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Hello everyone,
The other thread about vsync is pretty old and is more a discussion of what it does rather than how it can effect your performance, but it didn't give me the info I needed so I'm posting this in hopes that it might help other people in my situation
Because I use a laptop that was not intended for gaming I have tried everything to make Starcraft 2 run smoother, not just FPS wise, but also with my mouse settings. I use a Lenovo g560 with the i5 chipset and Intel HD graphics. Even with every optional effect turned off through variables.txt, and generally low graphics settings, I was still only getting about 30 fps regularly and during battles I tended to notice a lot of input lag.
The entire time I hadn't turned off vertical sync. I had read on this forum and battle.net about what exactly it does, and I guess I had not previously considered its effect on my computers performance.
After turning off vertical sync, I immediately noticed that I got consistently higher frame rates and considerably less input lag, even in large battles. On top of this I get absolutely no artifacts/tearing.
I am not a techie so I have no idea why this could happen. As far as I knew vsync makes your framerate a fraction of your monitor's refresh rate.
TLDR: I'm using a fairly new/decent laptop not meant for gaming, and turning off vsync significantly increased my FPS and reduced my input lag. If you are in a similar situation (you have vsync enabled but you are getting pretty lousy FPS) turning off vsync may improve your performance.
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This should be in the tech support forum.
And also, IMO, it's kinda obvious to turn of VSync if you're having FPS problems that nothing else fixes, or at least to try it as a possible solution.
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It's because Vsync locks your max fps at 60 in order to synchronize when frames begin to generate. It is great for stopping screen tearing but yes, it does limit your fps.
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Russian Federation164 Posts
It doesn't make any sense to turn V-sync on if your FPS is lower than 60 (refresh rate of LCD's is 60 Hz).
I rarely use it, but once it helped A LOT at an online shooter when I had like 100 FPS, but suffered from 'unsmoothness'.
Also try triple buffering
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On November 09 2011 14:50 Tycoon004 wrote:
It's because Vsync locks your max fps at 60 in order to synchronize when frames begin to generate. It is great for stopping screen tearing but yes, it does limit your fps.
Im pretty sure it only locks your graphic cards output, to what your screen is capable of displaying?
The way I understand it is, that if you disable vsync, you will "free" your graphics card/processor from this limitation and it will work as hard as possible at all times, to maximize the amount of frames that it can possibly produce, even though your screen can't handle it
Im no expert though
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Vsync locks your FPS to the HZ that you have on your screen. If you have a refresh rate of 60hz then your max FPS will be 60. Sure it increases your fps but it's not like you will from 20 fps to 50 by removing vertical sync....
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I experienced the same on my old computer. Not sure why though.
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On November 09 2011 19:03 ELA wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2011 14:50 Tycoon004 wrote:
It's because Vsync locks your max fps at 60 in order to synchronize when frames begin to generate. It is great for stopping screen tearing but yes, it does limit your fps. Im pretty sure it only locks your graphic cards output, to what your screen is capable of displaying? The way I understand it is, that if you disable vsync, you will "free" your graphics card/processor from this limitation and it will work as hard as possible at all times, to maximize the amount of frames that it can possibly produce, even though your screen can't handle it Im no expert though
Interesting, so if you have around 130 fps you should probably go with vertical sync? If your monitor is lets say 75hz to just not let the graphic card work too hard?
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vsync does not allow the graphics card to update the framebuffer during a monitor refresh, which prevents the "tearing" issue that is pretty distracting. Whether or not you will see a lot of tearing with vsync off, or how much you fps will increase is dependent on many factors, including your monitor refresh speed, your tolerance for visual artifacts, how close to an even multiplier/divisor of 60hz you current frame rate is, and more. It is not a foregone conclusion that turning it off will increase your frame rate a noticable amount, but it can.
The upshot is, you should always try both and see what works best, because each person is going to have different tolerance, and each game/hardware combination will manifest different amounts of tearing. There is no firm rule on using it or not. I can run without it in a lot of games without noticing much at all, but certain games (like the newly release RAGE) drive me absolutely nuts within minutes without it. Best to just try both out and see what works for you.
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On November 09 2011 19:03 ELA wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2011 14:50 Tycoon004 wrote:
It's because Vsync locks your max fps at 60 in order to synchronize when frames begin to generate. It is great for stopping screen tearing but yes, it does limit your fps. Im pretty sure it only locks your graphic cards output, to what your screen is capable of displaying? The way I understand it is, that if you disable vsync, you will "free" your graphics card/processor from this limitation and it will work as hard as possible at all times, to maximize the amount of frames that it can possibly produce, even though your screen can't handle it Im no expert though
Specifically, when double buffering, the graphics card will wait for your screen to poll it for the current frame before drawing the next.
If your computer can do more than the screen can, it will lock it to your screen's refresh rate. (And, lets be honest, you're not really going to notice that, but you may notice tearing if it's not vsynced, some people/screens being more susceptible to that than others)
If your computer is not capable of matching that refresh rate, this is where you can run into problems. From here, your can only get (screen refresh rate) / (whole integer) FPS, as the card will wait for the next polling.
Lets say you're using a 60Hz screen. (standard for the most part, there are some higher though). and your computer can only draw at 55FPS. Which means your screen can draw every 0.17 seconds, and your comp can draw every 0.18 seconds.
After a frame is drawn, your comp waits for the polling.
0.00 seconds: Polling happens, screen refreshes, comp starts drawing.
