Gaming at less than 100FPS

[mylasthope]

Hey,

I just bought a new Asus VG248QE since I really need a monitor. I'm really hyped for g sync and lightboost, but I have a couple of questions. For games that I can't achieve 100 FPS, what HZ should I set the monitor to? When I'm emulating Wii games, I'm usually only able to get 30FPS. When playing games such as ACIV, I can only get 60 FPS. Should I just leave the monitor at 144hz in both these scenarios? Also, I noticed that my FPS bounces around in some games. Will this interfere with lightboost? For example, I was playing COD: Ghosts and my FPS was at 120 for the majority of the time, but it did fluctuate. Sorry for all of these questions. I'm really new to PC gaming.

[Trip]

In most cases with g-sync it is probably best to cap the engine to a framerate just below your 144hz refresh rate to avoid input latency. There are a lot of threads about this but it comes down to that the monitor has to wait for the game-engine instead of the other way around. So the monitor always gets the fresh frame. See it a bit like going to the market and waiting for the salesmen to fill up their stands you are in that case the monitor and will always get the fresh stuff. If you were going to the market while they clear up their stock you are sure the stuff is not as fresh anymore.

There also is ulmb which is really nice in a lot of fast paced games where high frame rates are achievable like source engine games. And you might wanna turn off g-sync and turn on ulmb(lighboost) and vsync since it is probably a better experience. You cannot combine ulmb and gsync though since the strobing backlight cannot dynamicly adjust to decreased refresh rates without negative side-effects. Also avoid using it if you are sure you cannot mantain frame rates equal to the refresh rate since it will only cause issues. If you have a game that can run at say 85 fps most of the time you can lower the refresh rate to that and still turn ulmb on but it will take some organizing. Avoid using 60hz and ulmb though since that will only cause headaches for most people because of the flickering screen.

There are exceptions to this rule though: You mention cod:ghosts this is a game that can easily run at very high framerates yet you really should not turn on vsync and ulmb here. Why? Well most cod's run best a frame rate which is gotten through the calculation of 1000/n where n is a positive integer number. This thus includes 500, 333.33, 250, 200, 166.66, 142.86... etc but not 144. What happens if you turn vsync on in this particular game? The framerate of the engine will shift up and down and will in general desync with the monitor often causing really bad stutter. I have noticed they have made some improvement in BO2 not sure about ghosts. But in previous cod's it was really bad to turn on vsync. G-sync should be fine here though. I recommend in this game to limit the framerate to 125 fps, this should be somewhere in the menu I hope or else via the console but you never know with cod.

As for the wii: it runs most of the time at a framerate of 30 fps in most games but sometimes 60fps. G-sync however has no effect if framerates starts dropping from 30 fps to even lower frame-rates . In this case I would recommend to put the refresh rate to a multiple of 30 fps (like 120hz) and turn vsync on. This should provide a stutter free experience since if it drops in framerate the next drop will be hopefully to (120/5 = 24fps). Dont put it to 30hz though since then it will drop to at least (30/2 = 15fps). There will still be really minor hiccups since the refresh rate is never a perfect multiple of the frame rate. But it is probably still better then putting it to 30hz.

So in short put g-sync on if you have an unsteady frame rate and preferably cap it to a frame rate which it can achieve most of the time in the game-engine.
Put vsync and ulmb on if you have high and steady[\b] frame rates of at least 85fps also cap the game engine to this speed.
Put vsync on and set refresh rate to a multiple of the game engines refresh rate(wii) if you have frame rates lower or equal to 30fps.

There are games that do not work correctly at certain frame rates(like cod, quake, the elder scrolls etc) if you feel responsiveness is feeling off or weird things are happening(skyrim physics bug at high frame rates). Just google it, more people probably have the same issues.

There are also games that do not allow you to modify the frame rate(rage, assassins creed) there is whole thread on this forum specificly for this purpose. In most cases(e.g not 30fps cap) just turn g-sync on here.

I hope I have helped you a bit with this.

[Chief Blur Buster]

I just bought a new Asus VG248QE since I really need a monitor. I'm really hyped for g sync and lightboost, but I have a couple of questions. For games that I can't achieve 100 FPS, what HZ should I set the monitor to? When I'm emulating Wii games, I'm usually only able to get 30FPS. When playing games such as ACIV, I can only get 60 FPS. Should I just leave the monitor at 144hz in both these scenarios? Also, I noticed that my FPS bounces around in some games. Will this interfere with lightboost? For example, I was playing COD: Ghosts and my FPS was at 120 for the majority of the time, but it did fluctuate. Sorry for all of these questions. I'm really new to PC gaming.

Trip's answer is good, the situation depends on your goals.
That said, input lag reduction (VSYNC OFF) versus stutter reduction (VSYNC ON) can be very different goals, depending on casual versus competitive gameplay.

The simplest answer is to try all modes and stick with what you like. (e.g. LightBoost/ULMB turned on/off, different refresh rates, VSYNC ON/OFF, GSYNC). There are general rules of thumb.

