60fps Content Stutter and Judder on High Refresh Rate Laptops (Caused By Power Management)

[JDnoob]

I recently purchased a Dell G5 SE 144hz laptop and am currently trying to decide if it is the right fit for me. I have never owned a high refresh rate laptop before and it has caused me a lot of headache in the way the built-in display handles 60fps content.

• 60fps YouTube vides will judder badly and stutter cyclically (one big stutter every few seconds). I believe the judder is caused by 144hz-60fps pulldown but I believe the cyclic stutter is caused by the AMD graphics driver automatically limiting the desktop refresh rate to 143hz, likely to reduce input lag (only occurs with AMD’s special drivers for the G5 SE, which I need for Freesync to work).
• 60fps games and emulators tend to judder (144hz-60fps pulldown) and sometimes stutter.

I have spent a good week reading online and testing solutions to these issues. Obnoxiously, most laptops do not let you change the refresh rate of the built-in display (Example: 144hz all the time) so I will be using Custom Resolution Utility (CRU) to force these changes. The built-in laptop display is shown twice in CRU but only changing the active one has any effects. I must also edit or delete+replace the 143.999hz default detailed resolution for it to work, as the laptop won’t let me change the refresh rate in windows (windows will say it has changed but it will still be on 144hz). I have devised 3 solutions in the order of least effective to most effective to solve these stutter+judder problems. Please reply with corrections or if you can offer any help or clarifications, I would be extremely grateful.


Solution 1: Forcing the laptop to run at 120hz with CRU

• Hz is a multiple of fps, 60fps goes into 120hz and 240hz, but not 144hz
• Fixes judder and stutter for 60fps YouTube videos!
• 60fps games and emulators ARE NOT FIXED and it causes bad periods of stutter (stutter free for a few seconds and then another several seconds of bad stuttering, repeat, depends on game though). It seems as if Hz must equal FPS for stutter-free, and multiples are no exception. I have tried this on both the laptop and a 120hz monitor with many different 60fps games and emulators.
  • Same principal seems true for 30fps emulator games on 60hz displays. I wonder if this stuttering occurs for 30fps games on consoles or if they use a method around it like outputting 30hz instead of 60hz to the TV?
    • 60fps at 120hz has much worse stutter than 30fps at 60hz, I am assuming this is because there is less blur to hide stutter at higher framerates

CONCLUSION: works for videos but not for games, seems Hz = FPS is required for stutter-free gaming, Hz as a multiple of FPS doesn’t work for most games and emulators (according to my testing, but I want to be sure). This would seem to imply that buying a 120hz or 240hz laptop instead would not solve my issues.


Solution 2: VRR - G-sync and Freesync

• This section is a little dense. Bottom line is I could not get it to work well for most 60fps content but it could just be my implementation of Freesync. This is the only VRR display I own so I have nothing to compare it to. See solution 3 for a more universal solution.
• Hz = FPS within the variable refresh rate range
• Does not fix 60fps YouTube videos as Freesync doesn’t work on the desktop (could not find setting to make it work either)
• This is my first time owning VRR display so I am still learning a lot
• most laptops don’t support even support VRR
  • The Dell G5 SE I did all of my testing on technically supports Freesync but the implementation might be poor. I am not sure if these issues are typical for VRR.
    • Unfortunately, Freesync on this laptop does not seem to be good enough for general use with most 60fps games and emulators. Below are the results of my testing:

Freesync will not work well or will not work at all with some of my favorite emulators and 60fps games:

