It's worth reminding that if you haven't purchased your VRR monitor yet and want to use VRR more professionally...
...That if you plan to use VRR in esports, always purchase more VRR range than your planned framerate range.
VRR works much better when your VRR range is wider than your framerate range. Obviously quality of the LCD plays a big matter (e.g. excellent 240Hz LCD versus one of the less-good 360Hz LCD) but all things equal, always purchase more refresh rate than you think you need. Thank me later.
Organically breathing framerates happily VRRing in the entire framerate range, makes capping optional. Capping is great VRR hygiene, but capping is simply a lesser pick-poison versus the dreaded "VSYNC ON" lag of framerates skyrocketing and crashing against the top end of VRR range. Or the weird lagfeel change between VRR versus VSYNC OFF.
You don't want lagfeel changes in your entire VRR continuum, so you always want to keep framerates in VRR range, and if you buy more VRR range then you enjoy more framerates without capping!
VRR can become esports-quality in this situation without the unexpected lagfeel changes caused by framerates fluctuating at the edges of VRR ranges. Lagfeel can includes the sudden change in latency gradient since not all pixels on a screen necessary has the same lag, due to scanout lag,
www.blurbusters.com/scanout
These lagfeels are different:
- (TOP < CENTER < BOTTOM) + little backpressure ... when framerate in VRR range
- (TOP < CENTER < BOTTOM) + more backpressure ... when framerate hits max Hz for VSYNC ON (VRR or not)
- (TOP = CENTER = BOTTOM) + zero backpressure ... when framerate hits max Hz for VSYNC OFF uncapped (VRR or not)
- (TOP < CENTER < BOTTOM) + slightly more backpressure ... when framerate hits below-max-Hz cap during VRR.
Enemies at the top edge of screen can lag differently than enemies at bottom edge of screen, which can be an issue in games like Fortnite where enemies show up at any corner of the screen, especially with all the aerials and towers etc. Your peripheral vision will notice these, and that triggers of your human reaction time clock to react to them. So lag is not a single number.
So inherently, in paid professional esports, "GSYNC + VSYNC OFF" and "GSYNC + VSYNC ON" can lead to compromises caused by lagfeel changes of framerates fluctuating against a cap or against a VRR max Hz.
Minor as it may be (milliseconds) and a nonissue for most of us, this is the rarified leagues of paid esports where lagfeel problems tend to matter more... The single-digit milliseconds matters a hell lot more in paid esports than casual competitive.
But with more VRR range than framerate range, this completely disappears, and VRR feels consistent through the entire framerate range of the game. VRR becomes esports quality, e.g. 500Hz VRR in CS:GO can feel better than 240Hz VSYNC OFF.
For 500Hz, the ultrafast scanout (2ms total difference between TOP vs BOTTOM edge of screen) almost eliminates the lag gradient along the vertical axis of the screen too -- even if your frame rates are only 100fps. You're getting those 100fps frames blasted over the DisplayPort cable in a mere 1/500sec, and scanned out onto the screen in 1/500sec. This benefits all sync technologies, but it also removes several VRR disadvantages in esports too!