Games not smooth despite 60+ FPS when vsync is off!

[Aquinus]

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26218785/fixed-timestep-stuttering-with-vsync-on

You're describing, once again, studdering. If the screen is tearing, then V-Sync probably isn't actually on because there are plenty of driver level settings that override what you and the application wants. It does introduce studder (not tearing) though. If you read that 2nd to last link you provided, the guy even edited his StackOverflow question to say that it appeared that scenes were getting rendered multiple times, so while the output was synchronized the actual rendering that altered the frame-buffer was not. Therefore the "changes" that actually occurred were happening slower than the frame rate.

This is the result of bad programming not bad v-sync.

This guy's question was answered:

It seems like you're not synchronizing your 60Hz frame loop with the GPU's 60Hz VSync. Yes, you have enabled Vsync in Nvidia but that only causes Nvidia to use a back-buffer which is swapped on the Vsync.

You need to set the swap interval to 1 and perform a glFinish() to wait for the Vsync.

Once again, look above. He has a physical memory problem which could very well be the problem (an occasional memory swap WILL drop a frame) and discussion of ours is only a tangent.

Edit: Adaptive v-sync isn't really pure v-sync.

 

[...PACMAN...]

It's understandable the OP is miffed as when he first had everything installed everything worked fine. Introduce a fresh install on an SSD and it's suddenly different? Some people will be like, it's user fault blah blah blah. But tbh I've had the same experience and managed to fix it. I had to reinstall again and basically methodically eliminate stuff that I thought could be the source of the issue.

This involved a different combination of chipset drivers, installing graphics drivers without all the excess stuff like physx, geforce experience etc. I then slowly introduced stuff back again one by one and eventually found a very smooth combination for my particular system.

Don't lose heart OP and don't get annoyed, just try the process of elimination and take things slowly. Even removing and reinstalling the same graphics driver can sometimes miraculously resolve issues. Some games work great on some drivers, some have issues and need frame caps (as mentioned by Mussels). It's a learning curve and what I tend to do is keep a record of what games worked well on what driver just so in the future I know for sure that the graphics driver worked well with it and that something else must be affecting it's performance. Something I may have possibly introduced to the system.

 

[BiggieShady]

It wouldn't hurt to run GPU-Z or afterburner sensor graphs in background while the stuttering occurs, then review the graph history to rule out any gpu/driver issues and by the way to monitor memory consumption.

 

[AsRock]

It wouldn't hurt to run GPU-Z or afterburner sensor graphs in background while the stuttering occurs, then review the graph history to rule out any gpu/driver issues and by the way to monitor memory consumption.

Which GPU memory could be it, as i have seen the game hit 3.6GB of video ram but that's at 3200x1800.

Forgot to say i have my GPU down clocked to 724 and game still runs perfectly.

 

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

Did you have the hard drive connected while you reinstalled the Win 8.1 on your SSD?

And/or are you using the HDD for your swap file instead of the SSD? Dumb question...I know.

This. The hdd was installed when windows was installed when windows was installed to the ssd. Your swap file is on the hdd instead of the ssd. default for windows install when a hdd is present when doing a os install on a ssd. Always just have the os drive hooked up when doing the os install, no other drives. Install those after the os install.

 

[MrGenius]

Yeah, you'd be surprised how much of a difference it can make. Since the speed of the drive with the page file = the speed of the "virtual memory". Particularly the random read/write speeds. I just thought it was a dumb thing to ask because I assume everybody knows that. And/or knows how important that is when the pagefile is being stored on a HDD or SSD.

 

[Brokencarr00t1]

Alright. I did all you said and did not help it. Now i can confirm that i have some issue whit PC. Its nothing to do with 60hz Monitor.

So ive just lowered resolution to low to all games and games become smooth as butter again with disabled vsync.
So it seems that fps software do not recognize fps drop and showing high fps when game is not smooth. Now i tried different fps softwares like fraps , dxtory but still is the same.

 

[Schmuckley]

Do you have an extra 2gb RAM stick laying around?

 

[Brokencarr00t1]

Do you have an extra 2gb RAM stick laying around?

