Capping FPS in games

[Chaos_Sorcerer]

So earlier today, I had a good discussion in the off-topic subforum about capping FPS in games. I always thought it was a good idea to keep my in-game FPS capped to match my monitor's refresh rate, to avoid screen tearing and reduce load on the GPU. 

 

But apparently, uncapped FPS results in a smoother experience since the monitor will take the latest frame produced by the GPU and display it, resulting in less latency and whatnot. But what about the frames in between refresh cycles? What about screen tearing? Doesn't screen tearing happen when a display is trying to draw more than one frame at once? If a monitor only takes the most recent frame, how does this happen? 

 

I myself can't tell the difference between capped 60 and uncapped on a 60Hz panel. Could someone give me a detailed explanation of whether capping FPS is good or not and why that is the case? 

 

 

[Techicolors]

7 minutes ago, Chaos_Sorcerer said:

But what about the frames in between refresh cycles? What about screen tearing? Doesn't screen tearing happen when a display is trying to draw more than one frame at once? If a monitor only takes the most recent frame, how does this happen? 

the GPU will deliver the frame outright to the monitor, thus causing screen tearing but you have reduced latency. an uncapped FPS will do this. but if you have a monitor that isn't 144hz, 120hz, etc., then you won't even be able to see the difference. 

 

if you have a Nvidia GPU you can use Fast Sync, which helps minimize screen tearing when you run over the refresh rate of your monitor. but i heard it causes microstuttering 

 

7 minutes ago, Chaos_Sorcerer said:

I myself can't tell the difference between capped 60 and uncapped on a 60Hz panel. Could someone give me a detailed explanation of whether capping FPS is good or not and why that is the case? 

like you said, capping FPS helps reduce heat and power draw. though that doesn't mean screen tearing is ruled out, as dropping below the FPS cap will allow screen tearing. 

 

 

if you like to learn more, i will do a kinda shameless plug and redirect you to this guy's channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP7QY6L5pvmm0-stL-pNFrw 

he looks into this sort of stuff

 

edit: and also regarding high FPS, screen tearing becomes less of an issue. 

[Chaos_Sorcerer]

5 minutes ago, Technicolors said:

the GPU will deliver the frame outright to the monitor, thus causing screen tearing but you have reduced latency. an uncapped FPS will do this. but if you have a monitor that isn't 144hz, 120hz, etc., then you won't even be able to see the difference. 

 

if you have a Nvidia GPU you can use Fast Sync, which helps minimize screen tearing when you run over the refresh rate of your monitor. but i heard it causes microstuttering 

 

like you said, capping FPS helps reduce heat and power draw. though that doesn't mean screen tearing is ruled out, as dropping below the FPS cap will allow screen tearing. 

 

 

if you like to learn more, i will do a kinda shameless plug and redirect you to this guy's channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP7QY6L5pvmm0-stL-pNFrw 

he looks into this sort of stuff

Sorry if I misunderstood...so...a monitor will try and display multiple frames at once if it has an excess coming from the GPU, and will show the same frame more than once if the GPU can't render fast enough? And that's what causes screen tearing, correct? 

 

 

[cj09beira]

17 minutes ago, Chaos_Sorcerer said:

So earlier today, I had a good discussion in the off-topic subforum about capping FPS in games. I always thought it was a good idea to keep my in-game FPS capped to match my monitor's refresh rate, to avoid screen tearing and reduce load on the GPU. 

 

But apparently, uncapped FPS results in a smoother experience since the monitor will take the latest frame produced by the GPU and display it, resulting in less latency and whatnot. But what about the frames in between refresh cycles? What about screen tearing? Doesn't screen tearing happen when a display is trying to draw more than one frame at once? If a monitor only takes the most recent frame, how does this happen? 

 

I myself can't tell the difference between capped 60 and uncapped on a 60Hz panel. Could someone give me a detailed explanation of whether capping FPS is good or not and why that is the case? 

 

 

when you use your gpu drivers to capp the fps, your latency increases more than it should, so you shouldn't use it, although using in game fps capps don't have this problem 

and will help reduce tearing and power while not increasing latency much

[Chaos_Sorcerer]

1 minute ago, cj09beira said:

when you use your gpu drivers to capp the fps, your latency increases more than it should, so you shouldn't use it, although using in game fps capps don't have this problem 

and will help reduce tearing and power while not increasing latency much

 

So, capping FPS in-game is a good thing, while doing it in the GPU settings isn't? But what does the in-game cap do differently that allows it to have less of a latency increase?  

[cj09beira]

2 minutes ago, Chaos_Sorcerer said:

Sorry if I misunderstood...so...a monitor will try and display multiple frames at once if it has an excess coming from the GPU, and will show the same frame more than once if the GPU can't render fast enough? And that's what causes screen tearing, correct? 

 

 

theres a place in memory called complete frame, when the gpu finishes the next frame, it renames it to complete frame, if the screen was reading said place while the gpu changed the name the monitor will continue reading and will display part of the two frames 

[mmaatt747]

23 minutes ago, Chaos_Sorcerer said:

So earlier today, I had a good discussion in the off-topic subforum about capping FPS in games. I always thought it was a good idea to keep my in-game FPS capped to match my monitor's refresh rate, to avoid screen tearing and reduce load on the GPU. 

 

But apparently, uncapped FPS results in a smoother experience since the monitor will take the latest frame produced by the GPU and display it, resulting in less latency and whatnot. But what about the frames in between refresh cycles? What about screen tearing? Doesn't screen tearing happen when a display is trying to draw more than one frame at once? If a monitor only takes the most recent frame, how does this happen? 

 

I myself can't tell the difference between capped 60 and uncapped on a 60Hz panel. Could someone give me a detailed explanation of whether capping FPS is good or not and why that is the case? 

 

 

Well capping doesn't help because it in no way syncs the monitor refresh and the GPU output refresh (which is what GSYNC and freesync do).  So just because the monitor might be at 60 Hz and the GPU at 60 fps, that does not mean they work in tandem.  For instance, a frame that is delivered to the monitor by the GPU at any given time might be halfway through the monitor drawing the previous frame.  So half of that frame that the GPU just sent is not even displayed by the monitor.

[cj09beira]

1 minute ago, Chaos_Sorcerer said:

 

So, capping FPS in-game is a good thing, while doing it in the GPU settings isn't? But what does the in-game cap do differently that allows it to have less of a latency increase?  

its probably that the driver doesn't have access o enough info to make this type of decision without overhead 

[cj09beira]

if you are interested theres a video  that explains all this really well:

 

[Techicolors]

1 minute ago, Chaos_Sorcerer said:

Sorry if I misunderstood...so...a monitor will try and display multiple frames at once if it has an excess coming from the GPU, and will show the same frame more than once if the GPU can't render fast enough? And that's what causes screen tearing, correct? 

 

 

getting frame rates that isn't multiples of your monitor's refresh rate also causes screen tearing. because an uncapped FPS doesn't actually take care of the timing, allowing the GPU to render as much as it can and shove it to the monitor. adaptive sync, such as vsync, freesync, or gsync helps get rid of screen tearing as the tech can time both the GPU and monitor to work together. however vsync doesn't actually time it as well as freesync and gsync

 

and not necessarily showing the same frame more than once. rather the GPU is already ready to send the next frame, so it kinda intercepts the previous frame and thus screen tearing.