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Gsync and Vsync

Jonnygrunge

Jonnygrunge

Jonnygrunge

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Hi All,

For gaming I normally just have GSync on for my Sammy Odyssey G7 monitor. I then if required lock the framerate to either 120 or 240fps depending on the game.

Quick question as I have seen many posts online regarding this, do you have VSync enabled also, if so from NVCP or the game itself. I was under the impression you don't need them both, but this appears to be contradicted and game dependent with regard to input lag.

Any advice or comments would be appreciated.

Spec in sig.
 
If your frame-rate is within the Gsync window, there is no extra lag turning Vsync on. The only extra lag appears when you hit the GSync upper limit. With Vsync off, the game will run faster giving you lower latency at the expense of tearing.

Unless you need the reduced latency for higher than 240, you may as well leave Vsync on, you don't need to add other frame-rate caps then.
Even at 240fps, latency is pretty damn small, and I doubt anyone can tell the difference between 240 and 300. The difference is only 0.8 milliseconds.

I always leave Vsync on with Freesync.
 
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Jonnygrunge said:
Hi All,

For gaming I normally just have GSync on for my Sammy Odyssey G7 monitor. I then if required lock the framerate to either 120 or 240fps depending on the game.

Quick question as I have seen many posts online regarding this, do you have VSync enabled also, if so from NVCP or the game itself. I was under the impression you don't need them both, but this appears to be contradicted and game dependent with regard to input lag.

Any advice or comments would be appreciated.

Spec in sig.
Click to expand...
best practise is to cap framerate below max refresh
enable gsync and vsync in the nvcp
disable vsync in the game menu
 
Alt0153 said:
best practise is to cap framerate below max refresh
enable gsync and vsync in the nvcp
disable vsync in the game menu
Click to expand...
Great advice mate!

Found this also, bit of light reading...

blurbusters.com

G-SYNC 101

Many G-SYNC input lag tests & graphs -- on a 240Hz eSports monitor -- via 2 months of testing via high speed video!
blurbusters.com blurbusters.com
 
Best thing to do is to enable vsync in nvcp and limit framerate just under your display refresh rate.
From experience disabling vsync in nvcp can introduce slight tearing even when under display refresh rate and locking the framerate reduces input lag as vsync never kicks in.
 
There seems to be a lot of mis-information about latency and G-sync/Freesync and Vsync.
You don't need to limit the frame-rate to just under max refresh if you have Vsync on.

Where the latency comes from is say if your monitor max is 240hz, but the game could run at 300. Enabling Vsync limits it to 240, therefore increasing latency compared to if it was running at 300.

There is no latency difference between it hitting Vsync limit and you limiting it to just under Vsync. In both cases the game is running virtually identical rates internally.
Technically letting it run at 240 at Vsync limit will have a miniscule less latency than limiting it to 238.
 
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Nutty667 said:
There seems to be a lot of mis-information about latency and G-sync/Freesync and Vsync.
You don't need to limit the frame-rate to just under max refresh if you have Vsync on.

Where the latency comes from is say if your monitor max is 240hz, but the game could run at 300. Enabling Vsync limits it to 240, therefore increasing latency compared to if it was running at 300.

There is no latency difference between it hitting Vsync limit and you limiting it to just under Vsync. In both cases the game is running virtually identical rates internally.
Technically letting it run at 240 at Vsync limit will have a miniscule less latency than limiting it to 238.
Click to expand...

There was a mega thread when Gsync came out on this ran to 100's of pages.
Its not misinformation in this thread the ones who said this are right. Not sure if it was due to latency but it smoothed out the experience.
Limiting the frame rate to 1 below the refresh rate was tested as being worth it. Note it was always 1 below never greater.
The method was using Riva Tuner as at the time not a lot of apps did this now you can do it in drivers and all sorts. We are talking
like 5-6 years ago now.

I cant find the thread now it may have been deleted when the forum got upgraded or before as it was a massive thread.
 
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varkanoid said:
There was a mega thread when Gsync came out on this ran to 100's of pages.
Its not misinformation in this thread the ones who said this are right. Not sure if it was due to latency but it smoothed out the experience.
Limiting the frame rate to 1 below the refresh rate was tested as being worth it. Note it was always 1 below never greater.
The method was using Riva Tuner as at the time not a lot of apps did this now you can do it in drivers and all sorts. We are talking
like 5-6 years ago now.