0.17 seconds: screen polls again, takes last drawn frame
0.18 seconds: frame is drawn, waits for next polling
0.34 seconds: polling happens, back at 0.00 seconds effectively.
Everything over the screens refresh rate is handled fine, however. It's just that falling slightly below can halve your frame rate immediately.
This effect is alleviated somewhat by triple buffering though.
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this article explains it well, but in summary vsync will cap your frame rate at your monitors refresh rate, and also has the potential to reduce your overall FPS (irrespective of the capping).
http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_9.html
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Russian Federation164 Posts
guys, I've just read an article about V-sync lag (in Russian..)
the thing is that even though theoretically if your FPS is below 60, V-sync won't make a difference, but..
What happens in standard double buffering mode: FPS is either 60, or 30, or 15 12 10 .. etc, i.e. if your PC could run SC2 at 50 FPS, V-sync lowers it to 30 -.-
It seems that's pretty much what happened to OP.
Therefore you should either turn V-sync off, or turn triple buffering on.
edit: lol, I'm typing too slow ^
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On November 09 2011 19:12 eYeball wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2011 19:03 ELA wrote:On November 09 2011 14:50 Tycoon004 wrote:
It's because Vsync locks your max fps at 60 in order to synchronize when frames begin to generate. It is great for stopping screen tearing but yes, it does limit your fps. Im pretty sure it only locks your graphic cards output, to what your screen is capable of displaying? The way I understand it is, that if you disable vsync, you will "free" your graphics card/processor from this limitation and it will work as hard as possible at all times, to maximize the amount of frames that it can possibly produce, even though your screen can't handle it Im no expert though Interesting, so if you have around 130 fps you should probably go with vertical sync? If your monitor is lets say 75hz to just not let the graphic card work too hard?
Well, weirdly this can actually solve some problems with 'hickup-fps' that some people are getting.. If you have no issues, there's no real reason to not have it on (should be on as default), as it will only strain your box
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On November 09 2011 19:29 ELA wrote:
If you have no issues, there's no real reason to not have it on (should be on as default), as it will only strain your box
Yes there is; it introduces (additional) input lag. If that really doesn't bother you, and you get more FPS than your monitor's refresh rate, then sure there's probably no good reason not to. For a lot of games though, the input lag added can be very detrimental to gameplay (especially if said game is a twitch-shooter, e.g. Quake or CS).
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On November 09 2011 19:12 eYeball wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2011 19:03 ELA wrote:On November 09 2011 14:50 Tycoon004 wrote:
It's because Vsync locks your max fps at 60 in order to synchronize when frames begin to generate. It is great for stopping screen tearing but yes, it does limit your fps. Im pretty sure it only locks your graphic cards output, to what your screen is capable of displaying? The way I understand it is, that if you disable vsync, you will "free" your graphics card/processor from this limitation and it will work as hard as possible at all times, to maximize the amount of frames that it can possibly produce, even though your screen can't handle it Im no expert though Interesting, so if you have around 130 fps you should probably go with vertical sync? If your monitor is lets say 75hz to just not let the graphic card work too hard?
Most of the effects vary game to game/system to system/person to person (some people just really don't notice, or are bothered by tearing too much, for example).
It can (but wont always) introduce input lag.
Triple Buffering has a little extra overhead. (although not significant in most cases anymore)
Tearing sucks. =P
Frame Rate drops possible under Double Buffering.
Many others, etc =P
But really, 99.99% of the time it's a very easy to change option.
Just try it both ways if you want to be sure. =P
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On November 09 2011 19:27 Elefes wrote:
guys, I've just read an article about V-sync lag (in Russian..)
the thing is that even though theoretically if your FPS is below 60, V-sync won't make a difference, but..
What happens in standard double buffering mode: FPS is either 60, or 30, or 15 12 10 .. etc, i.e. if your PC could run SC2 at 50 FPS, V-sync lowers it to 30 -.-
It seems that's pretty much what happened to OP.
Therefore you should either turn V-sync off, or turn triple buffering on.
edit: lol, I'm typing too slow ^
Thank you, I think this is exactly what was happening. Before I wouldn't see framerates higher than 30, but would sink 10 and lower in large battles, now it floats between 45 and 60.
I am also wondering if newer devices may have something to prevent the problems that vsync was meant to fix. If the standard graphics cards on newer computers already have measures to prevent artifacts, then vsync could definitely impact perform ace.
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Guys, I know this thread is old. I was reading through a few of this I have asus 120hz 2ms 24" award winning new egg monitor 8 core amd gt470, my frame rate is around 120 in games, I've seen so many mixed reviews about this, should I turn it on or off? I turned the reduce mouse lag one on and it seems to be doing alot better to help my micro, so I was just wondering I am having trouble deciding not being a computer guy and reading so many mixed opinions
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On December 24 2011 16:33 grimmjowxbcx wrote:
Guys, I know this thread is old. I was reading through a few of this I have asus 120hz 2ms 24" award winning new egg monitor 8 core amd gt470, my frame rate is around 120 in games, I've seen so many mixed reviews about this, should I turn it on or off? I turned the reduce mouse lag one on and it seems to be doing alot better to help my micro, so I was just wondering I am having trouble deciding not being a computer guy and reading so many mixed opinions
vsyc should really only be turned on if your GPU is overheating, if your getting screen tearing. If your not experiencing any of those 2 symptoms no reason for it to be on.
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Tearing sucks? For me it's always been minimal. Not worth losing 20% FPS and having input lag in a competitive game. Even driving in NFS becomes sucky and delayed.
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EPT
