Input lag and fluidity under 60fps

[Nocta]

Hi, I'm a huge fan of the low-lag trick for non-VRR screens but I never fully understood what would be the right settings for games that do not sustain 60fps at all times (recent emulators, big sandbox games and flight simulators are my concerns) and for which you desire the best combo of fluidity and latency.

Should one use Vsync? Fullscreen or Borderless? what about the LLM settings? Is it still usefull to use a Frame Cap?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[deama]

Hi, I'm a huge fan of the low-lag trick for non-VRR screens but I never fully understood what would be the right settings for games that do not sustain 60fps at all times (recent emulators, big sandbox games and flight simulators are my concerns) and for which you desire the best combo of fluidity and latency.

Should one use Vsync? Fullscreen or Borderless? what about the LLM settings? Is it still usefull to use a Frame Cap?

Thanks in advance for your help!

In my case, if I can't run a game at 60fps whilst everything is at lowest settings then I put it on the shelf and play it whenever I upgrade my PC.
That game will always be there, so don't worry about missing it, e.g. you can still play games from the golden era, like the first ultima game.
Unlike in the past, you have way more choice these days, so just pick another game and wait for an upgrade.

That said, if you're still adamant, what you can do is basically set your monitor refresh rate to say 80hz, and then use something like scanline sync on RTSS and set it to /2 so it caps to your refresh rate /2 (40fps in our case), whilst also hiding the tear line (if you configure it). The frame pace should be almost perfect assuming you can actually run it comfortably at 40fps.

I have done some experiments playing around with this and whilst it works, I wouldn't recommend it, just wait for an upgrade, going below stable 60fps makes it look bad even if it is stable, especially below 30, I've no clue how people play games at or below 30fps. You'd also add more and more input lag as you lower your monitor's hz, so if you want to play at 30fps, you'll have to lower your hz down to 60, and then combine that with playing at 30fps...

Also, always run it at fullscreen exclusive to get rid of that pesky DWM, however it does help in keeping your frame pace, so if you're having trouble keeping your frame pace steady at, say, 60fps, and you don't mind a bit of extra input lag, then you can set it to borderless fullscreen or some such to enable the DWM, and cap it to 60fps (I don't think you need scanline sync for this one as DWM should handle it) and it should keep the pace, however this is assuming you have the hardware to run it somewhat stable at 60fps.

[Nocta]

Thanks deama for your feedback!
So running a game in borderless fullscreen forces some kind of triple buffer, is that right?
Do you know what setting should be use for the Low Lag Mode in those scenarios?

[deama]

Thanks deama for your feedback!
So running a game in borderless fullscreen forces some kind of triple buffer, is that right?
Do you know what setting should be use for the Low Lag Mode in those scenarios?

No, borderless fullscreen just doesn't disable the DWM. DWM forces vsync on everything and adds input lag depending on your monitor's hz and computer usage, e.g. at 120hz you'd get about 10ms in a game that isn't too demanding and running at 120fps, at 60hz you'd get an extra 16-20ms depending on how well the application runs.

Low lag mode? You mean the nvidia latency mode thing? Generally keep that on just on, but there's not much if any difference between on/off, however ultra reduces input lag if your GPU usage is above 95%, generally though I wouldn't recommend keeping your GPU that high anyway as the higher it gets the more input lag it adds, e.g. 70% GPU usage gives something like 5ms extra (example, I don't actually remember anymore), but at 30% usage it's just an extra 1ms (again, don't remember, but probably similar).

[andrelip]

Disable Processor Idle gave me the best 60hz experience. I already had C-States disabled, core park, fixed clock, etc. This lowered my fps in CSGO but gave a highly improved mouse response, especially when we have a capped frame-rate. Totally playable.

1- Run CMD as admin:
2- powercfg -attributes SUB_PROCESSOR 5d76a2ca-e8c0-402f-a133-2158492d58ad -ATTRIB_HIDE
3- Open power management options in Control Panel, set your plan to "Maximum Performance", open the power plan, go to advanced settings, then set “Processor idle disable” to “Disable idle” under processor power options.