Adaptive Vsync Showcase Featuring NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,087 words · ~5 min read
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welcome to a special Linus Tech tips episode about adaptive vsync so this is
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all about the technology that makes GeForce cards that feature adaptive
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vsync pretty much the best thing ever
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for LCD users so back when we were all using CRTs and we were lucky to get 30
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to 40 FPS in our games and CRTs high end
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we're capable of 75 85 H Hertz we didn't worry too much about the frame rate
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going over the refresh rate of the monitor so to be clear the frame rate is
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how many frames per second or FPS or images per second the video card could
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potentially output to a display device in this case you can see our frame rate
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is around 150 FPS in Battlefield 3
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staring at a wall this is with a 660 Ti
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refresh rate is how many images the screen can draw in a second so this is a
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pretty fast monitor this is a 120 HZ monitor for 60 HZ monitor users this is
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going to be even more of an issue because you're much more likely to have
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these out of sync so 120 and 150 what
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that means is this video card is feeding this 150 images and this monitor is
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displaying only 120 of them so what that
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means is while the video card is in the middle of changing from this position
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actually here let's do it this way from something being in this position to this
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position the monitor might pick up half of this one and half of this one and you
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get this disjointedness between where the image is split called tearing so
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tearing only occurs when the frame rate goes above the refresh rate this is an
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extreme example of tearing this is not an artifact This Is Us looking at
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something and seeing the that that
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tearing so you can actually also see it in the line here I don't know if you
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guys are going to be able to see that very well but you can see it gets quite
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distorted and quite crappy so you can see like it breaks up
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like this so the way to combat tearing is to turn on vsync or vertical sync
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what that does is it locks your frame rate at the refresh rate of your monitor
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the problem with vsync is that when you get into an actionpack scenario vsync
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has to keep the refresh rate or rather the frame rate at an
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even crap I always forget is it Factor
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whatever the thing it has to multiply out to the refresh rate of the monitor
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so if you run into like a firefight and you would have normally dipped to 110
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FPS it'll actually knock you all the way down to 60 and then all the way down to
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30 and all the way down to 15 until it reaches one where you can
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keep that sustained frame rate so what we're going to do is we're going to show
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you how adaptive vsync gives you the
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best Best of Both Worlds whenever you're going to be running too high vsync will
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automatically turn on and whenever you're going to be running too low or
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below that refresh rate vsync will turn off which will allow you to run at 110
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or 100 FPS rather than knocking you all the way down to 60 and giving you that
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difference so we're going to turn on adaptive vsync and we're going to come back and look at this wall and show you
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what a difference it makes to the tearing this that uh that goes
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on you can change the in the manage 3D settings of your NVIDIA control panel so
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we're going vertical sync instead of using the 3D application setting we're
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going to go with adaptive yay adaptive
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bsync all right let's fire up our game again and see if this actually works I
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don't know if it will no looks like we're going to have to uh we're going to
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have to restart our game here slick thought it might work but I thought he was wrong and it looks like I was
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right all right so here we go we have adaptive vsync on which means you can
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see that we're pinned at 120 FPS
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which means that after we chop this thing ha no tearing artifacts see that
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that is what it is supposed to look like without all of those lines same thing if
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we look back and forth on these pillars we're not going to see that horrible
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separation now let's go find ourselves a firefight and let's see what happens to
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the frame rate so as soon as we drop below 120 FPS instead of knocking us all
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the way down to 60 we should be able to
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achieve like you know 119 or 117 or 115
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so there you go that is adaptive vsync it means we don't have to deal with bull
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crap tearing which looks terrible and is very very distracting because you can
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have the most beast machine in the world and it's almost the more Beast of a
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machine you buy the more susceptible you are to this horrible visual anomaly and
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so we don't have to deal with that and we don't have to deal with dipping all
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the way down to 60 FPS which I personally can tell the difference
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between UH 60 and 120 whatever you people who think that you can't tell the
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difference you guys are just totally wrong and I'm sorry but uh get a better
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machine and get get a better Monitor and you will understand um so I don't have
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to suffer with 60 or 30 FPS but I don't have to deal with tearing so it's like
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like the best thing ever thank you NVIDIA for bringing us adaptive vsync
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which you can see continuing to uh to work here as we watch these frame rates
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move all over the place and do what they do
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going to play me some Battlefield 3 now I actually kind of like this mouse I hadn't tried it before CM Storm
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something or other don't forget to subscribe to Line Tech tips for
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