Discussion: Nvidia Fast Sync

[TechyInAZ]

In the past, Nvidia has optimized all their V-Sync "flavors" to give better performance at or below the refresh rate of monitors. But, nothing has been said or done about those players who play at 300fps on CSGO with no V-Sync on for optimal latency.

Welcome to Fast Sync, Nvidia's response to players who desire all the abilities of V-Sync, but with none of the latency issues.

Here's how it works:

Without getting into all the nitty gritty about frame buffers, basically the game runs at the highest frame rate it's able to output (just like non V sync), BUT instead of giving you all that nasty tearing, fast sync only displays certain frames and discards the uneeded frames.

The beauty of this is that you still get the same low latency as no V-Sync, but at the cost of the GPU working overtime by making useless frames, which I'm sure 95% of you gamers out there are perfectly fine with.

But Wait...Doesn't Borderless Windowed Mode do the exact same thing?

Yes it does! Just like Fast Sync the GPU runs at max fps, (since V sync is not supported in windowed mode) but instead of getting tearing, the Windows Desktop Manager picks out certain frames to output to the monitor.

So...why would I use Fast Sync if Borderless Windowed Mode does the same thing..?

The Major Cons about Borderless windowed mode is that it's still in windowed mode. Windows will still use some GPU resources for running other applications, like Aero on Windows 7.

Fast Sync runs in Fullscreen mode, allowing 100% of the GPU to operate only the game itself, and nothing else. Yielding higher FPS.

Conclusion:

I hope this helps with any of you who have had questions about fast sync. It was recently introduced on the Pascal GTX 1080, and is going to be feature exclusive to Pascal.

Feel free to discuss this topic to your hearts content! Thank you for reading!
TechyInAZ,

Update 5/31/2016: Fast Sync is not going to be exclusive to Pascal. It currently works on Maxwell, and will most likely work on Kepler and Fermi.

Update 6/20/2016: Took out ".., Successor to V-Sync?" in the subject line. It's pretty obvious that Fast Sync is NOT the successor to v sync.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Cool, though no need for it unless you play competitive FPS.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Cool, though no need for it unless you play competitive FPS.

True. But it is still nice if you have a ton of power to spare.

 

[renz496]

Interested with this one as well. Nvidia for their part has been working with this kind of stuff for a long time. The ultimate result is gsync. Also since nvidia mention this will not going to be limited to pascal only i was hoping they will include support for fast sync soon in their drivers.

 

[Rasklop]

Interested with this one as well. Nvidia for their part has been working with this kind of stuff for a long time. The ultimate result is gsync. Also since nvidia mention this will not going to be limited to pascal only i was hoping they will include support for fast sync soon in their drivers.

It's already supported - https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/4l86nm/fast_sync_is_available_right_now/

Reddit post:

With 368.22 you can enable Fast Sync using Nvidia Inspector. Under the vertical sync setting choose 0x18888888. The Nvidia control panel will now show custom under the vertical sync option. Make sure you disable normal vertical sync in your games.
This is working with my Maxwell card.
Wth is Fast Sync? Tom Pertersen explains it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpUX8ZNkn2U

 

[bystander]

I'm pretty sure OpenGl at least used to do V-sync this way. DirectX, on the other hand, has always forced every frame to be displayed. This would be great to reduce latency.

I'm not sure how CS:Go players would like it. They seem to want every partial frame displayed, so they'd likely still go without, but I'd definitely welcome that in my DX games.

 

[Rasklop]

I'm pretty sure OpenGl at least used to do V-sync this way. DirectX, on the other hand, has always forced every frame to be displayed. This would be great to reduce latency.

I'm not sure how CS:Go players would like it. They seem to want every partial frame displayed, so they'd likely still go without, but I'd definitely welcome that in my DX games.

I, as CS:GO and CS 1.6 player, absolutely LOVE this! Screen tearing is bad, since targets are constantly moving, and you don't know where is the target precisely. I used to play with V-Sync and max prerendered frames 1, which would give me results close to these, so I don't really notice the difference.

BTW, sry I don't speek London dat well DD

 

[Rasklop]

I hope this helps with any of you who have had questions about fast sync. It was recently introduced on the Pascal GTX 1080, and is going to be feature exclusive to Pascal.

It works on my Maxwell GTX750...

 

[TechyInAZ]

I hope this helps with any of you who have had questions about fast sync. It was recently introduced on the Pascal GTX 1080, and is going to be feature exclusive to Pascal.

It works on my Maxwell GTX750...

Thanks. I'll go back and edit my post.

 

[bystander]

I'm pretty sure OpenGl at least used to do V-sync this way. DirectX, on the other hand, has always forced every frame to be displayed. This would be great to reduce latency.

I'm not sure how CS:Go players would like it. They seem to want every partial frame displayed, so they'd likely still go without, but I'd definitely welcome that in my DX games.

I, as CS:GO and CS 1.6 player, absolutely LOVE this! Screen tearing is bad, since targets are constantly moving, and you don't know where is the target precisely. I used to play with V-Sync and max prerendered frames 1, which would give me results close to these, so I don't really notice the difference.

