Adaptive Vsync sounds like a great idea, want on 7970

[BrightCandle]

I saw today the GTX 680 has adaptive vsync which turns off the sync when the frame rate is running lower than the monitor refresh. That sounds like an excellent idea, where the double length wait to render the frame would have a largely bad impact on the quality of the game experience, especially when compared to a tear. I for one love this idea as it should reduce/eliminate microstutter and provide decent IQ whenever its possible.

Do you think its possible to do it without hardware changes or is it something we are only like to see in future generations of cards rather than future drivers?

 

[Athadeus]

I saw today the GTX 680 has adaptive vsync which turns off the sync when the frame rate is running lower than the monitor refresh. That sounds like an excellent idea, where the double length wait to render the frame would have a largely bad impact on the quality of the game experience, especially when compared to a tear. I for one love this idea as it should reduce/eliminate microstutter and provide decent IQ whenever its possible.

Do you think its possible to do it without hardware changes or is it something we are only like to see in future generations of cards rather than future drivers?

That is definitely possible with driver changes.

 

[Anarchist420]

Anyone have a link to a page of review showing how much it reduces input lag?

 

[JAG87]

It doesn't reduce input lag, in fact it doesn't do anything at all except create tearing.

vsync ON for me.

 

[BrightCandle]

Anyone have a link to a page of review showing how much it reduces input lag?

Nothing particular about the reduction of input lag just what it does:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/03/22/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-2gb-review/5

The way to think about this is its frame rate capping with vsync on the cap. Its a nice idea to have this in the drivers rather than the FPS monitoring tool, but the frame rate capping tools we have today are still stuck in vsync on or off mode so they tear or lag depending on which way its set. Having that tear or not set on the fps achieved is really a nice feature.

Logically it does reduce the largest input lags, but it also increases the lag on the fastest frames as well. If on average you are achieving 120 FPS you'll only see 60, and just like with vsync it would only render the first frame. With vsync off you would get all 120 and see the second frame, which would likely only be 8ms old. With vsync its about 16ms old and with adaptive vsync it is also 16 ms old. However if you drop to the point where each frame is just slightly longer than 16ms with vsync on you are seeing something new every 32ms, or worse every 16,32,16,32,16,32 ms or any other stuttering pattern. With adaptive vsync that slight stuttering in performance can disappear and give a smooth 16ms for every frame, but with tears on those frames that go over.

A reduction in IQ for the moments when it drops below 60 for a much smoother experience?! I want it.

 

[Sylvanas]

It probably will find it's way to AMD via a driver update much like other recent driver only features. MLAA comes to mind, Nvidia shortly came out with FXAA which while different is a post process AA similar to MLAA in performance impact and effect.

Driver cycles are slow though, if AMD's driver team add to the 'to-do' list, dont expect it for at least another 4-6 months, driver releases are planned plenty of time in advance.

 

[Keysplayr]

It doesn't reduce input lag, in fact it doesn't do anything at all except create tearing.

vsync ON for me.

Did you mean to say "create tearing" or "prevent tearing" ?

 

[JAG87]

Did you mean to say "create tearing" or "prevent tearing" ?

Nope, create is the word. Already tested.

The moment the driver feels brave enough to turn off vsync (the moment you fall under 60 fps), you get tears. Not even close to an improvement to vsync always on. It's simply a solution to games that don't support triple buffering and would be a pain in the ass to play with vsync on because of the sudden drops to 30. Otherwise it's pretty useless.

 

[railven]

Nope, create is the word. Already tested.

The moment the driver feels brave enough to turn off vsync (the moment you fall under 60 fps), you get tears. Not even close to an improvement to vsync always on. It's simply a solution to games that don't support triple buffering and would be a pain in the ass to play with vsync on because of the sudden drops to 30. Otherwise it's pretty useless.

Hmmm...

Okay, because I'm mostly a gamer and really just game with whatever settings I can get (yes I have big eyes ).

