How does limiting 2 fps below refresh rate help mouse lag?

[TheLeetFly]

okay, thank you for your answer. I really appreciate your activity in this forum and your answer's quality!
I will keep my 125fps lock in BF3.

I have a few remaining questions:

1.) In CS:GO i locked my frames on 241 fps, which i can outreach everytime.
Is there a better value or should I keep it?

2.) In Toasty's Strobelight.exe are the different Brightness-options of Lightboost from 10% up to 100%. What about the 0% option i can choose in the monitor itself? I noticed a bigger illumination-step from 0% to 10% than from 10% to 20%. In other words: The steps between each option [60 to 70 or 10 to 20] are very tiny, but the change from 10% to 0% Brightness is enormous.

EDIT: Its rather a little change of colors and a short "strobe" while goign down to 0%.

Is 0% Lightboost considered as "real lightboost"? Is there even less motion-blur than with 10%?
Thanks for an answer.

[Chief Blur Buster]

okay, thank you for your answer. I really appreciate your activity in this forum and your answer's quality!
I will keep my 125fps lock in BF3.

I have a few remaining questions:

1.) In CS:GO i locked my frames on 241 fps, which i can outreach everytime.
Is there a better value or should I keep it?

Keep it, That is a good number for. CS:GO. 242 or 243 may produce less visible tearing, but if you do not see it anymore, don't bother. If you have a super powerful GPU such as a Titan SLI, you can try 362 or 363, but that will only give you about 1-2ms less input lag, however, the bigger benefit is further decreased visibility of tearing. The key is consistent capping-out, as whole chain input lag (button to photons) in CS:GO varies slightly during dramatic swings in framerates, and lag variability can throw off aiming.

2.) In Toasty's Strobelight.exe are the different Brightness-options of Lightboost from 10% up to 100%. What about the 0% option i can choose in the monitor itself? I noticed a bigger illumination-step from 0% to 10% than from 10% to 20%. In other words: The steps between each option [60 to 70 or 10 to 20] are very tiny, but the change from 10% to 0% Brightness is enormous.

EDIT: Its rather a little change of colors and a short "strobe" while goign down to 0%.

Is 0% Lightboost considered as "real lightboost"? Is there even less motion-blur than with 10%?
Thanks for an answer.

0% has more blur.

View http://www.testufo.com while switching between lightboost 0% and 10%, while looking at the three eyes in the Alien in the UFO. Also try http://www.testufo.com/photo at 1920 pixels per second. The windows at the castle at top gets blurry at 0%.

[Chief Blur Buster]

I received a PM -- another game that noticeably benefits from a lower framecap (e.g. 118 instead of 120) is an older game, Halo / Halo: Combat Evolved for PC. The input lag noticeably lowers when capping slightly less than the refresh rate.

[Chickenfeed]

that dont get the input lag penalty when crossing the cap boundary.

There is no one-size-fits-all rule for all games. It is very game/configuration dependent.

Do you have anything more you can add regarding this? Im trying to better understand the how and why of this in my pursuit of optimization. As of now im running everything at 120Hz, no vsync, capped slightly above refresh. My goal is minimal input latency without uncapping as to have consistent latency through a fixed framerate. I do like vsync IQ with light boost but even at 120Hz i find the added latency annoying.

Thanks Mark

[Chief Blur Buster]

Do you have anything more you can add regarding this? Im trying to better understand the how and why of this in my pursuit of optimization.

There are many situations where it can happen, and many reasons depending on how the game is coded.

But here's a smple explanation for games that suddenly gain input lag when capping slightly above.

Let's take certain kinds of multiple-buffering algorithms as an example (a queue of prerendered frames) during VSYNC ON or triple buffering operations. During frame caps lower than refresh rate, you don't get a backlog of frames. At framerates ever slightly lower than refresh rate, the queues of frames is the most shallow because the display is refreshing faster than frames are being generated. At framerates ever slightly higher than refresh rate, the queue of frames can slowly increase to its own maximum depth because frames are now being generated faster than the display is refreshing them. This, obviously, is for VSYNC ON with a queue of prerendered frames.

Another situation -- frame caps below refresh rate keeps it at a behavior more resembling VSYNC OFF, rather than capping out (where the GPU is waiting for VSYNC) and adding a bit of input lag.

And those are likely not the only reasons. Due to the way some game engines are coded, some games get that sudden slight increase in input lag (e.g. say, a sudden addition of 1 extra frame of input lag) when crossing certain framerate thresholds (e.g. say, when frame rate matches or exceed display refresh rate).

Now, games that purely use VSYNC OFF and tearing occuring all over the screen (equal amount of tearing above and below crosshairs), should theoretically not have a sudden input lag increase when going above. So 125fps @ 120Hz should have no sudden input lag penalty in many games.

