Blur Busters Forums

Hi everyone,

don't know if there's any players for these old titles around here, but I thought I'd mention the huge difference that UseTripleBuffering has between these two games. With UT99 for the longest time I've used the UTGLR OpenGL renderer and lately have been noticing some inexplicably high input lag and random hitches, running @200 FPS on servers with the v469 community patch. I decided to finally give the UTD3D9R renderer a try and it seems to scale better across all threads, but what's interesting that the triple buffering option turned on (which is not exposed with the OGL renderer) seems to result in every so slightly lower input lag vs. triple buffering turned off, with VSync off. The difference is slight enough that I can't fully rule out them just being identical, but triple buffering definitely does not add any input lag here, at worst.

Now in UT2004, where I'm using the default D3D8 renderer going thru D3D8to9, also with a 200 FPS cap, it seems to be the other way around, with triple buffering adding a bit of input lag. Can anybody confirm/deny this or has an idea why the implementations would differ? People around here probably know this old Anandtech article, do these games implement proper triple buffering or a render ahead queue that forces all frames to be displayed?

utplayer wrote: ↑

23 Jan 2023, 19:16

do these games implement proper triple buffering or a render ahead queue that forces all frames to be displayed?

I don't know, but you can force it anyway through the driver. On Nvidia it's called "fast sync" and on AMD it's "enhanced sync." Both of these implement what the Anandtech article describes. The best way to use this is to configure the game to vsync OFF and triple buffer OFF, and then force fast sync or enhanced sync in the GPU driver control panel. If it works with the game, that is. D3D works. Not sure about OpenGL.

Fast sync isn't a good tradeoff at 180 FPS in my opinion, as while it does fix tearing, it adds judder to the motion and has an added input lag that is too high for me in UT04. The game can potentially run at higher FPS but last time I checked 250 FPS would drop frames and stutter online, and at a certain point above that the engine breaks in some ways.

Right Tool for Right Job -- some people use a framerate cap combined with Fast Sync, as a "low-lag VSYNC ON" option. This prevents the jittering and the tearing.

That being said, there are many ways to create a low-latency jitterfree tearingfree copycat of VSYNC ON, both driver-based and third-party:

- NVIDIA NULL
- Low Lag VSYNC HOWTO
- Capped Fast Sync and Enhanced Sync
- Special K Latent Sync (during <50% GPU utilization)
- RTSS Scanline Sync (during <50% GPU utilization)

utplayer wrote: ↑

25 Jan 2023, 14:18

Fast sync isn't a good tradeoff at 180 FPS in my opinion, as while it does fix tearing, it adds judder to the motion and has an added input lag that is too high for me in UT04. The game can potentially run at higher FPS but last time I checked 250 FPS would drop frames and stutter online, and at a certain point above that the engine breaks in some ways.

That's not an issue specific to fast sync, but to triple buffering in general. And that's what you were asking for

i just tested and vsync off triple buffering on makes 0 difference to me on 3d9. did you apply the opengl hotfix?

RealNC wrote: ↑

25 Jan 2023, 21:13

That's not an issue specific to fast sync, but to triple buffering in general. And that's what you were asking for

I just tested triple buffering on with fast sync on/off in UT04, and with fast sync on the judder is a lot more noticeable. It's well visualized in the RTSS FPS graph:
Triple buffering in UT04 with no vsync or fast sync doesn't seem to affect anything other than giving slightly higher input lag. Also I'm using an Eizo FS2333 monitor and don't have access to an adaptive sync display.

milojr21 wrote: ↑

26 Jan 2023, 09:24

i just tested and vsync off triple buffering on makes 0 difference to me on 3d9. did you apply the opengl hotfix?

I've read about the UT99 469c hotfix after making this thread, but I'm actually still on 436 and just play on 469 servers since the community patches are network compatible with the old versions. Thing is, the server browser just says 469 for those servers and not 469c or 469c with hotfix or whatever, so I have no idea what servers are patched to the newest 469. All I know is that especially the Deck16 all wep server had really bad stuttering issues with UTGLR that are 99% gone with UTD3D9R, but for some reason the latter seems to give more tearing on flickering shadow effects.

utplayer wrote: ↑

26 Jan 2023, 12:53

RealNC wrote: ↑

25 Jan 2023, 21:13

That's not an issue specific to fast sync, but to triple buffering in general. And that's what you were asking for

I just tested triple buffering on with fast sync on/off in UT04, and with fast sync on the judder is a lot more noticeable. It's well visualized in the RTSS FPS graph:

ut04 triplebuffering no vsync.png
ut04 triplebuffering fast sync.png

Triple buffering in UT04 with no vsync or fast sync doesn't seem to affect anything other than giving slightly higher input lag. Also I'm using an Eizo FS2333 monitor and don't have access to an adaptive sync display.

milojr21 wrote: ↑

26 Jan 2023, 09:24

i just tested and vsync off triple buffering on makes 0 difference to me on 3d9. did you apply the opengl hotfix?

I've read about the UT99 469c hotfix after making this thread, but I'm actually still on 436 and just play on 469 servers since the community patches are network compatible with the old versions. Thing is, the server browser just says 469 for those servers and not 469c or 469c with hotfix or whatever, so I have no idea what servers are patched to the newest 469. All I know is that especially the Deck16 all wep server had really bad stuttering issues with UTGLR that are 99% gone with UTD3D9R, but for some reason the latter seems to give more tearing on flickering shadow effects.

i used to always use opengl on windows 7, but on windows 10/11 opengl causes massive input lag. it doesn't matter what version of UT you are using...basically opengl on windows 10 is like playing borderless fullscreen. the fix is client side you have to be using 469c with the patched WinDrv. don't worry about what version the server is running. or just play around with 3d9 settings..heres some ini's you can just copy their 3d9 settings https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 1358326174

utplayer wrote: ↑

26 Jan 2023, 12:53

I just tested triple buffering on with fast sync on/off in UT04

You're doing triple buffering twice then. Disable TB in UT04 and only use fast sync. That gets you driver-level TB.

With that being said, is UT04's TB the kind of TB we're talking about here?

UseTripleBuffering=False with fast sync off gives me identical results to the fast sync on screenshot in my earlier post. Even tried maximum pre-rendered frames set to 1 or default (does this even do anything in current Nvidia drivers?), no difference.

Anyway I was already aware of stuttering issues with fast sync so it's not surprising to me it's not smooth at 180 FPS, but even if it was, the input lag is just a bit too high to take that tradeoff in this game. 200 FPS is about the mark where tearing starts to become less of an issue even on 60 Hz panels in my experience.