No i dont , why ?

 

[Schmuckley]

You might be running out of RAM
How many GB do you have installed?
There's other things you can do, too..
Like set the affinity for the game to only 2 cores maybe..

 

[Brokencarr00t1]

You might be running out of RAM
How many GB do you have installed?
There's other things you can do, too..
Like set the affinity for the game to only 2 cores maybe..

i have 8gb.

How do i do that?

 

[AsRock]

You're describing, once again, studdering. If the screen is tearing, then V-Sync probably isn't actually on because there are plenty of driver level settings that override what you and the application wants. It does introduce studder (not tearing) though. If you read that 2nd to last link you provided, the guy even edited his StackOverflow question to say that it appeared that scenes were getting rendered multiple times, so while the output was synchronized the actual rendering that altered the frame-buffer was not. Therefore the "changes" that actually occurred were happening slower than the frame rate.

This is the result of bad programming not bad v-sync.

This guy's question was answered:


Once again, look above. He has a physical memory problem which could very well be the problem (an occasional memory swap WILL drop a frame) and discussion of ours is only a tangent.

Edit: Adaptive v-sync isn't really pure v-sync.

I have all so read that changing the frames read ahead from default 3 to 4 has helped some people with nVidia cards. Not used a nVidia card for many years now and it used to be the other way around but hey maybe it will help in this case.

run app\game in question and open Task Manager and right click the task and select Set Affinity

 

[Schmuckley]

ctrl+alt+del while game is running..
find game in task manager..
untick all but 2 threads. (1st 2)
I'm not familiar with what game you're playing..
If your CPU has hyperthreading,use thread 0 and 2.

 

[Aquinus]

ctrl+alt+del while game is running..
find game in task manager..
untick all but 2 threads. (1st 2)
I'm not familiar with what game you're playing..
If your CPU has hyperthreading,use thread 0 and 2.

He has a devil's canyon i5, it's in the OP's first post.

GTX 970 4gb OC
i5 4690k
8gb of Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz
Gigabyte Z97 Gaming 3 Motherboard
Corsair x600m
Samsung Evo SSD 120GB
Barracuda HDD 1TB

When you have a CPU without HyperThreading, changing the core affinity doesn't really do a whole lot. Once again, I think the hick-ups the OP is experiencing is due to Windows swapping pages out of physical memory. We really should focus on that issue first as it's the biggest and has the most potential to cause issues as the OP did say he was getting low on memory.

Changing the priority will help on if whatever else is taking time if another process is taking time. If the machine is swapping, this won't do you any good.

 

[Brokencarr00t1]

He has a devil's canyon i5, it's in the OP's first post.


When you have a CPU without HyperThreading, changing the core affinity doesn't really do a whole lot. Once again, I think the hick-ups the OP is experiencing is due to Windows swapping pages out of physical memory. We really should focus on that issue first as it's the biggest and has the most potential to cause issues as the OP did say he was getting low on memory.

Changing the priority will help on if whatever else is taking time if another process is taking time. If the machine is swapping, this won't do you any good.

What do you mean by swapping? I wish that i could find the solution to this instead of plaining to buy windows 7 and try with that :/

 

[xfia]

down grading to win 7 really only helps with older games.. they have tested the games you mentioned with win 8.

there is a few good suggestions here but i dont know what exactly to make of it. jump on the gsync boat!

swapping is referring to windows page file on a hdd/ssd and the system ram.. if what your doing is using more vram than what your gpu has it can use the resources with a performance penalty.

 

[MrGenius]

What do you mean by swapping? I wish that i could find the solution to this instead of plaining to buy windows 7 and try with that :/

Using the swap file/page file/virtual memory. Which means your available RAM/physical memory is low, or none, and the CPU is swapping pages stored in the virtual memory(the page file on your HDD or SSD) to substitute for what it can't fit/find in the RAM.

So maybe you didn't fix that if you didn't understand why you should. I highly recommend you do. As in, set no paging file for the HDD, and instead use the SSD for that. If you don't know how to set the amount of virtual memory manually, google it.

