thurst0n

Could someone explain VSync? Why would it be important to me?

Syrillian

Greetings.

The function locks the frame-rate at a certain speed, most of the time it is 60 frames per second.

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CorporalAris

Wasn't it that it locked your Frames Per Second at whatever your Screens Refresh rate was? So as to reduce the chance of noticable screen tearing?

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DuckieHo

It reduces tearing.... Do you notice tearing when playing FPS? If so, are you getting above 70FPS? If so, enable VSync.

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thurst0n

So will that throttle the graphics card, if it's getting 60fps it won't work any harder?

What happens when it can't get 60fps?

dM@n

The two things that are important in VSync is monitor refresh rate and FPS.

Monitors have refresh rates. Some are set at 60 hz, and some at 75 hz.

FPS is frames per second, or how many frames is rendered in a second. That depends on your hardware and/or the game that you are playing.

What VSync does is basically "sync" your FPS with your monitor's refresh rate. Sometimes, when there is too much FPS, there is a phenomenon that happens called tearing, which is where you can see little lines as if the picture is actually "tearing" (it's very minor though). VSync prevents tearing of the picture because now the FPS is in sync with your monitor's refresh rate.

It may or may not be important to you. If you think that anything above 60 or 75 fps is unnecessary (many times it is), then you should turn on VSync to prevent tearing. But if you want more of an FPS boost and/or tearing doesn't really bother you, then I suggest you keep VSync off.

I hope that helped .

EDIT: In response to your question, the GPU will lock itself at 60 fps. Doesn't necessarily mean that it just decided to take a break and stop working as hard. So basically, your GPU will produce FPS anywhere between 0-60.

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Syrillian

Then the frmaes will only "spool" as fast as they can be rendered.

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thurst0n

Thanks. Those are like all really good responses!

jpz

vsync keeps the video output from the graphics card in sync with your monitor. When a screen displays a frame, it does not draw the entire frame at once. It sweeps across the screen line by line, which takes quite a bit of time. If your graphics card outputs the next frame while your screen is in the middle of drawing a frame to the screen, then part of the picture that displays on your screen is from the first frame and the second part of the picture is from the second frame. This is known as tearing, because it looks like the picture on your monitor was cut in half and poorly pasted back together.

The simple answers to your questions are:

The framerate will have a maximimum limit of the refreshrate of your monitor(usually 60hz/60fps for LCD's). If your graphics card is capable of drawing more frames than this, your graphics card will spend time waiting instead of drawing additional frames which your monitor cannot display, while also preventing tearing. This means decreased load on on your graphics card, lower graphics card temps, less energy used, and no tearing.

If you turn on Vsync when your graphics card is not capable of outputting more than 60fps, your graphics card will still spend some time waiting to keep the graphics card and monitor in sync to prevent tearing. This means that your framerate will be slightly lower with vsync on than it would be with vsync off.

Vsync is designed to so that your graphics card and output frames at any rate below the refreshrate of your monitor. In other works, vsync will work even if your graphics card only puts out 59fps, 30fps, 10fps, etc.

When your game framerate is below 60fps, then it is a matter of personal preference whether you use vysnc or not. Screen tearing bugs some people who would rather take the small framerate hit of enabled vsync to eliminate tearing. Other people do not mind tearing and would never consider taking any kind of framerate hit and choose to turn off vysnc.

If your framerate is above your monitors' refresh rate (60fps), there is no reason to leave sync off. All the extra frames are lost because monitors cannot draw the frames fast enough. No matter how high your computer tells you the framerate is, the actual framerate you see on your monitor will never be higher than what vsync limits it to.