V-Sync and 144Hz

[mrmez]

Looking to upgrade my 60Hz monitor at some stage, but I'm a a little confused about v-sync options with 144Hz etc monitors.

As i understand it, v-sync matches the game's fps to the monitors fps. Simple enough.
But what happens when my system can't generate anything close to 144 fps during gaming?

Are there slower v-sync options?
Sync every 2nd frame = 72 fps?

It seems like I could be missing something totally obvious, but the v-sync options would need to be divisible by whole numbers so that each game frame corresponds exactly to a monitor frame.

Eg: 60 game fps = 1 game frame for every 2.4 on a 144Hz monitor. Now obviously you can't have a half frame so effectively there is no sync.

So is 144Hz purely a marketing tool, with little value to the average gamer?

 

[ChrisR83]

If you get a good 144hz monitor please god don’t even turn vsync on. yes there could be some tearing once in a blue moon but since your monitor is refreshing so fast you will most likely not even be able to see it. With vsync on you increase your input lag as well. vsync is crap and I don’t even use it on my laptop, I just deal with the tearing because vsync affects the game play so much in a negative way.

If you have some extra cash and use an NVIDIA GPU G-sync is amazing. Instead of matching your GPU to the refresh rate of your monitor (causing input lag, and on a 60hz monitor if you drop below 60fps it sets the cap at 30 fps, and more), it matches your monitor to the fps your GPU is pushing out. Completely eliminating screen tearing with no input lag.

 

[cookybiscuit]

Yea that.

You don't need vsync when using 144Hz, the point of it is to remove tearing so vsync isn't really doing anything.