Blur Busters Forums

Hello all, long time reader, first time poster,

I've been reading these posts for a while and I can't seem to find a solution to my current problem.

first of all, I'm a big fan of fluidity and smoothness in video gaming. One of the reasons I got G Sync installed on my 144HZ monitor.

I'm having issues with Battlefield 4 and Team Fortress 2, and Far Cry 3. I do not see the SMOOTH gameplay that I should be seeing with this technology.

I used to own an older i5 CPU with windows 7 and I couldn't get Gsync to work.

I basically overhauled my computer. I have an Asus Z87 Sabertooth MOBO, i7 4770K overclocked to 4.4 GHZ, a dual SLI GTX 680 setup. Solid State Drive. 16GB of 1866 MHZ Ram. All running on windows 8.1.

I noticed that when I run BF4 on Fullscreen mode, with Gsync enabled, I don't see the benefits when it dips below 60 FPS. to test it further, I used the game.variablefps command and locked it to 50 and it's super choppy. when I press the button on the monitor, it tells me I'm on MODE: Nvidia Gsync. furthermore, if I disable Gsync, and run BF4 on 120HZ with ULMB, it becomes really choppy. something's definitely fishy. my understanding is that this mode is supposed to reduce blur, but instead it just makes it really choppy. I tested the technology on the ufotest website and it works flawlessly there, but not in game.

I tried this on TF2. before loading up a practice game, I ran the command FPS_MAX 50 and created a game. again, really choppy and stuttery when running on Nvidia Gsync mode.

Farcry 3 as well. When FPS Dip below 60, the game is stuttery.

What absolutely KILLS me, is that I downloaded the Nvidia Gsync Demo and it runs SOOOO smooth at 40 fps. That's what I expected to experience on my games.

I don't know what the problem is. I disabled the SLI to run with one card and still the same issue persists on these games. I even went and removed it from my computer altogether, with no avail.

I've yet to experience the benefits of GSync on any of my games.

I've tried different profiles on Nvidia inspector from various people around the internet and nothing seems to fix my problem.

what suggestions might you guys have?

I'm at work right now, but I'm willing to post screenshots/files/ of anything that you guys would need to help me analyze my current situation. I'm going to try my monitor on my cousin's set up. he's got dual 780 TI's and I will see if the monitor still display these stuttery situations on BF4 and TF2 on his set up.

I recorded videos but.. I don't think they translate very well because of the frame rate at which they're recorded and YouTube's conversion, etc.

I spent so much money upgrading, that I'm not even mad anymore, just... sad I can't see this bad boy working as intended.

Cheers

Fralnky i'm starting to think right you, big delusion.
Yesterday i made my VG248QE compatible with g-sync with the kit(thanks to a france shop) and first game i tried was dota 2... not so smooth, in addition tried bf4 too and frankly that was not so impressive like review said.... i'm really starting to think a big scam by nvidia...

Unfortunately, G-sync is not a cure for engine related stuttering. But I would have expected B4 to be good, since I've heard people saying they tested it with that.

Problem is, I don't have any of those games you mention. I do have source engine games, but I play them at fixed frame rates, capped at 120 fps on 144hz g-sync mode.

There are some games that run great with variable frame rate, like Crysis 1, metro 2033, the new tomb raider are all examples I can think of.

What other games have you tried? I tried skyrim on the behest of someone wondering what it's like, and basically it's terrible, unless you cap at something you don't drop under. But it's the engine, not a problem with g-sync.

Try capping Dota 2 to 50FPS (use RTSS, NVidia Inspector, or EVGA Precision to do it) and use a 60Hz mode with V-Sync instead of G-Sync. Then you will see the kind of stutter that G-Sync fixes.

I played it for long time with VG248qe without v-sync and was ultra smooth the cursor too...
Don't give false news to people G-sync it's very far away from what is supposed to be.
I was ultra hyped but really now i think i have trashed 250 euros for the kit...

CoMa wrote:Don't give false news to people

I'm not doing. I stated what games work well with variable frame rates and which ones don't. GTA IV is another one which is pretty bad with a fluctuating frame rate. What other games have you played, did you try tomb raider or crysis?

Chief Blur Buster's Response

Rotocut wrote:Hello all, long time reader, first time poster,

Firstly, welcome to Blur Busters Forums! Let me try to help.
Next, I can tell that there are definitely some problems because:
-- You claim to see the GSYNC improvement in Pendulum Demo but not in BF4 or Crysis3.
-- I can see the same Pendulum Demo motion-smoothing effect in BF4 and Crysis3.
-- I can see the same TestUFO blur-eliminating effect in several high-fps games (120fps@120Hz) such as TF2, Borderlands2 and Portal2.

There are lots of us happy with GSYNC.
-- PoWn3d_0704's Gsync Thread
-- GSYNC experience by TheExodu5
-- nimbulan's first G-SYNC impressions
Etc.

