What issue am I experiencing here?

[vigrond]

I'm looking for a technical name for the issue I'm experiencing so I may better fix it. I have a theory but I'm not sure, wondering if someone with more expertise can provide me with the proper lingo

The issue has to do with screen movement in first person shooters (with objects / foreground / background moving across screen fast with mouse movement)

I don't think this is a screen tearing or fps issue because:

* example game: Overwatch
* constant 160fps, no drops more than 2-3 fps
* 165fps sync-compatible monitor (Lenovo Legion Y27q-20)
* GSync On
* Vsync on
* Low Latency Mode: Ultra
* Prefer maximum performance
* No other programs using GPU according to " Display GPU activity" in NVIDIA settings

OW Settings:

* 1440p @ 165hz
* Frame limit 157

Sometimes (especially if I have firefox running in the background, even with hardware accel off, I experience unsmooth screen movement with fast mouse movements. It is harder to keep track of objects with my eyes. For this reason I feel like it is something to do with CPU usage.

Other times this movement seems smooth as hell and I can track things with my eyes flawlessly.

What are some things that could be causing this?

[ball2hi]

I have a very similar issue to you, and disabling my Anti-Virus completely helped greatly but the issue isn't completely gone.

What processor and monitor(s) do you have? How many sticks of RAM do you use?

[deama]

Delete this, I accidentally double posted.

[deama]

Disable Gsync or any sync technology, and try this:

Don't put nvidia ultra low latency to ultra, leave it on On; only pick ultra if you want a bit less input lag if you push GPU past 95%.

Disable gsync/freesync or whatever else fancy stuff you got, you don't need it; from my experience it's a scam.
I went to a friend's house at one point to check out his gsync thing, but even though it was at 100hz, it felt like it was running at 60hz, in addition to the +20ms input lag that he got (I measured it) from it. After I disabled it and configured his system, not only did it finally feel smooth for him, he doesn't really get any tear lines either; he even decided to overclock it to 120hz just to get it smoother.

Disable all vsync, from nvidia control panel and in games.

Not sure if you have this, but download RTSS (latest version), since 2019 they added scanline sync, we will use this to fix your issue, hopefully.

Alright so open up RTSS and delete any profiles you may have for the games you'll be testing, keep global. highlight "Global" profile and then click "Setup" at the bottom. Under the "FCAT properties" tick the "enable frame color indicator" and to the right pick the 2 bars option from the drop down; click ok. If you have any values under "frame limit" or "scanline sync", put them to 0.
Now basically what should happen is two long white bars on the left side of your screen should appear when you start a game, if they don't make sure other profiles aren't interfering, and make sure you also got Show On-screen statistics enabled, as well as on-Screen display support.

Now open up a game, make sure the game is easy for you to run at 240fps (if you have a 240hz monitor), and make sure you don't do these tests in the main menu, make sure you're inside of the game itself.
Your framerate should be uncapped at this point, and the white bars to the left should be flickering a bunch between transparent white bar, and a solid white bar, or just flickering between no bar and a solid white bar. When this happens that means the frames aren't in sync, basically it's a microstutter. If the two bars are visible, but they're transparent white, then you don't have any stutters or tearing; this is what you want.
Essentially the idea is that you play with the scanline sync value until you can get 2 transparent white bars on the left at all times (or as often as you can). For me, at 120hz, with a ryzen 3600, 2060 super, and a 1080p monitor, -300 was the sweet spot for me if I had the dwm enabled. If I have the dwm disabled then you'd have to tune it on a per game basis, but I found most games worked fine for me at 870.

Here are examples to help you:
what you want:
https://i.imgur.com/g4SAoQW.jpg
See how there's two white bars but they're transparent? You can see a silhouette of some button and the rest of the map in the background, you want to keep it like this at all times, or at least most of the time.

what you don't want:
https://i.imgur.com/2XZ7g4l.jpg
This is what you don't want, it basically gives you obvious flickering and just doesn't look in-sync so to speak. One bar may look transparent whereas the other bar will look solid, e.g. in bottom of the picture, the right one looks transparent, whereas the left one looks solid, you want them both to be transparent all the time, and throughout the entire screen not just the lower half.

Keep in mind that these bars will actually behave differently at different fps and hz. I'm not entirely sure how they'll look like at 240hz, but should be something similar. Basically, if you don't notice the flickering, that's what you want to keep it at, if it flickers, then that's bad and you want to avoid that.

If you've gone through all the values and you still can't get it transparent stable, then there's something interfering with your general system, e.g. you have a big resource hog in the background, or lots of small resource hogs, or even something itself is wrong with windows, e.g. timer resolution problems etc...
It could also mean that your version of windows may be broken, or has been configured really badly (maybe an update broke something?) In which case we'll have to go through an elimination process, hopefully it won't come to this...
And finally, if you still can't get it stable, then your hardware isn't up to snuff, for that particular game at least.

BONUS:
This is what a tearline looks like, you won't have to worry about this though, unless you disable the dwm or run games in fullscreen exclusive:
https://i.imgur.com/h6aV0MG.jpg
Basically you have a type of "tear" that flickers in a specific spot (the spot can change, and the size can change too, could be half the screen), and it looks like the bad flickering I was talking about above, but at a specific spot on the bars.

Disclaimer: I've been told by more prestigious members on this forum that the gsync thing I've mentioned above may be be false, or not apply to you, disable it, test it out, and see if it affects you.

[TTT]

Above is right, whether its your problem or not is another matter.

If you use ULL set to Ultra you need to be pinning your GPU at max usage constantly, if you are frame capping then turn it off.

You are ok to leave it to 'ON' but if you are frame capping below 100% GPU usage just turn it off because it isn't activating anyway.

Also saying this they just announced Nvidia Reflex for Overwatch yesterday, so Reflex will take priority over any NULL setting anyway when they update the game with it.