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

[Brokencarr00t1]

When i bought my PC and installed a windows 8.1 for the first time games worked perfect vsync on or off. Then i got my HDD (Had SSD only before) and reinstalled windows 8.1 on SSD. When running games with vsync off they looks terrible. My fps is showing 60-120 (in most cases 80) fps, but games are not smooth at all. But when i vsync is on and games are capped on 60fps its smooth as butter! I dont mind playing at 60fps but demanding games as Dying Light , Far Cry 4 get those small fps drops to 57-58 that drives me crazy. My fps on these games is always around 80fps at ultra but does not feel smooth at all with that vsync disabled.

What could cause these problems?
My drivers are updated , Windows 8.1 is up to date as well. I dont have a virus.

PC :

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

 

[Aquinus]

That's called tearing. When V-Sync is off, the scene can get cut off before it's fully rendered, so in reality you're seeing parts of two rendered scenes. V-Sync makes it so that doesn't happen and it does this by using a buffer to hold on to a frame or two so it can easily put an entire cohesive scene on the screen, one at a time. I personally feel that there is no reason to not use V-Sync on a properly configured computer unless you can't maintain 60FPS. G-Sync and FreeSync are supposed to be better solutions to V-Sync with regard to this particular problem.

 

[AsRock]

I play Dying Light @ 3200x1800 without issue without vsync, although with it feels a little odd although totally playable still i have enjoyed it much more with it off.

As for what FPS i am getting i have no idea but it feels like 40+. I keep meaning to try another app other than AB but never get around to it as it's played perfectly fine for me.

And tbh to complain of it dropping 3 fps max i cannot help to say get over it lol. Which is another reason i have not installed another fps monitor as it just gets in the way of just enjoying a game.

EDIT: tell ya what turn the nVidia option on to run it at a higher resolution than your monitor does that will cut the fps down some so if tearing is your issue it should be problem solved.

 

[Aquinus]

And tbh to complain of it dropping 3 fps max i cannot help to say get over it lol. Which is another reason i have not installed another fps monitor as it just gets in the way of just enjoying a game.

8GB of ram maybe? It's possible that Windows could be doing a little bit of swapping if the application starts using a lot of memory and if there are other background services or applications. I upgraded from my Phenom II 940 because 8GB of DDR2 wasn't cutting it anymore.

So maybe keeping an eye on CPU and memory usage when the OP is gaming would be a good plan to see if anything stands out.

 

[MrGenius]

This^

 

[Devon68]

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

 

[MrGenius]

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

 

[Brokencarr00t1]

That's called tearing. When V-Sync is off, the scene can get cut off before it's fully rendered, so in reality you're seeing parts of two rendered scenes. V-Sync makes it so that doesn't happen and it does this by using a buffer to hold on to a frame or two so it can easily put an entire cohesive scene on the screen, one at a time. I personally feel that there is no reason to not use V-Sync on a properly configured computer unless you can't maintain 60FPS. G-Sync and FreeSync are supposed to be better solutions to V-Sync with regard to this particular problem.

Just to make clear. I know the difference between screen tearing and when game is not smooth. Im fine with screen tearing and of course that i get it when i disable vsync but choppy gameplay did not existed before. Also i should mention that when i disable vsync in games and limit the fps to 60 in dxtory i get that choppy gameplay again even when fps is limited at 60. So it has to do something with that vsync.

Thanks for trying to help me.

8GB of ram maybe? It's possible that Windows could be doing a little bit of swapping if the application starts using a lot of memory and if there are other background services or applications. I upgraded from my Phenom II 940 because 8GB of DDR2 wasn't cutting it anymore.

So maybe keeping an eye on CPU and memory usage when the OP is gaming would be a good plan to see if anything stands out.

Gosh , i should mention that sometime (very often actually) a my memory usage goes up to 94% after about one hour when playing some game or working on After Effects. Even when i turn off After Effects or game memory usage does not get back to normal. It stays to 94% until i restart PC. Sometimes i get terrible lag as well that force me to restart PC (This not happening very often)

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

First i had a Windows 8.1 on SSD only (had no HDD then) Then i bought HDD , mounted it on PC before installing the Windows (just to move important files) Then i installed a Windows on SDD when HDD was in PC and working.

