What Is the Best Way to Play Without VRR on an OLED Monitor?

[WhiskySolo]

Hi everyone,

I’m new to the forum, although I’ve been reading many of the guides here for quite a few years. I’m very grateful to you all for introducing me to this world, but I also hate you a little, since you’ve turned me into someone who is incapable of enjoying a game without spending hours searching for the perfect settings.

I’m finally going to make the jump to OLED. More specifically, I’m planning to get this monitor: Asus rog-strix-oled-xg32ucwmg

However, I have one major concern: VRR flicker.

In modern, demanding games, using frame generation is almost unavoidable. Unfortunately, when frame generation is enabled, VRR flicker can become absolutely terrible. I tried an OLED monitor a couple of years ago and ended up returning it for this exact reason.

After reading many posts, it seems clear to me that the definitive way to avoid VRR flicker is to play without VRR. However, doing so usually ruins the experience for me. I’ve looked through many discussions, but I still haven’t found a definitive answer:

What is currently the best way to play without VRR?

I’ve seen several different options mentioned, such as Special K Latent Sync, RTSS Scanline Sync, half-refresh-rate V-Sync, and so on.

As far as I understand, Latent Sync or Scanline Sync would probably be the ideal solution, but they can sometimes be quite annoying to configure. Would the other option be to use V-Sync, an FPS cap, and switch the monitor’s refresh rate using HRC or a similar tool?

I would really appreciate some advice from anyone who has been in a similar situation.

Thanks in advance!

[RealNC]

I use latent sync and it's dead-easy to configure. You just right-click and check the "latent sync" box and then select one of the FPS cap modes (I use 1/2 mode so I get 120FPS at 240Hz or 90FPS at 180Hz.)

However, if you want to use DLSS frame generation, this won't work.

[WhiskySolo]

Thanks for the answer!
Ah, i thought, in latent sync, you have to move the tearing line like the rtss solution.
Do you play with vrr on in some cases? Or just turn off in all games?

It seems frame generation doesnt have an effective solution

[RealNC]

Ah, i thought, in latent sync, you have to move the tearing line like the rtss solution.

You don't have to do that because you can just enable vsync (by setting the tearing mode). Like this:

Latent_Sync.png (69.01 KiB) Viewed 493 times

"Adaptive prefer off" turns on vsync, but disables it for only 1 frame when render latency exceeds your target. Setting your "render queue" target to 1 should provide a good latency. If you just use straight up vsync without trying to cap like this, you get a render latency of either 2 or 3 (depending on whether double-buffered or triple-buffered vsync is used.) Using SK render queue setting allows you to limit render latency to 1, which also means it prevents vsync backpressure lag which happens when render latency is maxed out. In my experience, this setup always gives good latency. Not as good as g-sync + VRR cap, which always has a render latency of 0. But it's still good.

Set your "scan mode" setting depending on what FPS you want. Note that if the scan mode you set is lower than 1/1 (like 1/2, 1/3, etc.) then the above text about the render queue doesn't apply, since render latency is always going to be either 0 or 1 when FPS is lower than Hz. So for scan mode 1/1, you can just set tearing mode to "Always off", which gives you a perfectly frame capped low latency vsync.

However, for DX11 games (DX12 won't work), you have the option of using vsync (full vsync or fractions 1/2, 1/3 or 1/4) without any FPS cap and still get only a 1 frame render latency by using these settings in the "Swapchain management" section of SK:

sk_swapchain_settings.png (36.41 KiB) Viewed 485 times

The "presentation interval" setting is your vsync control. 1 is normal vsync, 2 is 1/2 vsync, 3 is 1/3 vsync and 4 is 1/4 vsync. Set this to what you want your FPS to be and make sure the FPS limiter checkbox is disabled.

Sadly, some games simply don't tolerate a max device latency lower than 2 and might crash (either right away or after a while.) But when it works, the latency you get is also very low. Your current render latency value is shown in the frame time graph of SK.

Do you play with vrr on in some cases? Or just turn off in all games?

Ever since I got a W-OLED monitor I had to give up on VRR due to flicker.

It seems frame generation doesnt have an effective solution

It only works well with g-sync, unfortunately. Unless you're using Nvidia Smooth Motion or Lossless Scaling FG. Those can be made to be smooth. Special K, when it works with Smooth Motion (because sometimes it doesn't, SM is an Nvidia hack with compatibility issues,) can pace the generated frames with latent sync and thus have them perfectly smooth. LSFG can be used with its vsync settings (1/1, 1/2, 1/3) and a latent sync cap (without vsync) in the game with SK so LSFG gets the best possible frame pacing as source.

[WhiskySolo]

Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed reply. I really appreciate it.

This is very helpful for me, and I’ll read it carefully. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge and helping me out!