I cant find the thread now it may have been deleted when the forum got upgraded or before as it was a massive thread.
Click to expand...
Yeah actually you're right. Did some testing last night and yes with vsync off you get slightly better frame-rate and therefore latency due to frame-variances when you get frames that complete faster.
Basically Vsync means frames will never complete in less than (1000 / max frame rate) milliseconds. Sometimes they do, and with vsync off, the next frame is started sooner.

However, this does come at the expense of tearing, and at 240fps, I just don't think it's worth it. The amount of latency saved is fractions of a millisecond. Given even F1 drivers reaction times are in the order of 200 milliseconds, a fraction of a millisecond of saved latency is just pointless given it looks worse.
 
Just to throw another opinion in there, I always have VYSNC off and always use the NVIDIA CP to cap the frame rate to 2 below the refresh rate. I don't see any point in going higher than the refresh rate, and generally prefer the frame rate to be stable rather than peaking all over the place.
 
Yes I have vsybc off in everything and never see tearing. Gsync Ultimate on though and monitor is at 144Hz with most games frame capped to 142fps if necessary otherwise they run between 100 and 144 anyway as far as modernbganes go.
 
Nutty667 said:
Yeah actually you're right. Did some testing last night and yes with vsync off you get slightly better frame-rate and therefore latency due to frame-variances when you get frames that complete faster.
Basically Vsync means frames will never complete in less than (1000 / max frame rate) milliseconds. Sometimes they do, and with vsync off, the next frame is started sooner.

However, this does come at the expense of tearing, and at 240fps, I just don't think it's worth it. The amount of latency saved is fractions of a millisecond. Given even F1 drivers reaction times are in the order of 200 milliseconds, a fraction of a millisecond of saved latency is just pointless given it looks worse.
Click to expand...

Dont forget we didnt have 240hz monitors when this was discussed all those years ago. The fastest was 144hz I think. Maybe 165hz with overclocking.
 
Also remember that in some apps, enabling Vsync in NVCPL can introduce some weird issues. This is another reason why I always have it off. In Lightroom with the latest GPU acceleration features, Vsync on in NVCPL results in stuttering in Lightroom.

As mentioned though above and in other threads, have never seen a need to enable Vsync at all when Gsync is active. Simply disable vsync, use a frame cap in something like RTSS (Nvidia's internal cap has a higher latency than the 1ms only that RTSS introduces) and that is all. With RTSS you are setting a cap on a per-game basis too so no other app is affected.

All these guides were written years ago when the current gen of Gsync displays didn't exist and the exact same recommendations don't apply any more.

So to recap, my preference:

1: Vsync off.
2: Gsync on and set to full screen only in NVCPL.
3: Framecap in games set in RTSS on a per game basis if desired. I only set a cap on games that run above 144fps by default like System Shock, nothing else really needs it as no other game really goes above 140fps or drops below 60fps, so just let Gsync do its thing without any further intervention.

I see no tearing in anything ever as a result of this.
 
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mrk said:
Yes I have vsybc off in everything and never see tearing. Gsync Ultimate on though and monitor is at 144Hz with most games frame capped to 142fps if necessary otherwise they run between 100 and 144 anyway as far as modernbganes go.
Click to expand...
If I don’t enable vsync in nvcp I tend to have slight tearing at the bottom of the screen at times.
My current oled TV does this and my previous monitor that had gsync module did this too.
 
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Nutty667 said:
Yeah actually you're right. Did some testing last night and yes with vsync off you get slightly better frame-rate and therefore latency due to frame-variances when you get frames that complete faster.
Basically Vsync means frames will never complete in less than (1000 / max frame rate) milliseconds. Sometimes they do, and with vsync off, the next frame is started sooner.

However, this does come at the expense of tearing, and at 240fps, I just don't think it's worth it. The amount of latency saved is fractions of a millisecond. Given even F1 drivers reaction times are in the order of 200 milliseconds, a fraction of a millisecond of saved latency is just pointless given it looks worse.
Click to expand...
Gsync switches to vsync when framerate is reaching displays refresh rate.
Limiting framerate just under the refresh rate of the display prevents that so you never get latency penalty introduced by vsync.
 
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