I also highly recommend you try the Windows 10 Pro Technical Preview. Which works very well on my system with the latest build. Especially for gaming. And, if you end up liking it, it's going to be a free upgrade from 7 or 8 when it's released. So it's definitely worth trying first, since the preview is also free.

 

[Aquinus]

What do you mean by swapping?

I mean that you're running out of physical memory and that Windows is needing to "swap" memory pages to the page file on the hard drive. This takes time and is anything but fast which is why I say that poor performance could be caused by this. It's entirely possible that you had enough memory free before starting the game, but then after you started playing it may needed to have put some system files or background service's memory into swap space (virtual memory, hard drive space that acts as system memory.)

Re-installing Windows might solve the problem if it's bloatware or a memory leak but, if it's because of all the services you run on your computer plus applications like after effects, then it makes more sense (IMHO) to upgrade to 16GB of memory. That all depends on your time constraints and budget though. I know that it takes me a little bit of time before i get my tower back to where I want it after a re-install, so I tend to be a little more conservative on the re-installs then I have in the past.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Or just permanently set the page file to use your ssd and never to use the hdd it Will wear the ssd out quicker but it wont reduce much of its useful life.
By that I mean I used a revo x2 120gb for five years like that and because it was a small sdd I don't care now its dead because I got my moneys worth of speedy use and for five years ,Now a 120 is worth little and so it will be in three years for your ssd.

 

[Brokencarr00t1]

Or just permanently set the page file to use your ssd and never to use the hdd it Will wear the ssd out quicker but it wont reduce much of its useful life.
By that I mean I used a revo x2 120gb for five years like that and because it was a small sdd I don't care now its dead because I got my moneys worth of speedy use and for five years ,Now a 120 is worth little and so it will be in three years for your ssd.

Okey but how do i do that?

 

[MrGenius]

See here http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=faq-Windows-8&faq=133

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

hers a screeny of the steps taken on mine ,you can see i have it set now.

 

[newconroer]

vsync eliminates tearing, but it won't remove stutters if the system drops frames. I reckon the OP's system was always dropping below 60fps momentarily like he describes, but he just didn't notice because vsync was off. Especially with Far Cry 4, where it doesn't run all that fast anyway.

You would still notice it.


This has nothing to do with OS version, hard disks or even hardware components.

The cause of the stutter/lack of smoothness is inconsistent frame latency. Going from 60-120 and back all the time, will be very noticeable with wildly fluctuating frame times.

Mussels hit you with the most simplistic solution, which is to cap the frames to something you can achieve at all times. Radeon Pro can also do this.
This method is a quick way to also tackle that issue where a game like Far Cry 4 dips to 57,58,56 FPS. Cap it at 55 and the problem is solved.

You can then leave Vsync off and the tearing should be minimal.

An alternative option (which works out better depending on the game engine), is to set a custom refresh rate for your monitor that matches your sustainable FPS. i.e. 70
Then you can use a program like Radeon Pro and lock the game's FPS to the refresh rate.
Again, Vsync would be optional.

This method works particularly well when you have a situation where the game is simply too demanding and 60fps is unattainable. Dying light is like this for me. 40-50 is the best average I get when moving about the city.
I made a custom 40hz resolution and then locked the game to the refresh rate. It holds the same frame latency for 100% of the time and feels smoother than when I have it bouncing back and forth from 40-50, with the occasional 80+ spike while staring at a wall or the sky.

 

[Aquinus]

Will wear the ssd out quicker but it wont reduce much of its useful life.

That depends on how often the machine is thrashing. The harder it thrashes the more stress it puts on the SSD, so if it gets to the point where gigabytes of memory are getting swapped, you'll be reducing the longevity of that drive pretty quickly. It also don't solve the problem that the OP very well might be running out of physical memory. I would call this a band-aid, not a solution.

 

[newconroer]

Once again, I think the recommendations here are good, but the elephant in the room is probably being ignored.

It may explain why he sees some variation in 'general' performance vs. his previous installation and setup.

The stutter issue he describes is something separate.