Can I get some impressions from people sensitive to stutter.

[whitespider]

Hey there, I am pretty excited about gsync. However I find the wait for it to hit picture-friendly monitors to be pretty frustrating. For those of you with gsync, that are also sensitive to frame variance stutter - I would love to get some impressions. Since the impressions of actual smoothness on a per game basis in the gsync section of the blur busters forum is completely lacking. People often talk about motion blur, and rarely about actual frame perception. And the few people that have talked about frame perception, already seemed fine with a high refresh rate and no vsync. They mostly just like the lack of tearing.

For me, the ability for gsync to smooth out stutters into a silky smooth smoothy is the most exciting thing on the technology horizon. While I have a catleap 2b @ 132hz, i often use nvidia's "half refresh" to make sure I am vsyncing to a framerate that I can maintain so that i can get consistently smoothed frames. That smoothness for me, adds so much to gaming.

Now, thanks to the commitment of the chief blur buster, I have had some pretty good and detailed descriptions of what gsync does. However what I don't see is much talk of specific games. Sure we have brought up that a few games benefit from gsync, such as battlefield 4, crysis 3, the 'big known benchmark titles', however the pc has hundreds of thousands of games. Not 3.

How do those 99.99.99% of other games perform with gsync? Naturally most 2d indie titles won't require gsync at all. So let's skip those. However there are still lot's games that always had big frame perception issues that I can't help but wonder about. Such as:

Skyrim - has loading stutters and microstutter, a highly modded skyrim with enb running at 30-50fps has even more. This is a good example of a game that could benefit from gsync.

Assassins Creed 3, Fallout 3, Crysis 1, Watch Dogs, Gothic 3, Oblivion, Thief, Emulators, Older games that use fullscreen, Dosbox, Diablo 3 with lot's of action on screen (it often drops below 60). Also, using nvidias built in HBAO to force support in games such as diablo 3 and fallout 3 and new vegas and skyrim, combined with sparse grid supersampling anti aliasing. And how those settings interact with gsync.
For example, enabling nvidias hbao in games creates a more stuttery laggy experience and more framerate variance in games regardless of framerate. So i would be interested if gsync smooths out over the top driver level graphics tweaking.

The list goes on. I am very interested in seeing how gsync handles a wide variety of things from a frame perception angle.

[fenderjaguar]

I'm going to stick my neck out here and just say it:

engine related stuttering can be more exaggerated with g-sync than it is with v-sync.

If you're holding your frame rate all the time and never dropping under, vsync has buffered frames and more latency, so as I see it, it always has 'frames in hand' and can give you those when the game runs out of them. I know that isn't exactly science, but from experience, this is way I think of it.

There are some games I would never play with G-sync. For example, GTAIV is only smooth with 1/3 refresh rate vsync on 120hz AND a 40 fps frame rate cap from rivatuner statistics server or dxtory. And when I mean smooth, I mean almost 100% fluid almost all the time. With G-sync and a 40 fps cap, it's dropping frames all over the place.

Other games like stalker COP, well there's so much engine related stuttering in that game, I would never play with G-sync or vsync. For some reason, it just runs better with no vsync. But I always frame rate cap. There isn't any game that I wouldn't cap with RSS, and that includes g-sync enabled as well.

I would definitely advise you to use a 60 fps cap ON TOP of that half refresh rate 120hz vsync. It cuts down on input lag as well, not as much as 59 or 58 fps would, but then again with 58/59 fps it'll stutter like the new mario kart 8 does.

Skyrim, I haven't played for a while. It used to stutter like crazy every second, like Doom 3 does without the com_fixedtic 1 command. And the equiv in fallout 3 and skyrim was clampfps60 or something? Now I'm not sure if that's needed, but I used to have skyrim running really smooth and never stuttering, but you couldn't run it over 60 fps or it would speed up

[RealNC]

Skyrim, I haven't played for a while. It used to stutter like crazy every second, like Doom 3 does without the com_fixedtic 1 command. And the equiv in fallout 3 and skyrim was clampfps60 or something? Now I'm not sure if that's needed, but I used to have skyrim running really smooth and never stuttering, but you couldn't run it over 60 fps or it would speed up

In Skyrim they've fixed this issue. In Fallout, I got around the issue by running the monitor in 64Hz. The microstutter is there because the game renders 64FPS and simply drops the extra frames when running in 60Hz mode. Even with V-Sync enabled, the game still renders 64FPS internally. I can't imagine what the engine developers were smoking

So I've just made a 64Hz mode with CRU and it's butter smooth. Same should go for Oblivion, I guess. And Skryim, if for some reason you still get the problem even with the latest version of the game.

