Wow, great answer. I'll try that
Thanks!
Oh btw:
Can you tell us your pc components and your monitor model?
The description of adaptive vsync is misleading...
There are a few general things I guess you don't know yet:
- when using normal vsync, it will be smooth and fluid but you'll have 2 frames "cached" for smoothing things out. That's the famous vsync input lag
- when your pc drops below your vsync fps (mostly 60, depends on the hz of your monitor), one frame will be displayed a second time until your pc has the next frame ready.
That's the famous "stutter" that happens when you can't maintain stable fps with vsync
- when you don't use vsync, the frames from your pc will simply be thrown onto the monitor whenever they are ready.
Your monitor displays the frames from top to bottom (at 240 fps cameras you might see this).
If the next frame is pushed to the monitor in the middle of this "scan out" process of the monitor, you will see "tearing". You'll have a cut in the displayed image.
Often the cuts are very small so instead of tearing, you might only notice stuttering.
- with adaptive vsync, vsync will be activated when reaching 60 fps (or whatever the hz of your monitor is) and deactivated when your pc drops below that fps value.
That's to not drop down to 30 fps (one frame being displayed twice). You'll have some tearing and some stutter but not this "pause" like stutter you'd have with normal vsync.
Adaptive vsync doesn't like fps limiters! At close to 60, the limiter will cause the vsync to activate and deactivate all the time and not maintain a stable state.
Also adaptive vsync will have variing input lag. 0 cached frames below 60 fps, 2 cached frames at 60 fps.
Your body won't get used to either, so I don't like this...
Finally, there's "adaptive sync", important to notice that it's sync, not vsync!
Adaptive thing is mostly called gsync for Nvidia and freesync for amd. Adaptive sync is the technological term.
With adaptive sync, the pc will push out frames wherever it has them ready but instead of tearing or stuttering, the monitor will change its hz in real time to fit the pc output.
When it's changing too much, you'll see stuttering. But you won't have tearing!
Since there are no frames cached, you have a very low input lag.
That's why I bit the bullet and bought a 1000€ gsync monitor in 2018.
And I love every day with it...
Additional info: you can also limit the fps with Riva tuner to decimal numbers. Like 59.97 for example.
This in combination with the normal vsync will cause the frame cache to be more or less empty.
You'll have a little hiccup every few seconds but it's not really noticeable.
You will gain a way better input lag with this!
It's not usable with adaptive vsync though as that would cause activating /deactivating vsync all the time.
So if you can maintain stable 60 fps, use Riva tuner to limit at 59.97 fps and use the normal vsync for smooth and fluid image quality and low input lag.
I used this method for years!