So, I fired up MW3 last night to finish the SP campaign, cranked the settings on high, through on MSAA+AAA via the driver, and had no issues with frames (Not using a frame ticker, but I didn't "feel" any slow down.)

However, I did notice a random hitch here or there that I assumed was the game addressing the HDD (for whatever reason) which reminded me about the v-sync charts.

tldr

With V-sync on (which I always use, with 60hz refresh might brave to 120hz now though) if I'm not using triple buffering (forced or in-game support) the moment I drop out of 60 FPS, it drops to 30FPS correct? And that could create a short hitch? I tried the 59hz option, but got a Tflow overload error twice, keeping it at 60hz (least for MW3) I had no issues after 3hrs of gaming.

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

Better off using a frame limiter like MSI Afterburner. If your games are always within -/+ 10fps of your monitor's refresh rate you'll never see tearing.

Alternatively for games like BF3 you can set the console to limit the fps and with triple buffering enabled you'll get much better performance in every metric than you would with v-sync. It asks too much of a compromise when there are better (albeit slightly more complex) solutions out there.

 

[Anarchist420]

Last night I downloaded the newest drivers with it and used the modded inf and I was wondering what the adaptive half refresh does. I haven't loaded any games with it yet. nvidia inspector needs to be updated so the settings sync with the control panel.

I'm hoping these drivers at least fixed the opengl performance bug without any side effects, but I doubt they did. I was unhappy to see that forcing trilinear mip maps wasn't added back.

Anyway, wouldn't capping the frame rate at 30 fps reduce input lag with vsync if setting the max number of frames to render ahead to 1 works? I noticed there is a setting to leave it up to the application (which I've left it at), so I'm hoping that when setting it to 1 now, it would work for every application including aero desktop glass.

I might buy a GTX 680 anyway when I have the money, since it's DX11.1 and since it has such good thermal characteristics. If I notice nvidia reducing driver support for Fermi-based cards, then I'll definitely buy it.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Nope, create is the word. Already tested.

The moment the driver feels brave enough to turn off vsync (the moment you fall under 60 fps), you get tears. Not even close to an improvement to vsync always on. It's simply a solution to games that don't support triple buffering and would be a pain in the ass to play with vsync on because of the sudden drops to 30. Otherwise it's pretty useless.

I don't own one so I cannot test it. But JAG87 appears to be correct in this scenario. Not a lot of people realize (I didn't always know this) but just because your frames are lower than the monitors refresh rate does not mean tearing is eliminated. Hence the name "vertical synchronization" because it needs to be synchronized with the display. When they are out of sync, you will get tearing.

I have tested this myself. One thing is for certain though, frames per second lower than your refresh rate 'improves' tearing, but it certainly does not eliminate it.

 

[JAG87]

I don't own one so I cannot test it. But JAG87 appears to be correct in this scenario. Not a lot of people realize (I didn't always know this) but just because your frames are lower than the monitors refresh rate does not mean tearing is eliminated. Hence the name "vertical synchronization" because it needs to be synchronized with the display. When they are out of sync, you will get tearing.

I have tested this myself. One thing is for certain though, frames per second lower than your refresh rate 'improves' tearing, but it certainly does not eliminate it.

It's awful. It's sync above 60, tear below 60. If you're okay with tears below 60, you're okay with tears above 60, so why bother with this at all. Turn vsync off and that's it.

Don't really see the point when 99% of games support triple buffering and do not cut your frame rate in half. Stupid setting that might have been useful 10 years ago when we didn't have triple buffering.

 

[Keysplayr]

Nope, create is the word. Already tested.

The moment the driver feels brave enough to turn off vsync (the moment you fall under 60 fps), you get tears. Not even close to an improvement to vsync always on. It's simply a solution to games that don't support triple buffering and would be a pain in the ass to play with vsync on because of the sudden drops to 30. Otherwise it's pretty useless.

Hmm. Would you be Willi.g to disable SLI and retest?

 

[JAG87]

Hmm. Would you be Willi.g to disable SLI and retest?

What for? When vsync is off, you tear. Whether you have 1, 2, 3, 4 or 100 GPUs.

