stuttering 60fps

[yamaci1775]

I'm having a similar issue in AC Mirage. I have a 144 hz screen and I've tried in game, RTSS and NVIDIA's frame cap to cap the game to 60 but result is a stuttery, non smooth 60 FPS that constantly has microstutters and skips on the screen. I can confirm VRR is working with monitor OSD but it also constantly shoots up to 144 hz randomly and is very erratic. Of course monitor OSD is unreliable and only thing it should be used for is to determine whether VRR works or not, in this case, it clearly does. Yeah, I don't see tearing either, and I've tried in game vsync, driver vsync and various different configurations.

Then I tried disabling vrr, setting the screen to 60 hz and then enabling just Vsync. and voila, game now presents smoothly, like super smooth, so much so that I cannot go back to how microstuttery VRR 60 FPS feels in this game.

I'm really at a loss here. Only thing I can think of is that Vsync creates a buffer that somehow erases certain microstutters caused by asset streaming. In that case, VRR should be deemed incompatible with such games. But no one talks about that. Besides, almost half the games I've played over the last year had some kind of streaming/asset loading stutter. I don't necessarily have a top of the line SSD, but at least it is a 2.4 GB/s NVME SSD so it should be, to some extent, enough.

Anyways, it is pretty saddening. Vsync 60 hz method works but of course has some lag. It is acceptable. The actual problem is, AC Mirage is a game where I can get a consistent 60 FPS but in some other games, that is not going to be a thing. So if another game that I cannot get 60 FPS also produces asset streaming hitches that can only be get ridden of with some kind of Vsync, then it means I'd have to go for half rate vsync. And in that case, half rate vsync on PC through nvidia control panel is simply "unplayable" compared to the 30 FPS modes found on consoles. By smoothness, yes, it achieves the same visual smoothness as consoles, I can clearly attest to that. But playability? To me it feels like vsync and half vsync on PC has unnecessary amounts of additional input lag compared to what consoles have, even when compared to a barebones PS4 at that (yes, I did direct comparisons using the same gamepad and monitor in a variety of games).

Anyways it is pretty sad. AC Mirage and Starfield are two games that are riddled with streaming stutters that I can only seem to get away if I rely on Vsync. But then Vsync practically forces me to target 60 FPS, which is impossible for my lowend CPU in some scenes and scenarios. And when I would be fine with 30 FPS itself on consoles, I'm greeted by unplayable levels of input oddity on PC.

Your post is pretty much self-concluded. Vsync will deliver a smoother experience in exchange of input latency. That "buffer" you mention is pre-rendered/queued frames that can help iron out frame time inconsistency, which also causes input lag. When you use a CPU frame limiter like RTSS, essentially 0 frame will be queued and VRR does it job to show you exactly how your game is running. That stutter is likely to be frame time stutter, not sync-related stutter so there's pretty much nothing to troubleshoot.

And yes stutter has plagued many PC games over the years. That's the nature of this platform I'm afraid.

Okay, I'm with you on this one. And I can clearly see if I can get the game to be super GPU bound with no bottlenecking, it results as more buffers and smoother experience. So vsync is not the only way, and should not be the only way to acquire the said buffer to get smoothness. We can achieve similar smoothness if we can get our GPU usage to be at its maximum.

So why is there not a framecap variation that employs at least a 1 frame buffer, acting as if the GPU is maxed out?

I guess if we have a system that has is CPU bottlenecked, we can reduce GPU's clockspeeds to force the engine to use more buffers as a result of being GPU boundness. But we should have the option to get that 1 frame buffer at any arbitrary framecap. Otherwise games like these makes VRR unusable unless you get a perfect %99 GPU usage. It is a weird situation, then.

[Luviaz]

Okay, I'm with you on this one. And I can clearly see if I can get the game to be super GPU bound with no bottlenecking, it results as more buffers and smoother experience. So vsync is not the only way, and should not be the only way to acquire the said buffer to get smoothness. We can achieve similar smoothness if we can get our GPU usage to be at its maximum.

So why is there not a framecap variation that employs at least a 1 frame buffer, acting as if the GPU is maxed out?

I guess if we have a system that has is CPU bottlenecked, we can reduce GPU's clockspeeds to force the engine to use more buffers as a result of being GPU boundness. But we should have the option to get that 1 frame buffer at any arbitrary framecap. Otherwise games like these makes VRR unusable unless you get a perfect %99 GPU usage. It is a weird situation, then.

A frame limiter does nothing to the number of pre-rendered frames. It's entirely depends on specific game/ driver configuration. I believe the common varies from 1 - 3, NVIDIA driver has an option to config that.
The games you mentioned are very heavy on CPU, so it quite hard to produce a perfect flat frame time, even on high-end hardware.
If you don't mind the input lag and op for smoothness, then Vsync ON is your best bet. You don't have to disable Freesync, it can work with Vsync fine. Freesync will take care of sync-related stutter when FPS falls below targeted refresh rate.
You would want to put effort in specific patches/ fixes/ mods to improve performance or upgrading hardware rather than tinker with Sync configuration, since the stutter is produced in the game's rendering not displaying.