• snes9x - Freesync will only work with direct3d, V-sync on, and “emulate fullscreen” disabled. 144hz-60fps judder is removed but massive stutter problems remain.
• Cemu - Freesync will not work with any settings (144hz-60fps judder), Direct3d is not supported
• Dolphin - Freesync will only work in direct3d (144hz-60fps judder is removed) but it will either stutter or tear depending on if V-sync is on or off in the emulator settings (see paragraph below for how freesync is not 100% effective - Dolphin is worst case)
• Terraria - Freesync will not work despite using D3D (144hz-60fps judder)
• There are lots of guides online for how to make RetroArch Freesync friendly, RetroArch even has a “sync to exact content framerate” option specifically for the purpose
  • I personally do not use RetroArch and I have not heard of any other emulators with such a feature, but I imagine it works well
• My findings seem to suggest that the Dell G5 SE Freesync does not work in openGL or Vulkan but only in Direct3d (thankfully the vast majority of PC games use D3D).
  • I am not sure if this is special case or typical for VRR, finding credible info for this online is difficult
• None of these emulators or games are fixed by RTSS capping

The exact outcome of Freesync appears to be influenced by whether V-sync is turned on or off in the game/emulator. It is typically less than 100% effective but especially ineffective with 60fps games/emulators:

• With V-sync off in game/emulator, Freesync will sometimes tear (generally much less than V-sync off though)
• With V-sync on in game/emulator, Freesync will sometimes stutter
  • Radeon enhanced sync appears to make no difference. Forcing V-sync on or off in the drivers seems to do nothing
  • The degree to which tearing or stuttering occurs depends on the game/emulator and its nature
    • Witcher 3 (unlocked framerate) tears or stutters relatively infrequently with Freesync
    • Dolphin (60fps constantly) looks very bad with Freesync with a decent amount of tearing with V-sync off and a decent amount of micro-stuttering with V-sync on
• The emulators I have tested perform especially poorly with Freesync, with lots of stuttering (V-sync on in emulator settings) or lots of tearing (V-sync off in emulator settings)
  • Makes the Dell G5 SE Freesync not ideal for emulator usage, despite the input lag advantage

Potential causes and my theories:

• Perhaps the emulators I have tried just don’t work well with VRR (but some people seem to have it working well online, or at least they claim)
  • Also seems to be a lot of information on various forms of people having trouble getting VRR working in many emulators
• Could be due to 60hz-144hz Freesync range on Dell G5 SE being just out of reach of 60fps emulation. Although there appears to be driver-level LFC going on as it rarely tears below 60fps anyways
  • VRR stutter could be caused by rapid switching of LFC on and off around the 60hz threshold?
    • The supposed driver-level LFC only works at default settings. Custom refresh rates such as 120hz in CRU cause Freesync to work only above 60hz

CONCLUSION: Way too many issues. The 60fps games and emulators I tried could never achieve near-perfect frame pacing with VRR (but still less stutter than solution 1).


Solution 3: Forcing the laptop to run at 60hz with CRU

• Hz = FPS, most emulators and games run perfectly smoothly
  • THE ONLY MOSTLY WORKING SOLUTION I HAVE FOUND SO FAR that should work for most high refresh rate laptops for videos AND GAMES
• More input lag than VRR
• Should extend laptop battery ~10% from reduced pixel clock?
• Using any of the predefined CRU timing settings causes what appears to be intermittent periods of 30hz/dropped frames so I must use my default timings and only change the refresh rate to 59.999Hz
• Here is a screenshot of my current settings in CRU:

  

  Screenshot 2020-12-29 210956.png (309.73 KiB) Viewed 7847 times

  (CRU settings)
• Still has some issues: emulators and games have “micro-tearing” artifacts and still have stuttering in openGL (and sometimes Vulkan) only when using the discrete GPU (AMD 5600m). Note that the display does not skip frames according to the Blur Busters frame skipping test. Games and emulators running with APIs other than openGL work perfectly at 60hz (games and emulators that use the integrated graphics for openGL also work perfectly). Here is what “micro-tearing” looks like in openGL games:

  

