Windowed/Borderless Stutter

Talk about NVIDIA G-SYNC, a variable refresh rate (VRR) technology. G-SYNC eliminates stutters, tearing, and reduces input lag. List of G-SYNC Monitors.
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JosiahLightwood
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Windowed/Borderless Stutter

Post by JosiahLightwood » 14 Aug 2020, 21:58

I have a Gsync Compatible monitor.
Dell S2721DGF 165hz.
It’s a very new release so not many reviews.

If I engage the frame overlay on the monitor and play a borderless windowed or windowed game (with gsync settings in Nvidia to include windowed programs), it fluctuates between the games current FPS and the maximum.

I set my monitor to 144hz, but if I cap destiny 2 to 120, as an example, (in borderless windowed) the monitors frame overlay shows it hovering around 120hz, and occasionally jumping up to 144hz and back, and the game stutters a little constantly.

If I put the game into proper full screen, the frame overlay stabilises and hovers around 120 as expected and the game is smooth.

I do find it odd that the frame overlay fluctuates at all. Surely if the FPS is stable at 120, the hz should just read exactly 120 as well.

What is even more strange is this:

Borderless windowed with monitor at 144hz:
Cap game at 120FPS, and the Hz overlay jumps around from 110-144. Game stutters, but seems like it’s at least attempting to smooth things out more than vsync only would.

Cap the game anywhere from 72-144 and it does the same thing.

However,

Cap the game at 71 FPS and the Hz overlay hovers around 71 and the game is just as smooth as full screen mode.

I tried setting the monitor to 100hz, 120hz and 165hz and it does the same thing. When the FPS cap is less than 1/2 the refresh rates maximum (I.e. 49FPS, 59FPS and 82FPS, gsync works perfectly on Borderless windowed.

Has anyone else seen this happen?


Gsync and Freesync is aggravating me so much with its inconsistency that I’m considering returning the S2721DGF and 2070 super and going back to my 60hz U2417 and 1660 ti. Some games don’t support a proper full screen mode, such as unity engine games, and I don’t want to have to Limit my frame rate to less than 1/2 of the maximum refresh rate to have a smooth experience in borderless windowed mode.


Sorry if this post is not very articulate, but I wrote this on my crappy mobile phone at 4 am After an entire day of testing Different games and settings

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Chief Blur Buster
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Re: Windowed/Borderless Stutter

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 17 Aug 2020, 15:28

Certain games are certianly throughly annoying to configure, being optimized for 60 Hz.

Some Unity games support exclusive fullscreen by adding this command line option:
-window-mode exclusive
(Can also be configured in Steam, Library, Right Click, Properties, Set Launch Options, Copy & Paste the above option)

Now, many Unity games run MUCH smoother if you
1. Switch Windows Control Panel to 120Hz
2. Launch with command line option.

Keep in mind that running 60fps games at 120Hz has less input lag, even if the motion quality is similar. Also, sometimes you need to do the opposite trick with G-SYNC (By doing VSYNC ON in NVIDIA Control Panel, but VSYNC OFF in-game menus) to force the game to framepace correctly.

Sometimes I have to Alt+Enter a few times before it "takes", because some games / drivers are buggy on startup initialization. Especially older games such as Crysis 2, many games made long before VRR was invented.

One game worked best with the 1920x1079 trick in ToastyX (max Hz only) so games that normally launch at minimum-Hz automatically launches at maximum Hz.

Modern games are much more Hz-friendly but this present complications for our huge Steam catalogs... One of these days, there needs to be a database of game-specific VRR optimization. Maybe a Blur Busters wiki. Brainstorming...

I helped a developer add VRR support (Cloudpunk), they credit me: https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/ ... 9224753632
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JosiahLightwood
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Re: Windowed/Borderless Stutter

Post by JosiahLightwood » 18 Aug 2020, 12:02

Thanks.

I still don't get why the VRR works perfectly fine in windowed mode as soon as I can at anything lower than 1/2 the refresh rate. E.g. at 144hz, 71 fps cap is smooth, but 72fps cap is a stutter fest with the refresh rate counter bouncing all over the place. This seems like it's either a monitor problem or a general freesync problem, at which point surely everyone would experience the same peculiarity.

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Re: Windowed/Borderless Stutter

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 18 Aug 2020, 15:59

JosiahLightwood wrote:
18 Aug 2020, 12:02
I still don't get why the VRR works perfectly fine in windowed mode as soon as I can at anything lower than 1/2 the refresh rate. E.g. at 144hz, 71 fps cap is smooth, but 72fps cap is a stutter fest with the refresh rate counter bouncing all over the place. This seems like it's either a monitor problem or a general freesync problem, at which point surely everyone would experience the same peculiarity.
Is this behaviour universal in all games? That VRR never works well at frame rates above half Hz in FSE? Even well-known VRR-compatible engines like source-engined games such as CS:GO?