 

[AsRock]

8GB of ram maybe? It's possible that Windows could be doing a little bit of swapping if the application stats using a lot of memory and if there are other background services or applications. I upgrade from my Phenom II 940 because 8GB of DDR2 wasn't cutting it anymore.

So maybe keeping an eye on CPU and memory usage when the OP is gaming would be a good plan to see if anything stands out.

I have noticed after playing Dyinglight windows cache jumps from 4GB to 9-10GB with about 6GB used.

So i guess it could be windows making more space for the game to be cached maybe but putting it in to the pagefile.

CPU usage is pretty low at around 50%.

 

[Aquinus]

Just to make clear. I know the difference between screen tearing and when game is not smooth. Im fine with screen tearing and of course that i get it when i disable vsync but choppy gameplay did not existed before. Also i should mention that when i disable vsync in games and limit the fps to 60 in dxtory i get that choppy gameplay again even when fps is limited at 60. So it has to do something with that vsync.

Yes, but limiting to 60FPS without V-Sync is not the same because you're not using the graphics card driver to buffer the scenes, so you'll still get tearing. You can get tearing under 60FPS too, the difference is that it's much less likely to happen. The issue is that V-Sync does exactly that, it keeps the output of the frames synchronized to the refresh rate of the display, so if a frame isn't ready for one reason or another, it won't display the frame until the beginning of the next refresh cycle (stutter), whereas without V-Sync, it will start displaying it on the next frame which is already being drawn (tearing). So it's more of a function of how the operation of displaying a frame changes, not the frame rate itself. I just wanted to makes sure that clarification was put in there because V-Sync isn't simply a limited frame rate, it's a frame rending scheme that's locked to the refresh rate.

Thanks for trying to help me.

That's why we're here.

Gosh , i should mention that sometime (very often actually) a my memory usage goes up to 94% after about one hour when playing some game or working on After Effects. Even when i turn off After Effects or game memory usage does not get back to normal. It stays to 94% until i restart PC. Sometimes i get terrible lag as well that force me to restart PC (This not happening very often)

After Effects can use a lot of memory, so can Windows itself. If you're closing applications and memory usage isn't dropping, that means either the application are taking up hardly any memory or that the memory they are consuming are swapped out and are in the page file, not in active memory. If this happens regularly, I would suggest considering a 16GB set. It probably would solve a lot of these problems.

Short term, I would find out what's eating up so much memory when it occurs by using the task manager and checking the peak working set size on all processes. Sorting by this column will be very enlightening.

For example, I turned my tower on and haven't done much more than open Chrome. This is what I see (with a lot of columns being displayed, not all are defaults.)

So for your case, your worst offenders (with respect to memory usage) should be square at the top of this list.

 

[Brokencarr00t1]

Yes, but limiting to 60FPS without V-Sync is not the same because you're not using the graphics card driver to buffer the scenes, so you'll still get tearing. You can get tearing under 60FPS too, the difference is that it's much less likely to happen. The issue is that V-Sync does exactly that, it keeps the output of the frames synchronized to the refresh rate of the display, so if a frame isn't ready for one reason or another, it won't display the frame until the beginning of the next refresh cycle (stutter), whereas without V-Sync, it will start displaying it on the next frame which is already being drawn (tearing). So it's more of a function of how the operation of displaying a frame changes, not the frame rate itself. I just wanted to makes sure that clarification was put in there because V-Sync isn't simply a limited frame rate, it's a frame rending scheme that's locked to the refresh rate.

That's why we're here.

After Effects can use a lot of memory, so can Windows itself. If you're closing applications and memory usage isn't dropping, that means either the application are taking up hardly any memory or that the memory they are consuming are swapped out and are in the page file, not in active memory. If this happens regularly, I would suggest considering a 16GB set. It probably would solve a lot of these problems.