  IMG_00553.jpg (197.41 KiB) Viewed 7847 times

  (micro-tearing in openGL on discrete GPU)
  • Only occurs when laptop display forced to ~60hz in CRU. Modifying a timing to allow the refresh rate to be 60.000hz or 59.940hz instead of 59.999hz does not help, 60hz as a standard resolution does not help, using CRU timing presets does not help.
  • This will sometimes happen in Vulkan with Cemu but restarting the computer seems to fix it in that case
  • Sometimes this “micro-tearing” and stuttering will stop a minute after launching game and render perfectly thereafter, inconsistent
  • Sometimes plugging in an external display and immediately unplugging it fixes the issue even for the built-in laptop display until the game is restarted, inconsistent
  • Has happened a few times where games will outright fail to launch saying “graphics driver does not support openGL” or something similar. Restarting the app might fix this, but “micro-tearing” and stuttering often remain.
  • Tried with different drivers, fresh windows install, no solution
• V-sync off tends to not allow screen tearing at forced 60hz, strange. "Micro-tearing" in openGL will sometimes be influenced by V-sync on or off, depending on the game, with no noticeable trend.
• Sometimes closing the laptop lid and reopening it will set the laptop back to 144hz until it is restarted or sometimes after it sleeps or is closed again. This is occasionally annoying but not too bad (it really doesn't like anything but 144hz apparently).

FINAL CONCLUSION: the 3rd solution of forcing the laptop to run at 60hz with CRU is currently my best solution for consistently judder+stutter-free 60fps games, emulators, and YouTube videos on the Dell G5 SE but it still produces this issue:

• openGL and to a lesser extant Vulkan games/emulators only on the discrete GPU experience “micro-tearing” and stuttering inconsistently
  • But this solution remains 100% effective with direct3d / D3D / DirectX applications, making it very usable

My current method is to leave the laptop at 60hz for general use (for 60fps YouTube and 60fps games and emulators). I then reset my display to default (144hz Freesync) in CRU when I want to play more typical PC games. Rinse and repeat.

• similar to what I do on my desktop PC, except in that case I am switching from 60hz-single-strobed to 120hz-single-strobed for ideal motion.

I am wondering if the built-in laptop display is physically incapable of running at 60hz with 100% stability or additional configurations must be made in CRU for example? Maybe the reason Freesync will not work with openGL or Vulkan is the same reason those API’s produce problems when the display is down-clocked to 60hz. Direct3d games work in either case. Can anyone further assist with this issue or add important information? Surly I am missing something? Any help, additions, or corrections are all immensely appreciated!

With my current relatively limited knowledge: I would just recommend a 60hz laptop if 60fps content is extremely important to you and if judder and stutter really bothers you (even considering the added input lag). This is especially true if you don’t have time to tinker with computers. High refresh rate laptops cause problems with 60fps content that cannot be easily cured like they can on a high refresh rate monitor that allows you to change the refresh rate to 60hz easily.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Great write up, except for the last paragraph.

Are you on an AMD or NVIDIA GPU?

I am the owner of a Razer Blade 240 Hz gaming laptop (with RTX 2080 Max-Q) capable of perfect 60Hz frame pacing thanks to tweaking I've done.

Laptops have more 60fps stutter on battery power due to power management. And thermal throttling can also add to the stutter mix.

With my current relatively limited knowledge: I would just recommend a 60hz laptop if 60fps content is extremely important to you and if judder and stutter really bothers you (even considering the added input lag). This is especially true if you don’t have time to tinker with computers. High refresh rate laptops cause problems with 60fps content that cannot be easily cured like they can on a high refresh rate monitor that allows you to change the refresh rate to 60hz easily.

This is the only part I generally disagree with. Hate to say this, but I must be frank: misguided conclusion.

This is a common overlooking by many owners of gaming laptop concerned about framepacing precision. So you are not alone: You overlooked something very major: power management stutter & thermal throttling stutter. The reality is that I've seen the same problem on high power 60 Hz laptops too due to aggressive power management creating stutter.

My Experience: 60Hz laptop = same stutters as 240Hz laptop configured to 60Hz on GPU
(assuming same GPU, whether discrete GPU or the Intel GPU, similar power consumption, similar cooling, similar thermal regime, similar power management, etc. If you bought a high-end 60 Hz laptop with a powerful GPU that heats up a lot, you get exactly the same problems!!!! !!!! !!!! !!!! !!! !!!! !!!! !!!! (I intentionally bold these exclamation points it's 100% the ENTIRE point of my reply.)

