vsync on or off

[brandonb]

How do you define tearing? Can i get some screenshots please?

To understand tearing you have to understand how monitors are refreshed. Back in the stone age with CRT's, there was an electron gun shooting into the pixel. I understand moves like a book. Top left, and then renders down the screen. (twice per frame every other line if we are in interlaced NTSC mode, otherwise down once in progressive mode.)

Vsync on = The computer waits until a game has finished rendering the screen, has the screen buffer ready to render, but it waits until this electron gun is at the top left, ready to draw the screen. So when the monitor renders, the update to the screen is perfect, for every single pass the monitor is doing on the screen, the frame is there and ready to be drawn and the result is "perfectly" in sync with the monitor.

Vsync off = The computer waits until the game has finished rendering the scene, and has the screen buffer ready to render. But it does not wait for the electron gun to be in the top left position, and instead starts drawing immediately to the screen when the frame is ready. This leads to the top half of the screen being the last frame that was rendered, and the new frame rendering half way down the screen (or whereever the gun may be placed at the time). So that gives you the appearance of things being sliced in half on the screen where the top is one frame, and the bottom might be another frame and things won't line up exactly all the time. Hence the term tearing.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

How do you define tearing? Can i get some screenshots please?

Tearing is basically the frame rate being out of sync with the refresh of the monitor.

Monitors refresh by reading from the video cards front buffer which is 1 whole frame of information. It draws to the screen 1 horizontal row of pixels at a time, starting at the top and working downwards until it reaches the bottom.

Video cards renders into what's called a back buffer until the entire frame is complete and the backbuffer is then flipped with the front buffer and exposed to the monitor.

The problem is that the buffers flip once the frame is complete, and that can happen at any point during the monitors refresh, so if the monitor is 50% down the screen drawing the old frame the top half will be the old frame, and the bottom half will be the new frame.

If the 2 frames are different, and they usually are, then you see a visible tear line between the seam of those 2 frames where objects in the scene don't line up and appear to be sheared

Vsync simply forces the buffer switch to wait until the monitor has finished its refresh so its only 1 full frame per 1 full refresh, eliminating tearing, but that false delay of "waiting" causes lower frame rates and greater latency between input and output.

 

[tornadog]

wow Princess... thats the nicest explanation of vsync I have seen in a while.

 

[fastamdman]

On the contrary if 60fps is going to keep you from "PWNING" in CODMW2 ect then you were never going to win in the first place. Also in old games like CSS & Day of Defeat, Quake, ect the difference in mouse input locked at 60fps vsync or max fps it my be a bit more relevant because those games seem to run quite a bit faster with vsync off for some weird reason. COD lol I just always keep the frames locked @ 60fps in that game because it is easy.

The difference between 60fps in Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike Source and Counter-Strike Global Offensive is HUGE and I mean HUGE. I have played competitive *read as paid to play, tournaments, lan events* CS 1.6 for a very very long time and have used a lot of different settings, monitors, etc.

One thing is certain in the CS scene, if you don't have 100 fps, you are doing it wrong. As far as other games it might be less noticeable, but with CS and a few other FPS games, the higher the FPS the better.

I like vsync off 99% of the time. With a few games like WoW, it doesn't seem to bother me much, but I even turn it off with that.

 

[KAZANI]

ON, because even at 20fps it makes gaming @1080p possible (and better looking) without having to buy a discrete GPU. Besides, with Vsynch OFF I get tearing even while watching videos.

 

[Clinkster]

Adaptive vsync baby. It's the wave of the future. I use it for most everything except some of the Source based games (CS:S mainly) where locking your FPS to 60 seems to react poorly with the netcode (but my GTX 680 is monstrous overkill for that game regardless).

Man, I'm downloading new Nvidia drivers when I'm getting home.

 

[AdamK47]

VSync on. Always on. I cannot stand screen tearing.

 

[Karstein]

On, because I use a 120hz monitor for gaming.

 

[Dankk]

On, because I use a 120hz monitor for gaming.

Wouldn't you want it off because your monitor has a higher refresh rate, and therefore twice as much overhead before it starts tearing? I thought Vsync only benefits when your framerate surpasses your refresh rate.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Wouldn't you want it off because your monitor has a higher refresh rate, and therefore twice as much overhead before it starts tearing? I thought Vsync only benefits when your framerate surpasses your refresh rate.

Tearing can occur at any framerate. Easy to test. Cap your framerate to 30 and run vsync off. You'll still get tearing.

 

[jonks]

I tried adaptive vsync but just went back to always on. It just looks better to me.

 

[Anteaus]

I tried adaptive vsync but just went back to always on. It just looks better to me.

This is my experience also, though more from a performance standpoint. I can see it being useful when your frame rates are predominately < 60 or > 60 where the software can make a reasonable decision on whether Vsync should be on or off, but if you play a game where the FPS bounces around 60 it keeps turning V-sync on and off causing pauses

I tried Adaptive v-sync for about 3 hours spanning 4-5 games and I've gone back to always on v-sync and never looked back. Sounds good on paper but they definitely need to tweak it.