If so, there may be some bug somewhere (Drivers-side, OS-side).

There has been some occasional bugs in OS and in drivers in NVIDIA's FreeSync implementation (aka "G-SYNC Compatible") that doesn't happen with G-SYNC Native, or AMD graphics cards, and sometimes these bugs are fixed by driver upgrades or firmware upgrades. G-SYNC Compatible is still very, very new from NVIDIA.

In theory, a driver-clean (complete driver uninstall and reinstall, to reset all settings to defaults). Some hidden nuances (like a unforseen weird "Half VSYNC" setting/bug for fullscreen mode) may be causing a VRR-fail-on-above-half-framerate situation, but there are infinite numbers of theoretical causes of bugs of monitors, so more information would be welcome.

What version of Windows are you using?
What version of drivers are you using?
Have you recently done a driver refresh since you bought the monitor/GPU?
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JosiahLightwood
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Re: Windowed/Borderless Stutter

Post by JosiahLightwood » 19 Aug 2020, 04:07

Every game in WINDOWED or BORDERLESS mode that runs at =/>1/2 refresh rate/FPS has jitter/choppiness.

I actually tested CSGO for you. Proper fullscreen works fine, fullscreen windowed doesn’t.

The refresh rate counter will periodically jump straight up to max refresh rate and back again to the current FPS. There is general choppiness.

JosiahLightwood
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Re: Windowed/Borderless Stutter

Post by JosiahLightwood » 19 Aug 2020, 04:16

Windows 10 (fresh install. I did a fresh install because I got a new graphics card with the monitor (2070 super) and wanted a clean start.

Z490g strix wifi
10600k
16gb 3200mhz ram
2070 super strix


Monitor is dell s2722dfg gsync COMPATIBLE.

It’s probably software/driver like you said. Seems like it’s fixable due to the very specific behaviour across all games. I genuinely wonder if people notice the stutter I’m experiencing or just overlook it. It’s like bad frame pacing in windowed mode. Probably to do with DWM and Freesync and the Nvidia Drivers.

I could just run fullscreen for everything and hope there isn’t any game that doesn’t support fullscreen properly, and hope for a fix in the future, but if it is a monitor problem I don’t want to keep it and find out there will never be a fix.

I should have got the PG279Q if Gsync Modules have less issues. xD

JosiahLightwood
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Re: Windowed/Borderless Stutter

Post by JosiahLightwood » 02 Oct 2020, 00:37

I wanted to update that I bought a PG279QE and a 2080 Super and transitioned to a mini ITX build recently, and Gsync (actual Gsync, not Gsync compatible) does EXACTLY the same thing in windowed mode. When capped at 71 FPS, the frame rate display on my monitors OSD shows a locked 71. If I lock it at anything above 72FPS, say 80 as an example, the refresh rate counter will fluctuate heavily +/- 5-10hz, and the game will occasionally micro stutter. It's very subtle (the stutter) but it does happen.

As soon as I enable fullscreen mode for any game I'm testing, the refresh rate counter LOCKS steadily at whatever FPS I have set, i.e. 80hz exactly with the above example. The game is then totally smooth, no random micro stutter at all.

This will become a major problem as more and more games stop providing support for Fullscreen Exclusive mode. Many Unity engine games, e.g. Risk of Rain 2, do not support fullscreen exclusive mode. I'm sure there are other games as well.

Why isn't this fixed by Nvidia or Microsoft. It's obviously an issue with DWM.

I have now tested this on three diffferent PC setups, with completely different hardware, freesync AND gsync monitors. Windowed mode variable refresh rate is UNSTABLE.

kalston
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Re: Windowed/Borderless Stutter

Post by kalston » 10 Nov 2020, 00:55

Hi, yep I am seeing the exact same problem (and just spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to fix it and Googling the issue). Windowed or borderless G-sync is broken (I don't know about AMD's version?). I have successfully used it in the past (but honestly that was quite a while ago, maybe a year?) but at some point it broke and now a game that I play daily absolutely requires it. Sucks.

I didn't know that capping below half refresh rate made it work though, nice find. But I don't want to play that game at 59fps...

Edit: to clarify there are some games that bypass DWM in windowed mode and g-sync works fine then (for example WoW in dx12) but I have no idea how that works.

Also, I have found that on my laptop with Intel HD graphics (no VRR), windowed/borderless ALWAYS seem to bypass DWM no matter the game (I know because there's obvious tearing) even though the exact same games run through DWM on my desktop with a dedicated nvidia GPU (and can't tear). Both of those indicate to me that the issue should be trivial to fix since bypassing DWM is already a feature, even without VRR.

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