[Chickenfeed]

Got it. Thanks again

[l88bastard]

Mark THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR WORK with blurbusters! You have made significant impacts at making my hobby more enjoyable and fun!

So anyway, I have the EIzo FG2421 and like to play Halo CE, which is ancient but runs awesome on even the most mediocre of hardware. Well I was running a Titan in my main gaming rig and found that disabling Vsync and allowing the game to spool up to over 1,000 fps was the most optimal solution with nearly zero input lag. I suppose the game was running so fast that the monitor didnt even have time to know what hit it. Of course Vsync was disable, because enabling Vsync or capping frame rates to 120 caused noticeable input lag.

Well, I moved the titan into my backup rig and installed a watercooled R9 290x into my main rig and was dissapointed to find out that the game no longer spooled past 120 fps. Even with Vsync disabled, the game caps itself at 120. Apparently AMD has some limitation with HALO CE that doesnt allow it to run rampant framerates. Unfortunately, that 120 fps cap was causing noticeable lag versus my Titan solution.....and since Halo CE is primarily the only game I really play these days, I was considering dumping the R9. Then I found this thread and tried the 118 frame rate cap in afterburner and WALLA, HALO CE is just as snappy now as it ever was!

[mdzapeer]

Skyrim is extremely weird in that regard. In 3rd person view, there's almost zero input lag. Mouse feels very snappy. Switch to 1st person, the mouse feels very "floaty". Try to explain *that* one.

I would recommend going into SkyrimPrefs.ini and editing the following value to this: bMouseAcceleration=0 as well as Skyrim.ini and setting iPresentInterval=0 if you havn't already.

Do not set iPresentInterval=0 it can break lots of stuff in game, including physics,quests etc. I was even once killed by flying mug when testing with it off, i had only just lightly grazed and it flew off and then killed me, funny stuff.

Staying on-topic

I used to use the nvida inspector to frame limit to 58 frames with vysnc for most games (again game by game basis) which had input lag, including skyrim. This reduced input lag in most games down to 1 frame or less.

But the newer nvidia drivers broke the vsync + frame rate limit fucntion and limiting frame limit on the driver level now always disables vsync, lots of people complained about it on the fourms too

But found a workaround solution using the riva server stats appication and limiting frame rate through there to refresh =frame rate has the same effect or reducing the input lag.

I did do some tests with maximum pre-rendered frames as well but never together with RSS, something which i will try out soon.

Also noticed that using adaptive sync( this behavior was occurs on AMD cards as well) also tends to reduce input lag in games without screen tearing (if the frame rate stays at refresh), rather than using vsync on from the game or the driver level, i might be imagining things but the newer nvida drivers force vsync on option also tends have less input lag than before rather than using the in-game vsync (game dependent).

I would say usually capping the game engine, through console or ini tweaks to 1 or 2 frames less usually results no input lag and tear free gameplay with vsync on.

[Dash]

This is very interesting and completely relates to the games I play (fast twitch, Quake series). I'm using an FW900 right now. I often feel an odd input lag that I can't explain but It is very palpable but I can't quite figure it out (yes I have vsync off in game and in nvidia control panel). I also have standard drivers for my monitor as opposed to any FW900 specific ones but people have told me that shouldn't be an issue at all.

So for Quakelive, if I'm playing at 120hz should I just leave it capped at the standard 125 fps or will going to 118 fps help? Going by Marks explanation with regards to vsync off...keeping it at 125fps shouldn't have an input lag pentalty but I want to double check.

Sometimes I play at 140hz refresh. I had it capped at 145fps but it wasn't quite as smooth (more blur), capping it at 138 fps does make it smoother, and there should be no input delay penalty by the sounds of?

I'm trying to trouble shoot a range of things (in game and in windows) as to why I'm feeling odd input lag on a freaking gaming crt! It's driving me nuts, I don't think its my zowie mouse as I've tried it both at 500hz and 1000hz polling rates and they both register in mouse rate checker.

Great thread btw and thanks for any help!

[Chief Blur Buster]

It is very game dependant and what sync setting you use, amongst other factors.

- During VSYNC ON and during GSYNC, the use of fps_max capping below refresh rate, definitely decreases input lag.
- During VSYNC OFF, the use of fps_max doesn't make a big difference, fps_max 143 and fps_max 300 appeared to have about the same input lag from the GSYNC versus VSYNC OFF tests at http://www.blurbusters.com/gsync/preview2

Getitng a feeling of input lag on CRT is strange, try investigating the graphics card and drivers -- are you playing only in full screen mode and VSYNC OFF? What graphics cards are you using? Which version of Windows are you using?