Short term, I would find out what's eating up so much memory when it occurs by using the task manager and checking the peak working set size on all processes. Sorting by this column will be very enlightening.

For example, I turned my tower on and haven't done much more than open Chrome. This is what I see (with a lot of columns being displayed, not all are defaults.)
View attachment 63519

So for your case, your worst offenders (with respect to memory usage) should be square at the top of this list.

Task manager shows no apps that use so much memory when memory usage is high.

 

[Aquinus]

Task manager shows no apps that use so much memory when memory usage is high.

Make sure to click "Show processes from all users" and make sure you've added the "Peak working set (Memory)" column as it's not there by default. The regular working set doesn't actually describe the maximum the application has used from active memory. It also may not be one, but the combination of several services or applications that could eat up memory. You won't both have full memory usage but nothing taking up much memory with respect to Peak Working Set, they are dependent on each other to some extent but remains large even when it's been swapped out to a page file.

 

[Mussels]

use MSI afterburner with rivatuner statistics server.


Disable Vsync and cap your in-game FPS - i use 70, but to avoid tearing and issues i suggest 59 or 60

(framerate limit, right middle)

Dying light is terribly optimised, runs like crap for me too even on all settings low, with medium textures. Still looks nice, but FPS dips ahoy capn.

 

[qubit]

@Brokencarr00t1

The answer to your question is in your OP, although you don't appear to realize it.

The only way you get buttery smooth gameplay is if vsync is on and there are no dropped frames. That's it. Anything else will produce some combination of stutter and tearing.

The exact details of how it looks and how severe it is vary, but it's never, ever smooth as butter with vsync off since the GPU output isn't synced to the constant refresh rate of the monitor. It looks like changing something on your system affected this, but it doesn't really matter since it was there already even though you didn't realise it.

Just leave vsync on and be happy.

The only other way of getting smooth animation is something like FreeSync / G-Sync where the monitor syncs to the graphics card rather than displaying a fixed framerate.

 

[Misaki]

Of course it's not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing

 

[kn00tcn]

the thing is, some engines are quite stuttery as we have seen in fcat charts, i dont know how fc4 is but when fc3 came out (& for months after), people complained about stutters across all kinds of cards, settings, framerates

dying light? chrome engine... in dead island was a bit awkard, the biggest problem in dead island was keyboard input that was done incorrectly, resulting in stutters as you hold the W key for example, even though the fps would be 60 vsync (& mouse aim was perfectly smooth), so i wouldnt expect dying light to be a great example of a smooth game

but if OP says this ONLY started happening when switching from SSD to HDD, then.... it's probably the streaming of assets by the game along with the way windows handles the page file or other things

(yes tearing was my first guess but let's not be so quick to assume the answer)

 

[Mussels]

not wanting to sound like a broken record, but the fix i posted above with the frame rate cap solved my stuttering issues in all those titles. dead island, far cry, skyrim - 59FPS (or 60) solves a lot of engine related micro stutter, without needing Vsync (which some games like dead space were broken)

 

[DinaAngel]

vsync causes frame by frame delay and stutters but generally if you have enough vram and bandwidth and speed then it shouldnt be an issue. 4k has stutter issues because we lack the bandwidth and the speed and vram and panel controllers that's on par with 4k. It's serious input lagg on most 4k ips solutions atm.

the 390x is 4k focused and should take it like a champ.

Also I don't recommend anyone buying non g-sync or free-sync 4k monitor because stuttering. The gsync or freesync seems to fix it

This issue was common more back in the day for me on 1080p with 5870s


I know op didn't use a 4k but this is still under the same vsync and suppose in certain cases it's lots of stuttering.
I get stutters and tearing with vsync on but much less than with it off

 

[qubit]

I get stutters and tearing with vsync on but much less than with it off

You can get stutters with vsync on, but how can you get tearing? By definition, turning on vsync is the one thing it fixes.

The only thing I can think of is the situation where a bug somewhere ignores the vsync setting and doesn't actually turn it on. I've seen that particular one several times over the years, especially when it comes to running old games on new hardware and software.

