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Re: Why do Pro gamers not use G-Sync?

Posted: 07 Apr 2017, 15:27
by Chief Blur Buster
This be true too. The right tool for the right job.

Strobing does older CRT-optimized games wonders -- especially fast scrolling playfields that stay razor-sharp clear.

Another good point is as framerate increases (240fps), VSYNC OFF decreases in importance.

If the day of 1000Hz GSYNC monitors someday arrives -- then it's wholly possible that even eSports gamers will prefer using VRR too (GSYNC/FreeSync) too. Monitors that can display full frames in less than 1ms top-to-bottom, regardless of current framerate! Instead of settling for low-latency tearslices (segments of refresh cycles), we get low-latency FULL refresh cycles.

Re: Why do Pro gamers not use G-Sync?

Posted: 07 Apr 2017, 15:32
by Sparky
Though g-sync might be better for progamers in some situations. The center of the monitor is consistently X ms higher latency than start of the refresh cycle, while vsync off for any point on the monitor has an extra variance that corresponds to 1/framerate. If you're playing a fighting or rhythm game competitively, that consistently might be more important than the difference in average latency.

Re: Why do Pro gamers not use G-Sync?

Posted: 08 Apr 2017, 07:20
by lexlazootin
Everyone here is giving top level players way too much credit. The true reason they don't use it is because they don't understand it. If they wanted less latency they would be using higher refresh monitors and not be using zowie mice that have 20ms click latency.

Pro players switch between resolutions to find the 'best one'...

Re: Why do Pro gamers not use G-Sync?

Posted: 08 Apr 2017, 14:02
by Chief Blur Buster
lexlazootin wrote:Everyone here is giving top level players way too much credit. The true reason they don't use it is because they don't understand it. If they wanted less latency they would be using higher refresh monitors and not be using zowie mice that have 20ms click latency.
Many are using Benq/Zowie monitors (which ARE among the lowest lag displays) and other types of gaming mice anyway...

Assuming the monitor is all equal (realtime scanout, "Instant Mode", or whatever fastest lagless output mode) -- which is now most gaming monitors on the market -- VSYNC OFF at framerates far higher than refresh rate (more than twice) will have less average latency than GSYNC.

That said, 240Hz GSYNC will require far higher than >480fps VSYNC OFF for the VSYNC OFF to really take precedence.

Also, the fluctuating lag is also a problem: The sudden VSYNC ON lag that occurs when hitting the max GSYNC frame rate. Which can be solved by an IN-game framerate cap. Then again, VSYNC OFF at 1000fps is still preferable in the paid championships...

It's important to understand the scanout relationship with VSYNC OFF to understand why VSYNC OFF can have less input lag when framerates start to go far higher than refresh rate... For Quake and CS:GO competition players, the goal is to run VSYNC OFF at framerates far higher than twice the refresh rate -- in order to get less lag than anything "non-VSYNC-OFF"

Image

Now imagine this at 1000fps. You get 8 tearslices per refresh cycle, so everything on the screen is "1ms-fresh" as it scanouts -- even if the bottom edge of screen is scanned 1/120sec (8.3ms) after the top edge (aka -- VSYNC OFF is a workaround for scanout latency)

Scanout latency is a constant of the display universe. It is nearly as intractable as the speed of light. GSYNC definitely zeros-out the begin-of-scanout latency -- less lag before begin of scanout. However, GSYNC does not eliminate top-to-bottom scanout latency. VSYNC OFF does not either, but works around it by delivering fresher frame slices in realtime while the screen is scanning out. Scanout always exists, and VSYNC OFF is an old workaround for scanout latency.

GSYNC doesn't exist with a 500fps or 1000fps cap yet, and there is less lag in CS:GO at >500fps VSYNC OFF....

Also, VSYNC OFF while has more microstutters, can have more frametime visibility consistency with mouse aiming. Because the fresher slices are more freshly in-tune (less lag) with what the mouse is aiming at, despite microstutter.

