V-sync

[dannyaa]

V-sync - what exactly does it do? Do I want it on or off, and why? How does it affect performance?

I see the option in Doom 3 and wonder if I should have it checked. System specs in my sig.

Thanks,

Dan


P4c 3.2Ghz @ 800MHz Northwood / ABIT AI7 / 1GB Corsair XMS-Pro CL2 Pc3200 / 160GB Seagate SATA 7200rpm 8mb cache / BFG-Tech Nvidia GeForce 6800GT 256mb / Antec Sonata case w/Antec TruePower 380W PSU

 

[priyajeet]

1-2 more thread realteed to this. try page 4 or 5.

"Vsync should only be disabled when benchmarking so that the videocard and processor are not being limited by the display. Frame rates will appear higher with vsync off but the amount of information displayed is limited by your monitor in that instance. A monitor with an 85 Hz refresh rate will only display 85 frames per second even if the videocard is rendering 400 frames a second. The visual quality may decline as a result also because some frames could be skipped as a result of excess rendering so the interpolation between the first frame and the next frame displayed could be off resulting in 'tearing' or jerkiness."

A part of Doom3 tweak.

"Turn on vertical refresh sync — When you get into the game, the first thing you're going to want to do is enable vertical refresh sync, or vsync. Without vsync enabled (and it's disabled by default) you'll see lots of tearing (a sort of screen fragmentation) in DOOM 3. In my experience, setting vsync to "always on" in the ATI and NVIDIA drivers doesn't help. The game's default setting overrides the drivers, no matter what.

To turn on vsync, use the Advanced Options menu. Alternately, you can hit ctrl-alt-~ to bring down a game console. At the console, type "r_swapinterval 1". Then hit ~ to close the console. You should be all set, and the tearing should be gone. You can thank me later. "

from <A HREF="http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/7133" target="_new">http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/7133</A>

<i> <font color=blue>Futile is resistance,</font color=blue><font color=red> assimilate you we will.</font color=red> </i>
<b>Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.</b>

 

[Wolfy]

or to put it in a clearer way Vsync:

Enabled: syncrhonises the graphics card refresh rate to the monitors refresh rate.

Disabled: Most noticeable symptoms of not having vsync enabled is in first person shooters. Take for example the vertical lines of a building, if you turn left and right quickly you will notice a tearing effect where the top of the line/building will have moved before the bottom part comes into line. This only happens when the graphics card is refreshing faster than the monitor is refreshing. (which is why u really should have yur monitor set to 85hz)

switching vsync on does apparently impact the cards performance but in fairness if yur getting the tearing effect so bad it makes u enable vsync then it doesnt matter cos its a sign in some ways yur card is more than good enough for the game yur playing.

now that all make sense?


EDIT: actually rereading the post above it does make sense so i apologise but cos i went through the trouble of typing it out i cant be bothered deleting my post
"Its only when you look at ants closely with a magnifying glass on a sunny day that you realise how often they burst into flames"<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by wolfy on 09/03/04 10:28 AM.</EM></FONT></P>