tried enabling v-sync in nvidia control panel i tried setting it to adaptive i tried enabling and disabling triple buffering and nothing... Yes i think what i am describing is tearing because when i move my mouse i can feel that the camera jumps a few times and then goes back to normal stance.

Basically i feel like the gameplay is really CHOPPY ! thats the word

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I think you might be mis-using the term tearing causing us some confusion.

Tearing is when the video card provides a new frame to the monitor while the monitor is partially through a screen refresh, this results in X many horizontal lines being the old frame and Y many horizonal lines below it being the new frame, between the 2 frames is what is called a tear line where the content of frame 1 and frame 2 don't line up. This is a visual representation of tearing where the content of frame 1 on top is different from the 2nd frame below it and all the vertical lines in the scene mis-align due to movement between the 2 frames.

Just be careful you're not getting confused between stuttering (which is commonly defined as irregular frame rate) and tearing, tearing can occur at any frame rate even really smooth ones. You may simply be describing stuttering in frame rate. Stuttering can seem even worse with vsync turned on by the way because if the next frame isn't ready to be displayed when vsync is used it, the video card will display the old frame again causing it sharp suttering from 60fps down to 30fps for small periods.

 

[John123123]

Hmmm your right i recorded my gameplay and review the video. I noticed that it doesnt happen like you said. My screen freezes for 0.1 seconds and then camera moves normally i don't know how to explain it but i know it isn't stutter because fps remains at 58-60. Its just like a mini teleport it freezes for 0.1 second and then resumes the gameplay. My gameplay its not smooth its really choppy from time to time. Thanks for taking the time and explaining me what tearing actually is. I found it weird that v-sync and triple buffering didn't work.

 

[Aikouka]

Hmmm your right i recorded my gameplay and review the video. I noticed that it doesnt happen like you said. My screen freezes for 0.1 seconds and then camera moves normally i don't know how to explain it but i know it isn't stutter because fps remains at 58-60. Its just like a mini teleport it freezes for 0.1 second and then resumes the gameplay. My gameplay its not smooth its really choppy from time to time. Thanks for taking the time and explaining me what tearing actually is. I found it weird that v-sync and triple buffering didn't work.

If you're using any sort of frame limiting (e.g. VSync), missing a single frame will show up as a 1 FPS drop.

 

[John123123]

So v-sync could be causing the problem but the thing is if i have enabled or disabled v-sync the problem is still there.

 

[bystander36]

What you are describing sounds like stuttering, not tearing. If you are stuttering, due to a frame or two that is slow, turning off V-sync will help, but then you will get tearing.

 

[John123123]

UPDATE: It turns out that it wasn't screen tearing after all. However i didnt fix the problem but now i got more detailed information about the problem. So basically when i play bioshock i turn camera left and right and in certant parts of the map my fps drops a bit and i got this stutter like i was playing on 40-50 fps my camera jumps and is choppy.

 

[futurefields]

what's your cpu?

is your gpu throttling? are you running an on screen display to see gpu/cpu usage?

 

[John123123]

I don't think my gpu is throttling because the temperature gets only to 70 and that is safe. My cpu is intel core i5 4690k 3.5 ghz quad core. Yes im running GPU Tweak by asus and while im gaming i can see that the gpu usage is 90% almost 100%.

 

[Chaotic0ne]

I used to get similar types of throttling on some games as TC, and it turns out I had programs running in the background that were using resources while playing games were pushing my PC to its limits. In such a case, disabling some background programs can be the difference between night and day. Incorrect power settings options can also cause this.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/iobit_game_booster.html

I've been using game booster while gaming to cut background programs off, and other stuff that uses resources that isn't needed for gaming. It also makes a new power setting option it automatically switches to when enabled.

So TC I suggest you try that and see if it helps.

If I play DAI for example, and I got a browser open, that's gonna screw with my FPS because its a very CPU intensive game. Close ALL programs including those in the systray that you don't need for gaming. Turn of MSI afterburner and/or riva tuner, etc. So between game booster and cutting off background programs you don't need for gaming, that could help you a lot. Some games do not like overlay programs like riva tuner, Fraps, etc. And using them can cause stuttering.

 

[John123123]

I just did a re-install of windows updated drivers and windows. Didn't install any program on my computer exept league of legends. Still the same. I also forgot to mention that i have 1 stick of 8gb of ram i might go and buy another stick with 4gb of ram that might fix it what do you guys think ?

I also know PSU and monitors are not the problem because i had been running another PSU 1 week ago and i replaced it with the new one and its still the same. And my monitor has the same specs as my friends monitor.

The things that are left is graphics card, mother board, processor or ram. I might just send graphics card back and get a new one what do you guys think ?

 

[Chaotic0ne]

Another cause for lag could be from too many USB devices plugged in. I used to have 6 devices plugged in full time, and latencymon told me I was getting a bunch of lag from usb.sys, and unplugging 3 of the USB devices I had plugged in fixed the issue. That was screwing my performance up in games as well.

 

[DigDog]

do you really think gameboster can make a difference when he's running a 970 and a 4690k ? all that does is disable some services which doesn't even make 0.5% of the performance.

since OP did a reinstall, the issue *has* to be either bios- or hardware related, and i doubt it's bios (though it's worth checking).

maybe a faulty ram stick, maybe a bad disk. less likely, a dying mobo or psu. my money is on bad ram.
(a faulty GPU is not out of the question, but he would likely get BSODs from it)

 

[PrincessFrosty]

What video card do you have and how much vRAM does it have? Download and install MSI afterburner and fiddle with the OSD controls to display how much vRAM games are using.

Stuttering in game like this when you're turning around quickly can be due to exceeding your vRAM by having your settings too high, this cases game assets to be swapped in and out of vRAM and that can lead to stuttering because swapping in/out of vRAM isn't a relatively quick process.

Once you can display vRAM you can tweak your settings to make sure usage is always a decent way below you max and that will tell us if that's the issue or not and at the very least eliminate one possibility.

I'm thinking the issue is in the area of the HDD --> vRAM area, either because you're aiming too high with settings and causing excessive swap, or there's a hardware issue, typically when otherwise good frame rates have sudden drops it's because large assets like textures are being swapped.