The reason I tried Adaptive was because from the marketing chart NV showed, it's somehow supposed to "reduce stuttering", but all I see is the exact same meal with a side of tearing.

i.e. BF3 dips to 50 fps: 50 synched frames in before, and 50 tearing frames now.

Fail. No thanks.

 

[Keysplayr]

What for? When vsync is off, you tear. Whether you have 1, 2, 3, 4 or 100 GPUs.

The reason I tried Adaptive was because from the marketing chart NV showed, it's somehow supposed to "reduce stuttering", but all I see is the exact same meal with a side of tearing.

i.e. BF3 dips to 50 fps: 50 synched frames in before, and 50 tearing frames now.

Fail. No thanks.

Thanks for trying.

 

[railven]

So I take it adaptive V-sync is just marketing?

I don't think I've personally ever noticed my gaming clip when dropping under 60 FPS, but then again I often force Triple Buffering through D3D:O or use the in-game function if available.

 

[Anthonomy]

You guys are missing the point about adaptive vsync. What it's primarily made to do is significantly increase your minimum FPS. Yes, you will get tearing when framerate dips below your refresh rate, but there will be less of a hit to the smoothness of gameplay as the gpu no longer needs to sync frames.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/52616-nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-2gb-review-4.html

 

[railven]

Someone explain this to me because I don't get it. Why is Batman: AC even dipping under 60FPS? Is this at like 1600p? I get around 80-100FPS @ 1080p.

I don't get why the V-sync graphic is so erratic, I'd figure from what I've been reading it be 60FPS or 30 FPS, up and down in straight lines, this looks more like a game without V-sync on and being GPU bottlenecked.

EDIT: This is what I figured a game with v-sync would look like:

 

[BallaTheFeared]

What games are you getting tearing in? The only game I've had problems with it was WoW.

BFBC2 ran 170 fps and never had a single tear...

I don't get why the V-sync graphic is so erratic, I'd figure from what I've been reading it be 60FPS or 30 FPS, up and down in straight lines, this looks more like a game without V-sync on and being GPU bottlenecked.

On a 60 Hz screen vsync will only run at 60, 30, 15... etc fps. If you lose the 60 fps, say to 56, instead of dropping all the way to 30 fps which is where you'd go with vysnc, nvidia just shuts it off so you stay at 56 fps instead of 30, once you climb over 60 fps it turns vsync back on.

 

[railven]

What games are you getting tearing in? The only game I've had problems with it was WoW.

BFBC2 ran 170 fps and never had a single tear...

Dead space had awful tearing and using ingame v-sync created awful input lag.

Most Source games for me have tearing.

WoW suprisingly hasn't given me much tearing.

Star Wars: TOR had tearingout the wazoo.

Batman: AA had tearing

Batman: AC had tearing.

CoD:MW3 had tearing.

Ummm...I think a lot of games I've played recently have had tearing, why I choose to use V-sync. But I recently got a 120mhz monitor and haven't lifted my 60 v-sync cap, I'll probably start and see where I go from there.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

What kind of response rate does your screen have?

 

[railven]

On a 60 Hz screen vsync will only run at 60, 30, 15... etc fps. If you lose the 60 fps, say to 56, instead of dropping all the way to 30 fps which is where you'd go with vysnc, nvidia just shuts it off so you stay at 56 fps instead of 30, once you climb over 60 fps it turns vsync back on.

To your edit:

I get that, now look at the chart above, V-sync ON for Batman: AC - that chart doesn't look like what you just explained. Unless the game is dipping so often below 60 FPS to create so many ripples.

 

[railven]

What kind of response rate does your screen have?

Had a Samsung 350A 1080p 60hz, upgraded to an Asus 120hz around Novemberish.

EDIT: man these time warp post issues are so annoying.

 

[tviceman]

Someone explain this to me because I don't get it. Why is Batman: AC even dipping under 60FPS? Is this at like 1600p? I get around 80-100FPS @ 1080p.

Physx on high.