G-Sync first impressions

[nimbulan]

From the testing I've done so far, the G-sync setting in the nVidia control panel will override any vsync setting in games, though I try to leave game vsync off in order to avoid potential problems with altered frame timing and/or buffering in the game engine.

I did find one exception so far with Joe Danger 1/2, where the game profile had a hidden setting to disable variable framerate support and I had to use nVidia Inspector to enable it, as well as to turn the framerate limiter on since the game uses a fixed timestep and will run way too fast if you let it go past 60 fps.

It's pretty easy to check if G-sync is enabled though, just press the Menu button on your monitor and it will either say Normal or nVidia G-sync for the current Mode.

[electrostatic]

I took my sweet time doing the install (so I could take photos of every code number and mystery connection on the board for future reference) then went straight for the games and demos I desperately wanted to see improvement in.

My setup: GTX780 (ASUS reference), AMD FX 8350, 16GB 1866 DDR3, Win 8.1

The thing I tried first was the RigidGems demo... I always loved the eye candy but was heartbroken by the tearing (profile tweaking and forcing V-Sync never really got it looking the way I thought it should.) Result: perfection. The best I've ever seen it on any setup.

Then I went after the games that had either tearing or stuttering or both that I could never seem to completely fix. For example:

Borderlands 2 (slight tearing and stuttering that was always just enough to annoy me) Result: Tearing 100% gone, stutters mostly gone (more testing needed).

Train Sim 2013/14 (What can I say, I like my trains.) Chronic severe tearing in interior views and stuttering problems with exterior scenery. Result: Tearing 100% gone, MASSIVE improvements in overall fluidity, stuttering 95% gone, despite frame rates still varying wildly.

Other games/demos that already were quite well performing saw improvements in 'fluidity/smoothness' ranging from 'meh' to 'OMFG':

Unigine Heaven 4.0: scenes that always stuttered a bit on me before (ship and dragon statue flyarounds) were now completely smooth at the same settings. Framerates and benchmarks were pretty much the same as before, but as a whole everything just looked much smoother.

Unigine Valley: locations that stuttered still stuttered but less severe effect. It was less jerky and more like a slight slowdown or time-dilation effect. Again, same benchmarks and framerates (actually a bit lower) but noticeably improved 'smoothness' and greater sense of 'speed' flying over grass and such. Fog and DOF effects somehow 'felt' more realistic.

3DMark (the new version) - Firestrike (non extreme) This was kind of surprising: My scores dropped by about 200 points but the animation looked much, much smoother than before.

NVIDIA New Dawn demo - sub 30FPS, but performance was so steady and consistent it looked like a pre-recorded video.

So yeah, so far everything I've tried has seen improvements, ranging from just noticable to mind-blowing.

[PiERiT]

I suppose I'll throw in my two cents.

G-Sync is pretty much the best upgrade I've ever done.

My graphics card history is depressing. I've had a 460, 470, 560 Ti, 6950 w/ 6970 BIOS, 6850 CFX, 460 SLI, 580, 680, 680 SLI, and now a 780. Why so many? Everything I've had has been subpar or has had issues. I went through the first four because I wanted better performance in new games. When the 6950 had terrible coil whine, I returned it and went back to my 560 Ti. When 6850's dropped in price, I bought two of those since my board would not do SLI. When I realized my board could only do CFX at x4 speeds, I bought a different board and switched to 460 SLI since I already had one. When that board was DOA, I bought a different one and updated my processor at the same time. When the open-box craze on Newegg started, I grabbed a 580 for $250. When 680's were launched, I bought one the first day. When the 780 came out and 680's dropped in price, I bought a second for SLI. When half of the games I was playing flat out didn't support it, had poor scaling, or performed better with a single card, I sold them both and bought a 780.

Do you know what I realized after all of that, aside from the fact that I'd wasted hundreds of dollars? I realized that no matter how much money I dumped into my system, games would still perform like crap. There would always be poorly optimized games. There would always be random framerate drops. There would always be games I couldn't play at max settings because they are apparently intended to be ran on graphics cards that don't exist. Realizing all of that, and spending more time messing around with settings trying to get a smooth, enjoyable experience than actually playing games, there was about a 3 month stint where I was just disgusted with everything and didn't play a single game.