So I want to see if we can figure this out.
Here's some important questions, so I can try and help you:

1. Press the MENU button while playing game. Does it say GSYNC?
   While playing a game, press the MENU button on your monitor. It should say "GSYNC Mode" instead of "Normal Mode" or "ULMB Mode". If it does not, then we've found the problem -- try the GSYNC override
2. What is your NVIDIA graphics driver version?
   There are some stutter issues in certain NVIDIA drivers. As a result, this is a very important consideration.
3. What brand of gaming mouse, and which Hz is it set at?
   NVIDIA lists a 1000Hz mouse as a strong recommendation for GSYNC. (My testing agrees). 500Hz is the minimum, but I see a visual fluidity difference between 500Hz vs 1000Hz during GSYNC and during strobing. You want reduced microstutter from the beat-frequency effects between current game framerate versus mouse Hz. High-Hz mice is quite important for these displays. Also, I recommend you also install the Windows 8.1 registry fix for 1000Hz operation to reduce stutters, if you haven't already (there was a bug with mouse fluidity with Windows 8.1). Modern gaming mice makes a big fluidity difference with 120Hz+ monitors.
4. Did you make sure you ran framerate matching refreshrate during during ULMB?
   Strobing works best at framerates matching refreshrates, such as 120fps@120Hz or 100fps@100Hz, or 85fps@85Hz. Motion blur elimination eliminates so much motion blur, that stutters/tearing becomes more visible without motion blur. Blur-free can look more stuttery, but you shouldn't have that much stutters to begin with on such a powerful system. Strobing won't look good at framerates less than refreshrate. You must absolutely use 1000Hz AND a high framerate to compensate. Try briefly testing VSYNC ON + 1000Hz mouse + full framerate (to get TestUFO style fludity) during panning/strafing/turning in any of your older Source Engine games (e.g. Half Life 2, Portal 2, Team Fortress 2, CounterStrike:GO, etc), or any game capable of consistent 120fps@120Hz operation. To avoid VSYNC ON, you can also use fps_max to match or nearly-match the framerate.
5. What is the current CPU/GPU temperature?
   Run a monitoring utility while running a game. Sometimes there's a processor overheating issue which causes them to be throttling, causing major stutters to occur. Let's make sure this isn't a cause

There are several other possible causes; there may also be other "unexpected" background issues with your system that needs to be troubleshooted. It's happened before -- the high performance system with lots of mysterious stutters (even on a 60Hz monitor). But first would also like to know your graphics driver version and your mouse.

Rotocut wrote:I'm going to try my monitor on my cousin's set up. he's got dual 780 TI's and I will see if the monitor still display these stuttery situations on BF4 and TF2 on his set up.

I think at this stage, this is an excellent idea. I'm anxious to know the result too. If your cousin's system plays smooth with key games such as BF4 and Crysis3, I recommend an OS reinstall as I know this has helped one person.

I have now messaged Manuel_G of NVIDIA to check this thread, too. Appreciate your patience -- It may be a few days, but NVIDIA does pay close attention to all threads I tell them about.

hello! thank you for the replies. I really do appreciate it.

i'm going to quickly answer your questions, without having the hard numbers but as close as I can.

Press the MENU button while playing game. Does it say GSYNC?
yes, i specified it on my initial post. it does say MODE: NVIDIA GSYNC.

What is your NVIDIA graphics driver version?
VERY latest. can't recall the number.


What brand of gaming mouse, and which Hz is it set at?
i have a razer deathadder. i am going to try the 1000hz polling fix and see if that improves it.

Did you make sure you ran framerate matching refreshrate during during ULMB?
no i didn't. and that makes a lot of sense. i will try that to get the feel for ULMB in all its glory. thanks for explaining that to me.

What is the current CPU/GPU temperature?
last test I did, on full load i see the CPU reach 70C i believe. it wasn't high. that's why i kept a moderate overclock on my 4770k to 4.4GHZ with the corsair H80i cooling unit i have.

so straight after work I took my monitor and brought it over to test with my cousin's set up.

first thing i tried was the Nvidia Pendulum demo. it works great. very smooth.

next game i tried was Crysis 3, cranked everything up, ran it with one 780TI in ultra with 8X MSAA and it brought down the FPS to 34-44.

the game ran surprisingly smooth. I turned off GSYNC and it also ran smooth. So it was a little difficult for me to gauge if GSync made a significant improvement over having it off.

I fired up TF2 and set the MAX_FPS to 50. it ran a little smooth. you can still see that it's not butter smooth though but... i guess i wont reach 50 FPS on TF2.

Finally, I fired up BF4... moment of truth... i set the cap to 50 and ultimately 40... i realized that this monitor IS working but I possibly am under the wrong impression as to what i should be experiencing.

my impression was that the games running at 40 and 50 fps would somehow mimic the feel of a 80-120 hz scene.. but that's not necessarily the case.

i was still able to see the difference between 50 vs 60. But I'm starting to realize that the engine coding has to do a lot with the flow and smoothness of the gameplay. I say this because crysis 3 was very smooth at lower frames. surprisingly smooth. so that just leaves me to believe that BF4 might not necessarily be as optimized for GSync.

There are reports of people having issues getting BF4 working on reddit. so I don't think i'm alone on this one. http://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/commen ... _gsync_my/

so, i'm not going to break my head trying to figure it out. i'm going to keep gaming. my SLI Set up keeps my game running on Ultra at any setting at 110+ FPS, so i'm not really going to even remotely experience the FPS go down to the 50's. I just wanted to crank up the Quality from 100% to 150% but that's just overkill. i prefer smooth gameplay over the "crazy" quality. The game looks beautiful starting from the Medium settings and up, anyway.

Again, if someone has BF4 working flawlessly with GSync at 40 fps and 50FPS let me know. That's my main game and I'd be interested to know what possible fixes there are for that game.

Cheers.

Hi Rotocut,
Let me see if I can replicate your results tomorrow when I go back into the office. Have you been able to troubleshoot this issue anymore? have you check in BF4 the graph by running the console command "perfoverlay.drawgraph 1" to see if the lines are smooth or stuttery while playing?

sorry ManuelG, i've been really busy at work. but yes, i ran the game a few days ago with the drawgraph and the game runs fairly smooth. the occasional CPU lag spike but i am attributing those to the engine.

After messing with the game (BF4) and other games, I came to like GSync. it's working for me... i guess it was always working for me, it was a matter of perception.

I compared with other monitors and i definitely see the difference now.

i'm happy with the technology. it's only going to get better from now on.