Vsync frame drop issue?

Flanelman · August 19, 2018

Hey guys, So I have an i7 4720HQ, gtx 970M 16gb ram and a 1TB 7200RPM HDD, just wanted to start with that.

I've been getting back into Battlefield 4 recently but I'm having some issues with my frame rate. If I play with Vsync off I can get around 90-100 average fps with Mostly High, some Medium settings (lowest drop I saw was 75fps when there is a lot of explosives going off) but there is quite noticeable screen tear and it feels jumpy, but if I turn Vsync on most the time I sit on 60 fps, but every now and then it drops to 50 and even 45 fps, even if I turn everything to low. It makes it so frustrating when I can't aim because of stuttering or something. I just can't understand how the game never even gets close to dropping to 60 fps without Vsync but with it it can't stay at 60? These drops are random, not happening when there's explosives etc. Just for reference I've played BF4 for years on the same system and never had any issues (which kinda makes me think it's the new GeForce experience because shadow play has been buggy as hell too, or the newer drivers), there are also issues in other games such as BF1, Battlerite (which really isn't demanding at all), PES 2018, PES 2019 Demo, PUBG, and probably some more I'm forgetting.

I've tried restarting, reinstalling the game and reinstalling my GPU drivers and even some older drivers (Which actually work a lot better). ATM I'm using the 398.36 Nvidia driver (2nd most recent one) and it is better than the most recent driver but still not what I'd expect. Would appreciate any help guys, at the moment I'm just trying out older drivers and hoping one of them fixes the issue. Off to bed now but will reply tomorrow if anyone comments.

TL;DR: Game runs at High/Med with Vsync OFF at 90-100 avg, 75 lowest, but feels choppy. With Vsync ON, struggles to stay at 60fps even on low settings.

Thanks in advance!

Sakkura · August 19, 2018

You're looking at averages, so you're not getting a complete picture of what's going on. When the game averages 90-100 FPS, it can still drop to much lower performance for brief fractions of a second. That's why it may still feel choppy.

Once you enable Vsync, if you have a 60Hz display, the game will effectively be locked to that as a maximum. And when you do have those brief performance drops, they will go to 30FPS rather than 40 or 50 or whatever.

The average is calculated over a longer period of time, so when the game is mostly at 60FPS but with some drops to 30FPS, that could average out to 50FPS or whatever.

As for why performance is dropping, well that might be driver-related.