 

[Aikouka]

I had to turn v-sync on in Diablo III. The tearing was so awful that I couldn't stand playing without it. I've never had another game tear so badly.

 

[krnmastersgt]

I play everything with V-Sync on, the smoother feel is worth any input lag I may create (that I don't really notice).

 

[Continuity28]

I only use Vsync when I can enable triple buffering, whether it be through the game directly, through the driver (for OpenGL), or with D3DOverrider.

I can't stand screen tearing. However, I dislike sub-30 FPS gaming even more, which is why I need triple buffering. That way I get the same minimum FPS that I would with Vsync off, while still getting tear-free video. I don't remember ever having such input lag that it affected my gameplay either.

My opinion for games:

Triple Buffer Vsync > No Vsync > Double Buffer Vsync

 

[thejunglegod]

Ahhh so that is tearing. Thank you for clearing that up all you lovely people. I thought I was the only person who experienced "tearing". And hell yeah, Diablo 3 has a lot of that tearing shit. I guess i'll start switching Vsync on from now on. I guess with my rig, it won't be too much of a problem either. Don't know why i haven't been too keen on using it till now.

Now that i think about it, that Oblivion video which played at the start of the game had unbelievable tearing on my monitor.

 

[hans030390]

For a long while now, I've forced Vsync and Triple Buffering through D3DOverrider, as well as having any related settings turned on in the both the display driver settings and any game that gives me the option. I experimented with having it on and off. I definitely notice tearing, and it really bothers me. I can't really tell a difference with input lag. So, that settled it for me.

On top of that, it's a huge waste to have any sort of tearing on a 120Hz monitor, which I have. It entirely defeats the purpose of having such a "smooth" display, and it makes a huge difference to my eyes whether or not Vsync and Triple Buffering are on. And, again, I can tell no difference with input lag. Not saying it doesn't exist...just stating my preferences.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Wouldn't you want it off because your monitor has a higher refresh rate, and therefore twice as much overhead before it starts tearing? I thought Vsync only benefits when your framerate surpasses your refresh rate.

This is misinformation that for some reason people keep repeating, tearing happens at ALL frame rates when vsync is off, it's that simple.

However it happens to different degrees, you will get more tears per second as your frame rate gets higher and higher, so it generally becomes more noticeable at frame rates higher than your refresh rate.

On top of that, it's a huge waste to have any sort of tearing on a 120Hz monitor, which I have. It entirely defeats the purpose of having such a "smooth" display, and it makes a huge difference to my eyes whether or not Vsync and Triple Buffering are on. And, again, I can tell no difference with input lag. Not saying it doesn't exist...just stating my preferences.

I disagree, I think scenes which have vsync off and where your frame rate is higher than your refresh rate are smoother than the same scene with vsync on. For example at 60hz with 200fps and vsync on you'll get 60 evenly spaced updates to the screen, with vsync off you'll get 200 updates to the screen but they're just not full updates.

I personally feel the latter example is smoother and more responsive, while tearing is certainly jarring especially at very high frame rates I don't would describe the effect as making the scene less smooth, although I would agree that visually it looks worse (less pretty).

 

[imaheadcase]

ON, because even at 20fps it makes gaming @1080p possible (and better looking) without having to buy a discrete GPU. Besides, with Vsynch OFF I get tearing even while watching videos.

*cough* bullshit

 

[hans030390]

I disagree, I think scenes which have vsync off and where your frame rate is higher than your refresh rate are smoother than the same scene with vsync on. For example at 60hz with 200fps and vsync on you'll get 60 evenly spaced updates to the screen, with vsync off you'll get 200 updates to the screen but they're just not full updates.

I personally feel the latter example is smoother and more responsive, while tearing is certainly jarring especially at very high frame rates I don't would describe the effect as making the scene less smooth, although I would agree that visually it looks worse (less pretty).

All I'd have to show you is League of Legends on my 120Hz monitor. When it's running at 200 fps with vsync and triple buffering off, just moving the camera around on the map looks terrible. Lots of tearing and a generally feeling of the image not transitioning smoothly/being very choppy despite being at a high FPS. Turn Vsync/TP on, and scrolling around the map is smooth as butter. Night and day difference. The whole point of getting the 120Hz monitor was the buttery smooth picture the higher refresh rate brings. Turning off Vsync/TP simply kill it.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

All I'd have to show you is League of Legends on my 120Hz monitor. When it's running at 200 fps with vsync and triple buffering off, just moving the camera around on the map looks terrible. Lots of tearing and a generally feeling of the image not transitioning smoothly/being very choppy despite being at a high FPS. Turn Vsync/TP on, and scrolling around the map is smooth as butter. Night and day difference. The whole point of getting the 120Hz monitor was the buttery smooth picture the higher refresh rate brings. Turning off Vsync/TP simply kill it.

It depends on the game, RTS style games look worse with vsync off because the panning of the scene causes each frame to look much different from the last, in FPS tearing is much harder to see.

I do play LoL from time to time with vsync off and It doesn't really bother me, certainly the benefit of a 120hz monitor over a 60hz one is still just as apparent, force the monitor to 60Hz with vsync off, then 120Hz with vsync off and you can see it's much smoother (for high frame rates)