Then I read about G-Sync. It promised to fix every complaint I had. I was lucky enough to already have a compatible monitor and graphics card, and while $200 is pretty expensive for what it is, if it did what it claimed, it would be worth it. So, I bought one the first hour it was available, installed it when it arrived, and I've been playing with it since. It does everything it promised, and while it may sound cliche, it's renewed my interest in PC games. It delivers something that no graphics card(s) can: gameplay free of stutter, tearing, and input lag. For the first time ever I can install a game, set it to max settings, and have a problem-free experience.

Whether it's worth it for you is hard to say. I have a friend that doesn't even know what stutter and screen tearing are. If you do, however, and they annoy you as much as they annoyed me, G-Sync is the best thing you can do for your setup.

[Chief Blur Buster]

G-Sync is pretty much the best upgrade I've ever done.

[snip]

Whether it's worth it for you is hard to say. I have a friend that doesn't even know what stutter and screen tearing are. If you do, however, and they annoy you as much as they annoyed me, G-Sync is the best thing you can do for your setup.

Thanks for your feedback! I may quote some testimonials (with links to original posts) in an upcoming Blur Busters article, to indicate the wide variance & the worthwhile-ness of the overall upgrade. I agree it is a bigger upgrade in motion quality than a 400 dollar replacement of your graphics card. (Doing both does improve things even further, considering Lightboost/ULMB need of high frame rates, too.)

Show your friend the tearing animations at http://www.testufo.com/stutter
They are very educational.

[nimbulan]

My graphics card history is depressing. I've had a 460, 470, 560 Ti, 6950 w/ 6970 BIOS, 6850 CFX, 460 SLI, 580, 680, 680 SLI, and now a 780. Why so many? Everything I've had has been subpar or has had issues. I went through the first four because I wanted better performance in new games. When the 6950 had terrible coil whine, I returned it and went back to my 560 Ti. When 6850's dropped in price, I bought two of those since my board would not do SLI. When I realized my board could only do CFX at x4 speeds, I bought a different board and switched to 460 SLI since I already had one. When that board was DOA, I bought a different one and updated my processor at the same time. When the open-box craze on Newegg started, I grabbed a 580 for $250. When 680's were launched, I bought one the first day. When the 780 came out and 680's dropped in price, I bought a second for SLI. When half of the games I was playing flat out didn't support it, had poor scaling, or performed better with a single card, I sold them both and bought a 780.

I know what you mean about poorly optimized games and never quite getting the performance you want. It's even harder when you have a 120/144Hz monitor and are trying to make the most of it, though even with my 760, I generally just need to turn a couple choice settings down and I can get close to 100 fps without affecting image quality much. I get large stutters in the strangest places in games and still don't understand what causes them, but it seems like something an upgrade won't fix unfortunately. At least G-sync makes the rest of the stuttering go away!

[PiERiT]

The first game I tried was Bioshock Infinite. I turned off g-sync and v-sync and played the game for a few minutes and I noticed some stuttering but most of the time the framerate seemed very high and I didn't notice any framerate drops other than the quick stuttering here-and-there. Next I enabled g-sync... and I still had stutters! I'm not sure if these are considered "micro-stutters" from the GTX 690 or what. After that I tried to max every setting I could think of at 1080p and while I didn't measure the framerate, it seemed the same with v-sync off and g-sync on and I didn't notice any tearing with either.

Just installed Bioshock Infinite and yeah... it's still a stuttery mess. Either G-Sync flat out doesn't work, or the stutter is due to something that G-Sync cannot fix. Disappointing.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Just installed Bioshock Infinite and yeah... it's still a stuttery mess. Either G-Sync flat out doesn't work, or the stutter is due to something that G-Sync cannot fix. Disappointing.

