FreeSync vs G-Sync Input Lag Comparison
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
2,718 words · ~13 min read
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it is a hot day and you know what's refreshing on a
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hot day these guys aren't a sponsor no today what we're gonna be doing is we're
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going to be taking gsync so this is the Green Team over here this green graphics
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card and that black monitor with a red lighter okay don't worry too much about
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it that's the Green Team over there and then on the red team we have the R9 Fury
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X which is actually inside this computer right now and the BenQ XL 2730
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Z so I would consider that and the Rog Swift pg278 Q pretty much equivalent as
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far as a gsync versus a freesync monitor goes so we're going to be doing
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something pretty interesting we're going to be taking a look at which g-sync or
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freesync both with 144hz displays offers
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the lowest input leg so the least
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latency between pressing the mouse and
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firing the gun stay tuned
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vote for turnup it's a shirt I don't have one so we're going to do our best
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to demo what it looks like and this is not what the real shirt looks like it
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looks a little more like this but we didn't have a sample to show you guys so
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this had to do uh you can stay tuned after the outro for bonus footage of the
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creation of this masterpiece if you're into that sort of thing so the first
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thing I'll need to do is uh oh yeah guys this just arrived today drop a like on
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the video if you want to see the uh 3dr
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solo taken for a test drive we've actually got some pretty good ideas
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burkel who just about killed himself recently on his mountain bike wants to
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test the follow feature on his bike so drop a dislike if you think that that's
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a terrible idea and we should actually go ahead and just review it
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normally so the first thing we're going to need is on my desk over here now one
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of the better uh methodologies that I
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found online and I love those guys over at blur Busters they make my job so much
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easier uh one of the better methodologies I found online is to have
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an LED that illuminates on an input to
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the computer so in this case we're going to be using the Makey Makey which has
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indicator LEDs on board and then we're just going to go ahead and we're going
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to do a mouse click that's going to light up and then we're going to be able
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to see how many milliseconds it takes with a high-speed camera before our
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muzzle flare or Flash whatever the bullet comes out
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of the gun so here we go let's head downstairs and get our monitors together
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I like these Vlog Style videos because this is basically what's happening with
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every one of our videos except uh with this style you guys get to kind of come
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along for the ride as we go on Voyages of Discovery in The Labyrinth that is
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the LMG headquarters to find the hardware that we need in order to make
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whatever stupid video it is we're trying to make that that day so are you
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standing on a oh dear I am only half standing on a
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rotating sphere disc machine ball at
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least it doesn't have wheel oh at least this isn't
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heavy it's actually fairly heavy okay here we go want no I got this don't turn
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don't don't turn don't turn okay and
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down never do
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that why did I packed this monitor up I knew I wanted to do this
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comparison all of what we do is nothing without
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editing Okay so we've got both monitors
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here all right
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competitors
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lovers no one is sure what I'm talking about are you no that's okay that's fine
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that's normal everything is fine for
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some reason it started working and I don't know why and I'm not going to question it
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okay yes I
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victorious yes yes okay so what made the mouse
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work no devices
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detected what do you mean no devices
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detected okay so now that my stupid piece of crap Windows 7 install has
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completely itself and won't work with a
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keyboard or Mouse which I'm going to diagnose later with my handy dandy PS2
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keyboard and mouse uh can install a USB
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keyboard or Mouse trust me we've tried um we're going we've gone ahead and
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switched to my Windows 8 test drive and it is time to get the Makey Makey up and
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running first of all so we've uh We've set it up for click and ground and then
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we're going to position this so we can see the activity LED Boop look at that
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we clicked well hold on hold on well I got
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to put it somewhere useful okay ready so you can watch the
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LED illuminate just like that see that
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okay so that led is going to be the indicator
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of when the gunfire should start in
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Crisis 3 now the reason we're using Crisis 3 is that blur Busters has
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already done the groundwork for us those guys are awesome which I think I already
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said once but it deserves being said again and have found that Crisis 3 uses
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a particularly not leggy engine not as
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much as csgo mind you but CS go requires some fiddling around with uh Max FPS
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settings within the console that we're just not going to do here so we've got
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our Fury X on the bench I've got the latest drivers that just finished
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downloading we're going to go ahead and install those and boom we're going to find out how
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much latency between click and display
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with free sync enabled all right so the first thing
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we're going to need to do is enable free sync now this is not quite as cut and
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dried as it used to be with gsync because you can also enable or disable
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vsync From Within game so we're actually going to have to look at it four
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different ways we're going to have 144 Hertz with freesync with vsync on or off
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then we're going to do gsync with the same thing with vsync on or off and then
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have a look at how things go okay so
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we're in our game um we're going to Target 200 FPS for our uncapped scenario
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and then basically all we're going to do is we're going
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to fire the mouse or well fire the mouse
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uh fire the gun like that now this is our Sony fs700
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camera and what it will be doing is recording the screen at 480 frames per
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second unless we discover that 480 frames per second is not good enough in
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which case we will record at 960 FPS but
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the image gets very grainy and very dark at that frame rate so it's a little bit
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harder to work with so we're really hoping for the best here so uh let's get
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started where where is that damn
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remote it's not under the motherboard it's good it shouldn't have been there
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here it is so the genius is at Sony which I have clearly demonstrated myself
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to be uh uh a more genius than installed
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the remote IR sensor for this camera in
