patrickisfrench wrote:so those of you who have tried gsync thus far, can you say without a doubt if you have hardware to support using it you will have a smoother all around gaming experience? Is it one of those no brainer options you just want to enable?
In general, it is almost always a no-brainer option, as long as the game plays nicely with GSYNC. For example, Battlefield 4 and Crysis 3 both play noticeably much nicer in GSYNC. For other games such as CS:GO, they already run so fast, that you get further IQ improvements with ULMB instead.
patrickisfrench wrote:I don't plan to pursue ulmb because I feel it harder to keep up that kind of consistency of fps with higher IQ settings, and I love my IQ.
Static IQ (detail during static images) or motion IQ (detail during motion) can be different goals. ULMB improves motion IQ, because game details are completely lost during fast motion, because of motion blur. For example, you cannot read the street name labels on
TestUFO Panning Map Test (at 960 pixels/second and faster) unless you activate a low-persistence mode such as LightBoost, ULMB, Turbo240, or BENQ Blur Reduction. All the beautiful IQ and high-def goes VHS quality motion blur, if you're a person who likes to track eyes on things during fast motion/panning/strafing/turning. For some people, there are some
good LightBoost testimonials in the dramatic improvement in motion clarity, to the point some people actually spend big money in improving framerates to make low-persistence sing. LightBoost has really poor color quality, but the newer strobe backlight blur reduction technologies (ULMB, Turbo240, and BENQ Blur Reduction) have much better color quality than LightBoost.
patrickisfrench wrote:Also, is 100-140fps going to feel the same as 60-100fps while using gsync?
You get further improvements, though the improvements start to get marginal as you begin to approach stutter-free GSYNC 144fps@144Hz. At this point it becomes so that 144fps@144Hz GSYNC looks the same as 144fps@144Hz VSYNC ON, when GSYNC gets closer and closer to the framerate cap.
patrickisfrench wrote:Or am I going to be able to feel that extra butter while in the triple digits? If it does indeed all feel the same and equalized then what bar would you set the gsync experience at so I can imagine how nice it is? lol. would you say it keeps the "feeling" of 120fps/120hz at anything above 60fps?
More-or-less. But the more impressive aspect of GSYNC (to me) is the permanent "capped out framerate-refreshrate synchronized motion" so that fluctuating framerate 40-70fps looks as smooth as 60fps@60Hz. Random framerates that look smooth, even though the frametimes varied hugely from frame to frame.
If your game is already doing 120fps@120Hz, GSYNC isn't going to give you much improvement (and ULMB gives you a bigger leap in overall IQ, if you don't mind the brightness loss). If your game is fluctuating widly up and down, you don't notice the framerate fluctuations as much, and random 30-45fps actually feels smooth and playable where it used to not be playable in the past (random 30-45fps normally looks ultra-stuttery).
The question of what X framerate GSYNC looks better than X framerate non-GSYNC really depends on how stuttery the framerate originally is. A stutter during 30fps is a bigger stutter cost (1/30sec stutter = bigger stutter) than a stutter during 120fps (1/120sec stutter = smaller less visible stutter), so the stutter reduction benefit of GSYNC is so massive at low framerates and begin to gradually diminish as you get to a high framerate.
Now, to picture it like this, it's more of a curve of IQ improvement, of sorts:
GSYNC low framerate = looks better than a framerate 30fps higher
GSYNC med framerate = looks better than a framerate 20fps higher
GSYNC high framerate = looks better than a framerate 10fps higher
GSYNC max framerate = looks identical to VSYNC ON capped-out without framedrops
In other words, GSYNC 40fps can look better than non-GSYNC 70fps. However, this is not a hard-and-fast rule, as there are outlierss. Some games don't get much GSYNC improvement (e.g. engine-based stutters), while others get massive GSYNC improvement that occurs at all framerate less than 143fps...
The fact that framerates can look better than almost double framerates in certain games that are otherwise very stuttery (e.g. Battlefield 4) -- that $200 premium for GSYNC now can become a better buy than, say, a video card upgrade, since you usually can't double your framerates in modern games (Battlefield 4) for just a $200 premium.
So briefly, we go back to the discussion of ULMB. We already know ULMB is limited to 120Hz (or 100Hz or 85Hz). Now, let's take the scenario of GSYNC with a max of 120Hz (e.g. configuring GSYNC with 120Hz), you have 120fps@120Hz as your maximum. Now let's compare GSYNC 120fps@120Hz versus ULMB 120fps@120Hz.
GSYNC 120fps@120Hz = stutterfree/tearfree -- but not blurfree
VSYNC OFF 120fps@120Hz = not blurfree, not tearfree, and may not be stutterfree either
VSYNC ON 120fps@120Hz = stutterfree/tearfree -- but not blurfree
ULMB VSYNC OFF 120fps@120Hz = blurfree -- but not tearfree and may not be stutterfree
ULMB VSYNC ON 120fps@120Hz =
blurfree/stutterfree/tearfree
So you see, there's now becomes a specific situation where ULMB is superior in every department (except dimmer brightness & very slightly lower contrast ratio). But only if you have the GPU power to guarantee such high framerates. Now, this may not matter to you, since you may not have a GPU that runs capped-out framerates, and there are many players here who will never play VSYNC ON (due to input lag) because they primarily play competitively.