 

[BiggieShady]

This happened to me couple of times with games that didn't stress my 970 enough ... gpu was changing power states while playing game instead off staying constantly at max power state. You can try different drivers, custom driver profile with forced power state setting or bump up the anti aliasing to create more work for the gpu.
I believe Nv needs to work out some issues in the drivers for the 900 series, because majority of lower powered games don't have this issue.

 

[DinaAngel]

You can get stutters with vsync on, but how can you get tearing? By definition, turning on vsync is the one thing it fixes.

The only thing I can think of is the situation where a bug somewhere ignores the vsync setting and doesn't actually turn it on. I've seen that particular one several times over the years, especially when it comes to running old games on new hardware and software.

if u have drops and peaks thats very severe, then vsync wont be able to remove tearing.
might happen since i only have 3gb vram

 

[qubit]

if u have drops and peaks thats very severe, then vsync wont be able to remove tearing.
might happen since i only have 3gb vram

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.

 

[Aquinus]

if u have drops and peaks thats very severe, then vsync wont be able to remove tearing.
might happen since i only have 3gb vram

You're talking about standard stuttering. Micro-stuttering is a crossfire/SLi problem solved by using frame pacing. Tearing is when the next frame is getting rendered before the scene is done being displayed and V-Sync completely resolves this particular issue. What you're describing is an occasional stutter due to rendering not occuring within 0.01667s (the time of one frame at 60Hz) time block allowed by v-sync.

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

8gb of Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz

Gosh , i should mention that sometime (very often actually) a my memory usage goes up to 94% after about one hour when playing some game or working on After Effects. Even when i turn off After Effects or game memory usage does not get back to normal. It stays to 94% until i restart PC. Sometimes i get terrible lag as well that force me to restart PC (This not happening very often)

You've all read the thread, right? This is a pretty big thing to miss.

 

[qubit]

@Aquinus "You've all read the thread, right? This is a pretty big thing to miss."

Well spotted. Well, I confess to missing it as I didn't really read that post. This sounds like a memory leak by some program and hell yeah will screw with the game and everything else. This now changes the whole troubleshooting direction of the thread to finding that leak.

I've deliberately maxed out the memory on my PC before to see how it behaves. I used MSCONFIG to give it just 512MB (out of 16GB) and loaded up a ton of stuff. It predictably slowed to a crawl (heck, just booting was real slow) but the memory usage never went above 95% or so in Task Manager, presumably because Windows is keeping some in reserve will swapping the rest out to disc. Interestingly, doing the same thing with an SSD also takes a serious performance hit, but the system remains much more usable than with my old HDD and makes the PC significantly easier to control in that situation.

@Brokencarr00t1 As a starting point, when you next see this problem, start Task Manager and have the Processes tab active, then sort by memory usage and see what's using the most. Let us know what you see and we'll take from there.

If you want a Task Manager on steroids, grab the free Process Explorer: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

 

[DinaAngel]

You're talking about standard stuttering. Micro-stuttering is a crossfire/SLi problem solved by using frame pacing. Tearing is when the next frame is getting rendered before the scene is done being displayed and V-Sync completely resolves this particular issue. What you're describing is an occasional stutter due to rendering not occuring within 0.01667s (the time of one frame at 60Hz) time block allowed by v-sync.

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


You've all read the thread, right? This is a pretty big thing to miss.

i know what tearing and stutter is. but when half the screen gets not lined up with eachother with vsync on in games like dragon age 3 and shadow of mordor id call it tearing

i have it force enabled in control panel on adaptive, i have tried all the settings.
turning vsync on doesnt remove it totally but it helps.

so total removal of it is false

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/520049/adaptive-vsync-is-a-big-fat-lie/

http://steamcommunity.com/app/17410/discussions/0/828935672437751579/

https://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-22847.html

alot of people have this issue, just google, i could link all day maybe all week about people who has this issue.

and having stuttering with vsync on is alot of people who have this issue

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...posts-will-be-deleted-vsync-stutter-discussi/

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum...tearing-vsync-regular-stuttering-vsync-gtx260

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=368060

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

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1215767