For fixed-framerate games (e.g. 30fps and 60fps) on a non-GSYNC monitor, you want to make sure your refresh rate is a multiple of your frame rate (e.g. 60Hz or 120Hz, not 144Hz). For floating frame rates, or framerates that you can change maximum (e.g. fps_max), 144Hz is often best, or 120Hz strobed (LightBoost/ULMB/BENQ Blur Reduction). Lowering your refresh rate is generally favorable for stutter reduction (if more important than lag) during VSYNC ON, when you're reliably able to hit 85fps or 100fps, but not 120fps, so you can play 85fps@85Hz or 100fps@100Hz. However, it's not favourable for input lag reduction if you're a competitive game player.

[mylasthope]

Thank you both for the help. So, in general, I should do the following:

1) If the framerate is fixed (30 or 60), just set the monitor to 120Hz
2) If I can achieve a steady framerate of 85, I should turn Vsync on and lightboost (I thought I needed a minimum of 100FPS for lightboost)
3) If the framerate changes I should just leave the monitor at 144hz or turn on lightboost?

I do not have G-sync yet. I'm debating whether or not to even get it since it would void the 3 year warranty on the monitor. =/

[Haste]

Thank you both for the help. So, in general, I should do the following:

1) If the framerate is fixed (30 or 60), just set the monitor to 120Hz
2) If I can achieve a steady framerate of 85, I should turn Vsync on and lightboost (I thought I needed a minimum of 100FPS for lightboost)
3) If the framerate changes I should just leave the monitor at 144hz or turn on lightboost?

I do not have G-sync yet. I'm debating whether or not to even get it since it would void the 3 year warranty on the monitor. =/

1) Yes. And if you have an NVIDIA GPU and the game is capped at 60fps, go to NVIDIA control panel > Manage 3d settings, select your program > set vertical sync to "Adaptive (half refresh rate)"

2) No, lightboost doesn't work at 85Hz. You will need 100fps stable@100Hz or 120fps stable @120Hz.
Note #1:
- if you buy the G-sync kit you can use ULMB (ultra low motion blur) mode. It's the official implementation of the lightboost hack. And it can run at 85Hz.

- if you are on a Z-series monitor from BenQ you can use "BenQ's motion blur reduction" mode. It works at any refresh rate from 85Hz to 144Hz by increments of 1Hz using firmware v1. And at any refresh rate from 60Hz to 144Hz by increments of 1Hz using firmware v2.

Note #2: It is recommended in any case to run strobe back-light modes at high frequency (100Hz or higher) to avoid eye strain inducing flicker. The sensibility to flicker varies from individuals to individuals, from the persistence of the strobe and exterior factors such as the brightness of the screen and many other factors that I won't detail here. So you can play around with different frequencies and find the minimal frequency you find acceptable.

3) For lightboost and other strobe backlight modes, you always want frame rate = strobe rate = refresh rate.
Otherwise you'll experience heavy stuttering (The significantly reduction in motion blurring achieved by strobe back-light has the side effect of making stutters and micro stutters more apparent) and multiple image artifacts (when tracking moving objects, they will appear duplicated)
So never use lightboost when you don't have a perfectly stable v-synced frame-rate.
(Note: this statement becomes debatable in case you are at very high frame rates such as 500fps or higher.)

And welcome to the forum an to PC gaming.

[Trip]

1) Yes. And if you have an NVIDIA GPU and the game is capped at 60fps, go to NVIDIA control panel > Manage 3d settings, select your program > set vertical sync to "Adaptive (half refresh rate)"

I am not sure about that setting being superior to just normal vsync since it will only sent a frame every two vsync. Whereas normal vsync will send a frame every vsync. If you run at 120hz and your fps is 60 it will in general send a frame every 16.667ms and if it misses it will hopefully send it after (16.667 + 8.333 = 25 ms/40fps). I run a lot of 60 fps games this way and in general it feels smoother then adaptive(half refresh rate) imo. Since tearing will be eliminated and a missed vsync is not as expensive if 1/2refresh = fps plus you have a fresher frame since the game engine usually does not have to wait for the monitor.
But yeah in general just trying out some stuff yourself see what you like is often the best advice.

[lukeman3000]

So never use lightboost when you don't have a perfectly stable v-synced frame-rate.
(Note: this statement becomes debatable in case you are at very high frame rates such as 500fps or higher.)

And what happens if your frame rate occasionally dips below 120 for example? like down to 100 or even 80?

Also, I was playing Far Cry 3 tonight and experimenting with ULMB and it seemed to work fine with v-sync disabled.. I was getting around 120 FPS.

[Haste]

So never use lightboost when you don't have a perfectly stable v-synced frame-rate.
(Note: this statement becomes debatable in case you are at very high frame rates such as 500fps or higher.)

And what happens if your frame rate occasionally dips below 120 for example? like down to 100 or even 80?

Stuttering.

Also, I was playing Far Cry 3 tonight and experimenting with ULMB and it seemed to work fine with v-sync disabled.. I was getting around 120 FPS.

If you feel it's fine, then it's all that matters.