update: new geforce beta drivers 301.25

[Ferzerp]

Well I for one have learned something from this thread. I was one who was convinced tearing only happened above monitor refresh rate (with vsync off). Back in the days when I had a crt monitor with my refresh rate set at 100 hz, I never noticed any tearing in games and I played them all with vsync off. When I got my LCD (60 hz) everything changed. I noticed tearing all over the place and vsync became necessary to me or I would be teared to death!

Now here all this time I've hard wired myself to thinking all the tearing was going on above refresh rate. Then Adaptive came along and I thought it was the answer to vsync's "halving" fps characteristics which was irritating. Then I started noticing something using it in games. Some games it seemed to work perfect without me noticing any tearing (like Deus Ex Human Revolution for example where previously I couldn't even use vsync cause it lagged the game so much it was unplayable to me). Then other games it didn't seem to work right like Borderlands 2 where there was so much tearing going on it was pitiful. I don't use any fps counters playing games so I was thinking the tearing was going on in Borderlands 2 because "Adaptive" wasn't consistently turning on vsync when fps exceeded the refresh rate. Now after reading here, it seems the tearing I was seeing was actually when vsync was being turned off when fps went below refresh rate.

This "Tearing Below Refresh Rate" thing is blowing my mind. I must be a real dumb ass and need to retrain my brain now on everything I thought I knew about vsync. I'm no rookie either, I've been playing PC games since Quake. I still wonder back in the crt days why I never noticed tearing cause you'd think a lot of the time the fps was below my 100 hz refresh rate. I thought I wasn't seeing it then because the games rarely exceeded my fresh rate.

Dazed and Vsync Confused. Gotta go dig out my Led Zeppelen Albums.

Triple buffering. It trades tearing for latency.

 

[Mike89]

I gotta pay more attention using a fps counter (which I don't ordinarily do) to see if I see tearing below refresh rate. I'm one of those "show me" kind of guys so I will have to see this for myself. I looked at Borderlands 2 again using Precision X fps counter and now Adaptive is working fine, I see no tearing. The fps counter confirmed what I already knew, this game does not go below refresh rate on my system so the tearing I was seeing was sure not from below refresh rate. Don't know what the deal was before when Adaptive didn't appear to be turning on for this game. I had vsync off in the game, Adaptive on in Control Panel and vsync just appeared to be off cause of the severe tearing (and fps was above refresh rate). Cycled through turning vsync on in game, turning off Adaptive, turning Adaptive back on, turning vsync in game back off and now Adaptive seems to be working fine (with no tearing). There are issues with Adaptive being implemented right. Sometimes I have to fiddle with it like the example above. You guys are saying with Adaptive on, you will get tearing when fps drops below refresh rate. Fine. I will have to see it for myself to believe it. So far I haven't. I'm pretty sure any tearing I have seen to date has been above refresh rate, not below it though I've not had any fps counters on to confirm this (it's all by feel of what I thought the fps was and usually I'm pretty damn accurate). Not saying anyone is wrong, I just haven't seen it. I was gaming for years on a crt monitor with a 100 hz refresh rate with vsync off and never noticed any tearing. What are the odds of that happening when you know many times the games were running below 100 fps. As soon as I got a LCD monitor (60 hz) I began to see tearing immediately and it was from above refresh rate, not below it. So you can see I'm a bit skeptical. I will now be leaving the fps counter on for awhile to see for myself if I see tearing below refresh rate. I'll be the first to say I do if it happens.