Also, GPUs often go into power management mode for simple content such as emulators, creating massive stutter, even on 60 Hz laptops -- a high-CPU low-GPU emulator can create a weird mix of an erratically thermally-throttled CPU (+stutter) combined with a power-managed underused GPU (+stutter). So you multiply stutter x stutter = more stutter.

For emulators which don't need a powerful GPU, you can try temporarily disabling your AMD/NVIDIA GPU temporarily (NVIDIA Control Panel -> Manage 3D Settings -> Integrated Graphics). This temporarily turns your laptop into a plain jane 60 Hz laptop. And Performance Mode won't activate the battery-eating GPU. So your battery may actually last similarly with Performance Mode + Internal GPU than with Balanced Mode + Discrete GPU.

You can also intentionally underclock your laptop, so you can have a lower-power Performance Mode.

Stutter precision is more important. If your emulator is only using 25% CPU and 25% GPU, configure Power Options -> Advanced Settings -> Maximum Processor State -> A value less than 100%

You want to disable stutter-causing power management, while keeping things fully powering along without those multimillisecond-long laptop power management microsleeping (like a 10ms sleep that causes a 10ms stutter).

The problem is one has to pay more in battery power to de-stutter on laptops. One has to be creative.
- Don't use Power Saver or Balanced when you need precise frame pacing
- Intentionally force Discrete GPU when you don't need the powerful GPU.
- Fixed clockrates
- Lower clock rates, but prevent clockrates from going below a specific threshold
- Use RTSS to improve framepacing compared to in-game caps (RTSS performs better with Performance Mode)

Many emulators are OK with the discrete GPU unless you're doing complex shader stuff like MAME HLSL.

Many gaming laptops will thermal throttle without a laptop cooling pad when running apps pushing the discrete GPU. Watch out for thermal throttling stutters! If you download Intel Extreme Tuning Utility, you can tell whenever your laptop is thermal throttling. That generates stutter. Try to eliminate thermal throttle stutters via a combination of:
- Cool down laptop via underclocking. If your laptop BIOS supports overclocking/underclocking, intentionally underclock your CPU. Or use third party stuff like ThrottleStop (though I haven't tried).
- Cool down laptop by using less processor intensive emulators
- Cool down laptop by forcing to discrete GPU for low-GPU-requirement software (like emulators)
- Cool down laptop with a laptop cooling pad


While Balanced mode has more stutters than Performance Mode, it's possible that thermal-throttle stutters outweigh the stutters of not being in Performance Mode, so one can sometimes pick-poison and go Balanced Mode.

The name of the game is to avoid the clockrate changes (speedup/slowdowns of CPU, and CPU mini-sleeps, from power management) and keep the CPU running continuously in a steady way to allow it to do precision framepacing.

I have a Razer Blade 15 240Hz laptop and it does an amazing job 60fps material if I let my laptop start eating more battery power. But I've also had the same framepacing problem on many 60 Hz laptops too.

For example, when I play Netflix on my gaming laptop, I force my laptop to use the integrated GPU because Netflix plays longer.

netflix.PNG (40.45 KiB) Viewed 7798 times

TL;DR summary: For great 60fps framepacing in video and emulators on a laptop:
1. Balanced Mode or Performance Mode + RTSS. Definitely avoid battery saver modes if you hate stutter.
2. Integrated GPU and/or laptop cooling pad (especially if wanting to use discrete GPU)
3. Stabilize your CPU clockspeed via a tight min/max processor percentage, as high or as low as your need it to be (stop the dynamic clockspeed changes, or do a defacto underclock)
4. No unwanted thermal throttling or power management occuring (you can monitor this with third party tools)

Disable all automated power management for stutter-critical situations (no clockspeed gyrating, no thermal throttle gyrating, no automatic GPU-churning GPU-switching, etc). All of that shit is precision-damaging = STUTTER! A gaming laptop is a double edged sword, it's more work to learn how to control the additional power management goodies built into a gaming laptop (the two GPUs! The speedstepping! The thermal throttling!). When using a gaming laptop for multipurpose -- for high end gaming versus low-end nostagilia emulation to video creation of 60fps stuff, etc. -- one needs to familiarize with its weaknesses and strengths -- and learn how to tweak them correctly, preferably in saved automated profiles (and switching them quickly, e.g. system tray selection or automatic executable detection).