TL;DR: This thread exists only because some games can run at framerates far higher than refresh rate. (as a way of reducing input lag)

If refresh rates went up (scanout latency went down) such as 1000fps@1000Hz GSYNC, then there is no reason to use VSYNC OFF.

That said, some eSports players may actually be interested in trying out re-enabling GSYNC on the 240Hz monitors for games unable to exceed ~220fps or so -- and possibly using an in-game framerate cap (not external cap utility) to prevent the sudden lag change of hitting GSYNC limit (seen in GSYNC Preview #2). Though many eSports venues do not allow editing config files in this way, so that is a consideration...

Re: Why do Pro gamers not use G-Sync?

Posted: 25 Apr 2017, 16:40
by MT_
On games like CS Source/GO I can see why pro players prefer 500+ fps over gsync. At such high frames the tearing is barely noticable in the fiest place.

But what about newer games people play competitively? They are higher demanding on GPU and CPU, frames fluctuate between 250 and lets say 70 fps in heavy combat scenarios.

Dont you get huge latency fluctuations? I would say in such scenarios its better to use Gsync with a mild fps cap.

Correct me if im wrong :)

Re: Why do Pro gamers not use G-Sync?

Posted: 25 Apr 2017, 17:30
by RealNC
You're correct. But people use whatever makes them happy. Ignorance is bliss.

Re: Why do Pro gamers not use G-Sync?

Posted: 25 Apr 2017, 19:28
by Chief Blur Buster
MT_ wrote:But what about newer games people play competitively? They are higher demanding on GPU and CPU, frames fluctuate between 250 and lets say 70 fps in heavy combat scenarios.
As long as your max refresh rate is higher than your max framerate, there (in theory) is little advantage to using VSYNC OFF. So if you're using a 240Hz monitor, having a 70fps-235fps framerate range could work pretty well with a 240Hz GSYNC monitor. You won't be running framerates that can exceed twice the refresh rate, necessary to get really appreciable lag savings over GSYNC.
MT_ wrote:Dont you get huge latency fluctuations? I would say in such scenarios its better to use Gsync with a mild fps cap.
In theory, yes.
Ideally, GSYNC/FreeSync should have no lag penalty all the way to 239.99999fps on a 240Hz monitor -- but for some technical reason, we ideally still have to have a few frames per seconds below (e.g. 230 or 235fps) to prevent a lag-surge effect caused by the GSYNC limit being hit.

Also, 4ms lag may not be much, and won't matter to most of us. Even to many of those who compete. But even in a 5000pixels/sec flick aim on a 2560x1440 monitor (A slower 2 screen widths per second pan, sufficiently slow to aim your flick stop) -- that's potentially being off by 20 pixels on attempting to quickly snipe a tiny target such as a far-away enemy behind you (5000pix * 0.004s = 20pix). Some competition gamers just flick superfast and then aim after, but some people actually flick-and-aim on the fly (slightly slower flick, but perfect frag on first try, some eSports gamers are THAT amazingly good -- flick 5000pix/sec -- possibly faster -- and then instafrag with no undershoot/overshoot.) so they better damn well expect lag precision (low lag jitter). In THAT specific niche eSports case, in 1000fps VSYNC OFF versus 144fps GSYNC -- a 4ms difference in lag can actually throw pre-trained aiming off. eSports-league gamers know when they're consistently overshooting a target by an average of ~20 pixels 9 out of 10 times (caused by a few milliseconds lag change), they get annoyed, and will go straight back to VSYNC OFF. That's totally fair -- even 240Hz GSYNC can't beat 1000fps VSYNC OFF. If you have practiced your aiming at a specific predictable latency, and then you change a setting (e.g. turn on GSYNC and then get slapped by the GSYNC-cap-hitting lag-change effect). I've also written about the simultaneous-draw situation, where even a single millisecond can sometimes matter to the paid/sponsored eSports player -- but this is a different situation where input lag throws off pre-trained aiming. People often seem to train for a specific latency, and when the latency environment changes, aiming can still be suddenly thrown off even if the lag changes by 5 milliseconds. Human reaction times do vary quite a bit, but some well trained gamers have tight variances of reaction times that only jitter (vary) by ~10ms. In this case, even just a few milliseconds of lag change in a predictable-lag game engine (e.g. CS:GO) can easily throw off aiming. Sometimes milliseconds matters "more than expected", and sometimes not -- your mileage will vary.