I like strobing with Bioshock infinite better. Try turning VSYNC ON, and use ULMB at frame rate matching refresh rate (85fps at 85hz) and remark at the wonderful clarity of grapple hook on the rails. Far less dizzying with ULMB VSYNC ON full frame rate (I use EIZO Turbo240 for Bioshock). Since Bioshock is solo, VSYNC lag doesn't matter to me, and VSYNC ON fixes the stutters/tearing completely in bioshock with ULMB. Turn shadow detail downwards two notches to help frame rates stay continually high. View distance down one notch also helps. Then I am able to do locked 120fps in bioshock on a Titan. Though a 680 should be able to easily mostly maintain 85fps with detail notched down a tad.

GSYNC, however, is magical in eliminating stutters in battlefield 4 and crysis 3 for me, as I can't maintain frame rates worthy of strobing in those games.

[nimbulan]

After testing a number of games, I've come to an interesting conclusion. Prior to the public release of G-sync, I had several discussions with other people claiming that this would make developers lazy about optimization, since a higher framerate wouldn't be as important with G-sync. I am finding the opposite: G-sync makes performance problems in game engines much more visible than they would be otherwise. If there is any stutter whatsoever with G-sync enabled, it's the game's fault. I definitely couldn't tell the vsync/tear stutter in Far Cry 3 apart from the engine stutter that's visible with G-sync on. Max Payne 3 is a stuttering mess on DX10.1 or 11. Hopefully as G-sync becomes more widely adopted it will give developers more incentive to optimize their game engines.

[ZTylerDurden]

After testing a number of games, I've come to an interesting conclusion. Prior to the public release of G-sync, I had several discussions with other people claiming that this would make developers lazy about optimization, since a higher framerate wouldn't be as important with G-sync. I am finding the opposite: G-sync makes performance problems in game engines much more visible than they would be otherwise. If there is any stutter whatsoever with G-sync enabled, it's the game's fault. I definitely couldn't tell the vsync/tear stutter in Far Cry 3 apart from the engine stutter that's visible with G-sync on. Max Payne 3 is a stuttering mess on DX10.1 or 11. Hopefully as G-sync becomes more widely adopted it will give developers more incentive to optimize their game engines.

Say it ain't so nimbulan! I was imagining gsync as a workaround for fundamental game engine issues with stuttering!

I know of three well-known games that fall under this issue and you mentioned one of them (FC3).

As you may know, Darksiders 2 and Fallout: New Vegas are notorious for their frame stuttering issues. There's a workaround for DS2 and a mod patch on moddb for FO: NV. Could you tell me if stuttering is still present for either of those games with gsync on?

[nimbulan]

Say it ain't so nimbulan! I was imagining gsync as a workaround for fundamental game engine issues with stuttering!

I know of three well-known games that fall under this issue and you mentioned one of them (FC3).

As you may know, Darksiders 2 and Fallout: New Vegas are notorious for their frame stuttering issues. There's a workaround for DS2 and a mod patch on moddb for FO: NV. Could you tell me if stuttering is still present for either of those games with gsync on?

Darksiders 2: Runs perfectly smooth with some brief stutters when entering a new area (data loading probably.) Some camera movement also causes brief stutters, possibly due to a lack of animation interpolation. I was rather surprised since I had a lot of stuttering problems on my old PC, both microstuttering and intermittent frame drops.

Fallout New Vegas: Worst stuttering I've ever seen, even worse than Divinity 2 which is also based on the Gamebryo engine. Forcefully disabling vsync in the config shows no change. Adding a 64 fps cap in the drivers in addition lets it run smoothly with an intermittent large stutter every couple seconds. Using the stutter remover mod like I've always done lets it run silky smooth. It's a very good example how low resolution engine timing severely impacts how smooth the game will run. I honestly don't know how this game can run smoothly for anybody without the stutter remover mod with the way the engine is designed. Strangely I could hardly manage more than about 65 fps looking over Goodsprings even with a GTX 760. I guess it's par for the course for that engine.

I'll be adding these to my G-sync game testing thread.