BTW, sry I don't speek London dat well DD

You'd get less latency. With DirectX and V-sync, whenever you are at your refresh rate in FPS, you'll gain an extra frame worth of latency due to DX not tossing out old frames and displaying every frame made. This setup prevents that from happening.

As far as your Vsync use goes, you are pretty unusual, as most CS players I see are after 300 FPS or higher for faster bunny hopping (or is that strafe running, I'm not a CS player) and lower latency. Of course that might be due to them being the loudest group, making it appear that is how most play.

 

[Rasklop]

I'm pretty sure OpenGl at least used to do V-sync this way. DirectX, on the other hand, has always forced every frame to be displayed. This would be great to reduce latency.

I'm not sure how CS:Go players would like it. They seem to want every partial frame displayed, so they'd likely still go without, but I'd definitely welcome that in my DX games.

I, as CS:GO and CS 1.6 player, absolutely LOVE this! Screen tearing is bad, since targets are constantly moving, and you don't know where is the target precisely. I used to play with V-Sync and max prerendered frames 1, which would give me results close to these, so I don't really notice the difference.

BTW, sry I don't speek London dat well DD

You'd get less latency. With DirectX and V-sync, whenever you are at your refresh rate in FPS, you'll gain an extra frame worth of latency due to DX not tossing out old frames and displaying every frame made. This setup prevents that from happening.

As far as your Vsync use goes, you are pretty unusual, as most CS players I see are after 300 FPS or higher for faster bunny hopping (or is that strafe running, I'm not a CS player) and lower latency. Of course that might be due to them being the loudest group, making it appear that is how most play.

Bhopping is related to tickrate(64/128 tick), and not framerate... I dunno who told you that FPS has to do something with bhop.

 

[bystander]

Bhopping is related to tickrate(64/128 tick), and not framerate... I dunno who told you that FPS has to do something with bhop.

Every CS player who has ever posted on this forum complaining about their FPS has said so. I've never seen a CS player, until you, that is happy with anything less than 200 FPS. Whether it really matters or not, these players are pretty insistent they need 200+ FPS. And they do have a point on the latency front. The game mechanics is something I can only take their word for.

 

[Turb0Yoda]

Bhopping is related to tickrate(64/128 tick), and not framerate... I dunno who told you that FPS has to do something with bhop.

Every CS player who has ever posted on this forum complaining about their FPS has said so. I've never seen a CS player, until you, that is happy with anything less than 200 FPS. Whether it really matters or not, these players are pretty insistent they need 200+ FPS. And they do have a point on the latency front. The game mechanics is something I can only take their word for.

I'm happy with 40 fps Then again, I don't game on a pro status level

 

[Rasklop]

Bhopping is related to tickrate(64/128 tick), and not framerate... I dunno who told you that FPS has to do something with bhop.

Every CS player who has ever posted on this forum complaining about their FPS has said so. I've never seen a CS player, until you, that is happy with anything less than 200 FPS. Whether it really matters or not, these players are pretty insistent they need 200+ FPS. And they do have a point on the latency front. The game mechanics is something I can only take their word for.

Umm, I haven't said I'm happy with low FPS, no I'm not. I have 60Hz monitor so I need at least 60FPS, but I'm usually getting 400-500 FPS. I've just said I'm satisfied with Fast Sync, since I ABSOLUTELY HATE screen tearing. That was my primary reason to use V-Sync. Max prerendered frames 1 was just a tweak for less input lag(less frame latency). Now I'm using fps_max 400 and Fast Sync. Works like a charm.

 

[Rasklop]

Bhopping is related to tickrate(64/128 tick), and not framerate... I dunno who told you that FPS has to do something with bhop.

Every CS player who has ever posted on this forum complaining about their FPS has said so. I've never seen a CS player, until you, that is happy with anything less than 200 FPS. Whether it really matters or not, these players are pretty insistent they need 200+ FPS. And they do have a point on the latency front. The game mechanics is something I can only take their word for.

I'm happy with 40 fps Then again, I don't game on a pro status level

LOL, try to lower your settings a little bit, 40FPS and 60FPS in CS is like night and day. Or it's just a placebo. I dunno, i just can't play at 40FPS, that latency is crazy.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Bhopping is related to tickrate(64/128 tick), and not framerate... I dunno who told you that FPS has to do something with bhop.

Every CS player who has ever posted on this forum complaining about their FPS has said so. I've never seen a CS player, until you, that is happy with anything less than 200 FPS. Whether it really matters or not, these players are pretty insistent they need 200+ FPS. And they do have a point on the latency front. The game mechanics is something I can only take their word for.

I'm happy with 40 fps Then again, I don't game on a pro status level

LOL, try to lower your settings a little bit, 40FPS and 60FPS in CS is like night and day. Or it's just a placebo. I dunno, i just can't play at 40FPS, that latency is crazy.

Yeah, the higher frame rate is indeed night and day. You'll do so much better. Trust me.

FPS and Racing games are the games that really demand high refresh rates and high frame rates in order to play comptitively. For example in F1 2013, my laptimes improved by up to 25% or more just by going from 60fps to 96fps.

 

[Turb0Yoda]

I say 40 FPS because I never pay attention. It's my gt 740 that causes some lag sometimes.. but it gets 35 FPS avg in GTA V and I tend to play that more now..