Gsync compatible monitor forcing 60hz on some 60hz games and not others while other Gsync compatible monitor does VRR on

[nursejoy]

So I have 2 "Gsync compatible monitors" the ASUS XG248Q and the Alienware AW2521HF. The Asus monitor works on all 60FPS games but the Alienware will literally default to 60hz on some 60FPS. 60FPS with VRR is much better then 60FPS on 60hz due to latency reasons and the colors turn to limited when set to 60hz. The solution to this is I turn off full screen optimizations. Which I don't want to do. 1. Its annoying to have to configure it per game, 2. Gsync works out the box for the ASUS monitor why isn't it working for the Alienware?

[diakou]

Could you maybe give more information about which games and how you're seeing that it's defaulting to 60Hz? Have you tried to force "use highest refresh rate available" in the manage 3d settings of a game in NVIDIA CONTROL PANEL if utilizing a NVIDIA GPU?

The solution being full screen optimizations sounds to me like there's some odd activity with getting g-sync to activate properly in a game that does not let you take proper control over DWM OR bypass it completely (full screen exclusive.)

What does not make sense however is why the ASUS and the Alienware are portraying different behavior. Are you sure you're utilizing them on the same game? Another thing is that if a game is not capable of going into exclusive full screen or have a correct flip model presentation (bypassing/taking control over DWM) there's a high chance G-Sync cannot engage properly if there are two monitors currently present. Sometimes you can plug in the other monitor once G-sync is engaged/activated, but any and all activity on second screen might mess with your performance on the main screen (unsure if this is fixed in the newest windows.)

So to sum it up;
1. What games are you testing
2. How are you seeing if G-sync is engaged
3. Have you tried nvidia setting to force the game / override it to use the highest refresh rate?
4. You can also possibly do the 1920x1079 trick to only have one resolution available.
5. Check whether the game has proper full screen or borderless full screen so that G-Sync can engage correctly, if not, you can also utilize the NVIDIA Profile Inspector trick.
6. Check whether having only one monitor active/plugged into your GPU during the game opening up allows G-Sync to engage properly, which also indicates further problem with the game not being in FSE or correct flip model presentation.
7. Make sure you're doing correct apples to apples testing and not changing from having two monitors plugged in and one monitor plugged in when testing the two different displays. Or making sure you're testing the same game in the first place etc. As I am curious about this odd behavior from one working and the other not when afaik their VRR ranges should be pretty much equal. I feel like there's an error in testing for this to be true or simply that you have both monitors hooked in when you tested the Alienware, but not the ASUS. (Or that they're on different display priority, main display and secondary display)

Good luck. (PS; I'm an amateur G-Sync person, just trying to get better at diagnosing and learning G-Sync behavior.)

[jorimt]

The Asus monitor works on all 60FPS games but the Alienware will literally default to 60hz on some 60FPS.

I've only ever experienced a game locking the max refresh rate on my native 165Hz G-SYNC monitor to 60Hz in the DS engine; Sekiro, etc, regardless of what the NVCP "Preferred refresh rate" option is set to.

Disabling FSO indeed remedies it. Interesting that one of your monitors does this in more games than the other one does though. As @diakou mentioned, if you have them set up as dual monitors, that could potentially be influencing or triggering the issue.

[RealNC]

Check the EDID of the monitors with ToastyX CRU. See if the primary display mode is 60Hz maybe. Some monitors have their highest Hz as the first mode, some have a 60Hz mode as the first one. With some games, Windows (or the GPU driver?) seems to select the primary mode (first one listed in the EDID.)

[diakou]

Check the EDID of the monitors with ToastyX CRU. See if the primary display mode is 60Hz maybe. Some monitors have their highest Hz as the first mode, some have a 60Hz mode as the first one. With some games, Windows (or the GPU driver?) seems to select the primary mode (first one listed in the EDID.)

So when the AW2521H (360Hz) shows this;

That's one of the situations you're talking about? I was always finding that very strange, considering my omen x25f showcased the highest refresh rate the display had first. How do I even go about changing this?

I will say it's really weird to not have a single datablock or resolution showcase 360Hz in CRU(Maybe needs updating? lol.) The highest that is showcased is 240, what's even more strange is how 240 is perfectly rounded while the rest is 143.XX, 119.XX, 59.XX or 360.113(in windows display settings) - but the 240 resolution in the datablock was a perfect 240. I did change my refresh rate to a perfect 360 through NVIDIA however as CRU wasn't able to work properly for me to get a perfectly rounded 360Hz refresh rate.



(oddly enough, changing values to a perfectly rounded refresh rate has almost always had big impact on gameplay feeling, rather than manufacturers set refresh rate - this was a behavior I saw on my old monitor as well, the Omen x25f)

My omen x25f default out of the box from manufacturer @ 239.760


My omen x25f fixed to a LCD Native preset @ 240 (594Mhz pixel clock - under 600 was important due to restrictions of GPU)



This behavior had me oddly confused and to this day I can't find much explanation whether this even matters or not so I hope @chief finds this by accident and maybe comments as I'm confident he's probably dabbled into this in the past. Eitherway, maybe since it's a browser test it doesn't matter or maybe since it's a vsync test it's not a big deal and I'm overthinking it. But I just found it interesting anyways not to mention placebo or not, it does actually feel drastically different in-game.

[RealNC]

How do I even go about changing this?

You can create an EDIT override with CRU. Move the high Hz mode you want from the extension block and add it as the first mode in the "detailed resolutions" block. You should be able to cut and paste the modes I think. If not, copy and paste into detailed resolutions, and then delete it from the extension block. Then close CRU with "OK". This will save the EDID override. You need to repeat this step every time you update your GPU driver though. Or save the override to a file (with "export") and then import it again after every GPU upgrade.

Unfortunately, many monitor vendors ship displays with a suboptimal EDID like this. I don't know why. Maybe it's for compatibility with consoles, I don't know. Well, that is if doing this tweak actually fixes the problem...