You will NOT be able to fix VRR stutter without fixing thermal throttling stutter + power management stutter. It is important to troubleshoot a gaming laptop in the correct sequence when precision temporals are prioritized (i.e. low stutter). Throttley 3GHz is more stuttery than stable 1GHz. So if your emulator is only using 25% CPU, 25% GPU, then underclock the shit as much as you can, so you can have full-throttle precision (at lower clockspeeds + less power).

Yes, the precision tax you have to pay is battery power (whether be a 60Hz laptop or a 240Hz laptop), but it's not the end of the world -- a heavily underclocked Performance Mode can use less battery power than Balanced Mode, if you tweak strategically!. Throw away your old assumptions, and think along these lines instead -- and your stutterfree dreams can be achieved on any gaming laptop.

Oh, and driver bugs (e.g. switching from internal display to external display) and GPU switching bugs, can sometimes create some really weird stutter only fixable via repeat-switching the GPU again but I sometimes simply use ToastyX CRU's restart64.exe if I see things like www.testufo.com going stuttery/wonky from power management (Unable to Sync). Throughly annoyed by driver bugs, but that affects 60Hz laptops with two GPUs (sigh). On the other hand, when www.testufo.com goes smooth at 240fps 240Hz green READY, I know my laptop is framepacing beautifully and it's time to close the browser and then launch my game. Many gaming laptops at default settings will often stutter bad at www.testufo.com until optimized well.

If you want to debug stuttery browser videos, check out https://www.testufo.com/animation-time-graph .... My Razer gaming laptop can framepacing beautifully in the TestUFO Animation Precision Graph -- look at the 100 microsecond precision. It even plays 60fps YouTubes perfectly smooth while staying in 240Hz mode, as long as I've done a few tweaks. Get the green READY to appear in TestUFO if you want good 60fps browser framepacing for 60fps browser videos; reliably smooth TestUFO operation (when forcing to discrete GPU or forcing to Intel GPU) is usually a good indicator of reliably smooth 60fps YouTube.

Third party tools such as ThrottleStop and others, can be a good help. For stutter-critical situations on battery power, one can prefer "Performance Mode"+"Underclock" combo for a low-power precision framepacing mode. A.K.A. no power management stutters, no thermal throttle stutters. The Holy Grail for ultrasmooth 60fps framepacing on a gaming laptop is a Performance Mode with 0% thermal throttling. So up that cooling optimizations (underclock, cooling pad, etc) until you manage to have a Balanced Mode or Performance Mode that doesn't thermally throttle or eat up lots of battery power.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Oh, also temporarily turn off your RGB keyboard animating software.

Many gaming laptop have animated RGB keyboards. They're lovely unless inefficiently written. Some of it is relatively efficient but others are horribly inefficient -- see this thread as an example. Configure the keyboard to a stationary color pattern and see what happens to stutters when the RGB animation is paused.

My Blade RGB doesn't seem to cause issues, but it's an additional stutter factor with inefficiently-written RGB-animating software of some brands. Probably not your factor, but I thought to throw this additional consideration in.

[JDnoob]

Great Feedback Chief!

I’m sorry, I should have given the specs. The 144hz Dell G5 SE is a fully AMD gaming laptop with an 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 4800H for the CPU and an AMD RX 5600m for the GPU (about equivalent to an RTX 2060 mobile).