With G-Sync, I would imagine that capping to 64FPS with Inspector or RTSS would provide a perfect solution.

[fenderjaguar]

In Skyrim they've fixed this issue. In Fallout, I got around the issue by running the monitor in 64Hz. The microstutter is there because the game renders 64FPS and simply drops the extra frames when running in 60Hz mode. Even with V-Sync enabled, the game still renders 64FPS internally. I can't imagine what the engine developers were smoking

So I've just made a 64Hz mode with CRU and it's butter smooth. Same should go for Oblivion, I guess. And Skryim, if for some reason you still get the problem even with the latest version of the game.

With G-Sync, I would imagine that capping to 64FPS with Inspector or RTSS would provide a perfect solution.

Indeed you are correct. But I'm pretty sure the clampfps60 command worked back when I played, but you couldn't drop under 60 fps, as it was then in fixed time step and the game slowed down. Also, this command is the best way to run fallout 3, as well.

And yes, I kicked up the original doom 3 (not BFG) to find the gsync matching itself to 63 fps or 64 fps and the game didn't stutter.

Also, what we're describing is the same thing that's happening with the new mario kart, when there is AI on the track. The AI is somehow keyed into a tic rate higher than 60 fps, and it's making the game stutter in much the same way. It really annoys me, yet 90% of people can't see it, and even most of the people who can, say they can live with it. Now, if MK8 ran on PC, then g-sync would have it sorted for me, as would your custom refresh rate.

[whitespider]

This is from when i had skyrim installed last, in my documents, games, skyrim.

[General]
sLanguage=ENGLISH
uExterior Cell Buffer=100
uGridsToLoad=7
iPreloadSizeLimit=84934656
iFPSClamp=64

I was also using a 128hz refresh rate set to half refresh in NCP. And i had all the settings set so that i rarely dropped below that number. It resulted in a very smooth game. However skyrim does have a lot of thick forests which will drop that. And thus you walk around in slowmotion. My hopes with gsync, is that i won't even need to use iFPSClamp= at all and gsync will smooth out the frames in a similar way without the downside of slowdown. I don't mind the occational loading stutter, I just can't handle microstutter. Because being able to just max everything out in skyrim while still maintaining that iFPSClamp @ consistent fps smoothness would be so liberating.

With the new SKSE, skyrim can now handle pretty much anything you throw at it until it hits the videocard memory limit. And no longer crashes with ugrids set to anything. So having gsync smooth out the framrate with everything at way beyond maximum, plus ugrids set to something like 9 or 12 would be wonderful. from 50fps to 110fps without a massive amount of framejumping.

Same goes for most other games. It's just they often don't let things be pushed as far as you want. So in that sense it makes skyrim more exciting.

[fenderjaguar]

As long as the engine itself can run smooth at variable frame rate, it should be ok.

For example, RAGE, Doom 3 BFG (I think) and sonic transformed will not be smooth when they drop under 60 fps, even with G-sync. Not like source engine game, or Crysis or metro would. With skyrim, I'm not so sure, since they seem to have done something to it (I played the other day and it wasn't stuttering capped at 60fps like it used to do without the iFPSClamp60).

I'd test it, but I'd have to load up some demanding mod or downsample to make it drop under 60 fps. Actually, I wouldn't be able to downsample, since it doesn't really work with G-sync. Although that dark souls 2 downsampling tool could work...

[whitespider]

Skyrim looks spectacular with sparse grid supersampling, you can find it by using nvidia inspector. Skyrim does not need an anti aliasing code, all you have to do is 'enhance' the AA and set multisample aa to 2x or 4x or 8x and also set the sparse grid supersampling to the same as you have set the multisampling. This results in a picture I prefer to downsampling. As it cleans up more of the picture. To me it resembles a significantly less blurry, yet equally effective TXAA style effect. Combining this with the ingame FXAA results in skyrim looking great.

[fenderjaguar]

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about different forms of AA.

I'll probably try 4x4SSAA if it works lol. Nah, maybe 2x2, it's a 780 not a titan z

[fenderjaguar]

Nah, SSAA doesn't work, but enhancing like you said does. Used 8x sparse grid, dropping to 50 fps in a fight. Sometimes, it was smooth. But in a fight, really stuttery, even with Gsync. But it's not really engine related stuttering, because it's totally smooth if you cap at a frame rate you don't drop under. I just capped at 40 fps and it was totally smooth, but when you let the frame rate go variable, it stutters.

[whitespider]

Hmmm. That's a shame. I was hoping skyrim would be smoothed out mostly by gsync.