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the back of it so the talent may never actually use it um you know I don't know
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maybe like here and like sticking out so it works from any direction whatever so
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I use reflective tape here and then I can be like B bam bounce it and it will
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start and stop just like that that way I
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will be able to start the slow motion recording which only runs for 4 seconds
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I will be able to take some shots not that kind of take shots what kind of
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videos you think we make around here and then I will be able to review the
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footage and start oh it didn't work and
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start here we go 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
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12 13 14 15 and it's probably done now
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okay so let's check it out let's check it out so here we go here we go here we go you can clearly see a delay and this
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is running faster than the actual footage will be exciting so let's come
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back with some numbers so welcome to the next step in
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the process it's actually been it it ended up taking me like 3 hours or
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something like that to run all of the numbers that I needed but basically what
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it amounts to is I've got my folder full of Clips here so these are all slow
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motion clips of here we go so check this
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out so you can see these are at 960 frames per second so like the you can
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barely you can actually see the individual Blades of the fan spinning
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and then what you're going to see here is a significant delay eventually right
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here we go here we go between the
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light and the actual muzzle flash so
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that's not good enough what we need to do is take this footage and dump it into
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Adobe Premiere where we can make an approximate equivalency of one of our
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frames is about a millisecond and then what we do is we actually find the exact
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frame where the top LED begins to illuminate and then we count 1 2 3 4 5 6
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7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
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21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
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there we go and then when we see the first hint of the muzzle flash animation
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that's when I make my mark That's when I put down my result and we're already
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getting some really interesting results which is turning the into more like a a
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regular lineus Tech tips at this point not very vloggy with like graphs and
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everything but sometimes I'm just not in control of what video I end up making I
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set out to do one thing and then it's like all of a sudden I'm making videos
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about Subway sandwich napkins in the way that you could actually use one to
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replace the built-in eraser on your dry erase marker if it was too full of crap
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with just a pair of scissors and a doublea battery to help you also some
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tape ah yes a
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knife it's covered in peanut butter oh my God why am I sitting at taran's
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desk so I'm not sure if it's because they think it improves their job
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security but my editors let me sit here for an hour counting frames one
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by one instead of just showing me this super easy way to do it by changing this
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to frames and then just marking in and
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out and then getting a frame count right here so that's a faster way to do that
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little do they know that that does not improve job security oh we just told you
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I'm going to replace them all with robots these These are the
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future video editing like that so I feel
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a bit like every Linus Tech tips video is sort of like um like life you know
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you start out with joy and hope and
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belief that the world makes sense and then by the end of it you're this jaded
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bitter soul that just what the hell is going on here
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so all right I'll I'll put all the results up on screen for you guys or
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more accurately I'll have an editor do it since as you obviously know I don't
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know how to use Adobe Premiere so um at high frame rate so at 144 Hertz 144 FPS
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remember we're using gsync or freesync regardless of what else is going on with
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vsync or no vsync so with no vsync um
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dsync really does okay but freesync
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actually comes out ahead at 1440p with the xl2730z looking like it's overall a
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lower input leg chain along with the R9
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Fury X so with vsync however so this is
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g-sync with vsync the way NVIDIA intended for it to be used before they
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eventually caved and allowed vsync to be turned off now we see gsync really come
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into its own with not only really really
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low latency between LED light illumination and muzzle flash but also a
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really tight grouping of the of the latency here with free sync being a
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little bit sloppier now when we move up to 200 FPS you can see that no vsync
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doesn't actually give us on gsync an
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input leg reduction whereas with AMD
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free sync now that we have desynchronized we are actually getting a
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proportional improvement in our input leg this is what we expect but this this
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is where my brain explodes at 45 FPS
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remember this is the sweet spot for variable refresh rate gaming with bsync
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disabled NVIDIA just cleans up cleans
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house we're talking 72 to 73 frames with
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our camera that is outstanding at only 45 FPS that is an incredible delay with
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freesync not only much higher but also a
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little bit all over the place in terms of the latency then we turned vsync on
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and I just retested this to make sure I wasn't crazy if we turn vsync on forcing
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it through the driver or turning it on in game I just retested
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it gsync is actually as bad or worse
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than free sync so ultimately today we have raised
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more questions than we have answered uh
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what we do know is that at least on AMD
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free sync you are going to if you're
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going to exceed the maximum refresh rate of your monitor then you are probably
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going to want to go ahead and disable vsync if you want that 10 millisecond
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Improvement in input latency so like the
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responsiveness and on g-sync if you're going to be playing in that 45 FPS sweet
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spot where I guess NVIDIA intended for it to be used then you are going to want
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vsync off for some reason but then if
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you're going to be playing at a much higher refresh rate it looks like vsync
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on is the cat's pajamas with g-sync so uh
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let us know in the comments if your interpretation here is uh is different
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than my own and uh thank you for tuning in to this little Adventure I'm just
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going to look at my calendar and it looks like I'm supposed to tell you
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about Mast drop but I have no idea what their featured product is so I'll film
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that at a later time so thanks for watching guys like the or no I have a
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you're looking for something new to watch uh apparently we just released ah
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yes we just released our Fury X versus 980ti small form factor you know Uber
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gaming machine Showdown so check that out and guess we're done here