I have relooked into the issue bearing power management in mind. The 144hz Dell G5 SE may just be an odd case. I don’t think the bulk of the stuttering that I’m experiencing is related to power management as unexpected stuttering only occurs under two specific conditions:

Condition 1: When set to 60hz with CRU, all three of these conditions must be met to cause stuttering, poor performance, and graphical glitching (“micro-tearing”/weird artifacts)

1. The game/emulator must render in openGL
2. The game/emulator must use the discrete GPU
3. The built-in laptop display must be in use (external monitors are don’t exhibit the problem as long as you exclusively display to the external monitor)

The laptop is almost entirely stutter-free and displays content normally when set to 60hz with all 60fps games/emulators unless all three of the above conditions are met.

This specific stuttering is accompanied by small lines across areas of the screen during movement (that I termed “micro-tearing”). It looks a lot like GPU artifacting or major visual glitching and is often further accompanied by especially poor performance. I suspect an AMD RX 5600m GPU hardware, firmware, or driver bug with openGL and 60hz together. AMD and Dell quality control/testing teams likely didn’t expect anyone to run the 144hz panel at 60hz. This further makes a lot of sense because the RX 5600m is rare and basically exclusive to this laptop. Many different driver versions and fresh installs simply could not fix this problem

I should note though that AMD GPUs tend to perform very poorly in many openGL applications already anyway, and openGL games are pretty rare, so this issue is not much of a deal-breaker. The best workaround is to set openGL applications to use the integrated graphics in the Windows graphics settings only when running the built-in laptop display at 60hz. This results in normal behavior.

Nevertheless, This is why I was recommending a 60hz gaming laptop for some users (if 60fps games are their #1 priority), for guaranteed quality control from strange bugs like this. But the Dell G5 SE could very well be the only laptop with this issue, rendering my statement totally unnecessary. I’m curious if it's common or even possible for high refresh rate laptops to have problems when forced to 60hz with CRU? And wouldn’t it still stand true that for many casual users that do not want to install 3rd party software like CRU, a 60hz laptop would remain the only out-of-the-box solution for universally stutter and judder free 60fps games/emulators? For example: when recommending a gaming laptop to a technically illiterate friend whose primary gaming use-case would be 60fps emulation and who doesn’t want to use CRU.

Condition 2: Freesync often won’t work well or even not work at all with many 60fps-locked games/emulators despite working very well for most standard PC games with unlocked framerates.
Unlike condition 1, I don’t think this is unusual. Browsing the wealth of existing Blur Busters knowledge would seem to indicate that some applications are simply difficult to coax to run smoothly under VRR (most notably 60fps ones). It may also be an issue with Freesync implementation on this laptop in particular, but I don’t think so. RTSS capping framerate-unlocked PC games to 60fps typically yields good results. It's only 60fps-locked applications that typically have the most problems with VRR (though it could just be the ones I’m using).

I predominantly use Dolphin and Cemu by the way. I could not find any highly reliable accounts online of these applications being stutter-free with VRR, so my best theory is they just aren’t well made for VRR. I could easily be wrong though so if anyone could verify this, that would be awesome.

There are two reasons why I think most of the stuttering in these 60fps games/emulators during VRR is not caused by power management:

1. The same 60fps games/emulators are stutter-free when the laptop is set to 60hz with CRU (unless the aforementioned “condition 1” is specifically met)
2. The same 60fps games/emulators are stutter-free at the default display settings (only with consistent 144hz-60fps judder)

I have a potentially redundant question that is not necessary at all related to the above content if you don’t mind:

Just to 100% verify: Manually setting the display to 60hz with CRU is the best way to achieve universally stutter-free 60fps games/emulators on laptops without VRR or with 60fps games/emulators that do not work well with VRR?

Thanks for everything you do! Don’t know what people would do without Blur Busters.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Thanks for the useful troubleshooting information!

It is true that high refresh rate laptops can sometimes create very complicated configuration issues.

Fundamentally, it shouldn't be the case -- and at least some high-Hz laptops exist that does 60 Hz beautifully (like my Razer).

But alas, it is indeed true there are bugs (though to be fair, bugs can still also happen to 60 Hz laptops too).

Even as this thread gets long stale -- your extra information (and my supplemental information) will be useful for future people who google/search information on these forums later about this -- to troubleshoot 60 Hz problems with high-Hz laptops.

You're welcome!