But yes, if you play a modern 70fps game that has a highly variable 50-80ms button-to-pixels lag, then uncapped VSYNC OFF isn't going to help you -- in this case, the fluidity improvements provided by GSYNC may actually outweigh the precision-aiming input lag improvements you can get with ultrahigh-framerate (nearly quad digit or quad digit) VSYNC OFF...

Personally, I have no love for VSYNC OFF stutter-wise but it reigns supreme in input lag. Until we have 1000Hz gaming monitors, VSYNC OFF probably is still going to continue to reign supreme in PC-gaming eSports.

Re: Why do Pro gamers not use G-Sync?

Posted: 26 Apr 2017, 09:11
by MT_
Yes I agree with you on that, for flick games anyway.

I play mainly MechWarrior Online where tracking plays a much more prominent role, in fact there is very little flicking. The hard thing about this game is to manage your weapons because they are all mounted in slower moving mechs, arms, torsos which basically all have inertia, smoothing, acceleration/deacceleration behavior.

Which makes aiming pretty hard, but millisecond differences you could observe with CS Pro players are a bit less relevant. Complete stabilization, smoothness and prediction seems to play the bigger role here.

Weapons, firing and tracking often require pretty difficult compensation especially while moving over terrain, so i felt as if smoothest frametime, fps and still have ultra low latency due to gsync seems the most favorable.

I can only imagine how godly a 120+ hz screen with Gsync would be :D


But I do suppose that input latency would be about the same over the whole range, i just think it would be awkward to see running a match, having initially 200fps and once fighting starts drop to 70~ would probably distract one either way? Dunno, it might not be as bad. 80+hz to 200is much less noticable vs 60 to 80z.

Re: Why do Pro gamers not use G-Sync?

Posted: 26 Apr 2017, 12:40
by RealNC
I think that accurate flicks are impossible to pull off in games where you get 70FPS when looking one direction and 200FPS when looking another direction.

Re: Why do Pro gamers not use G-Sync?

Posted: 26 Apr 2017, 13:16
by Chief Blur Buster
RealNC wrote:I think that accurate flicks are impossible to pull off in games where you get 70FPS when looking one direction and 200FPS when looking another direction.
Agreed.

Ultra-fast aimed flicks only works really well in consistently-high-framerate games like Quake and CS:GO on modern GPU's (Titans and GTX1080s). Frametime variances will throw off aiming.

Motion blur variances also throws off aiming too (as motion blur increases/decreases as framerates change). Even the game engines that attempts to level playing field (e.g. game engine artificailly increasing input lag at 240fps to make it more similar in lag to 70fps), that won't be enough as stutter-change-effect / blur-change-effect will also throw off aiming. Even if a game engine still manages to handicap input lag perfectly to be constant at all framerates (to try and be fair to all competition gamers of different equipment) -- the motion blur can add visual lag via the increased blur trail (see TestUFO Black Frames) even if the leading edge is not lagged, the trailing edge will look lagged, and you might be aiming at the centrepoint of the blur rather than the trailing of the blur. The blur-varying effect of GSYNC framerate modulations may be part the aiming-predictability equation. Also, whether or not you're doing eye-tracking during the aim (eye tracking creates motion blur across static frames), or simply fixing your gaze at the crosshairs during the flick aim. So eyetracking technique is part of this equation.

There are so many apparent factors can throw off aiming...