Probably only interesting for NVIDIA card owners

TL;DR: I think very few ppl know about fast sync, and the information about it should be spreaded

So, recently I got my new PC and was totally excited and couldn't wait to start playing any game I want without worrying if I can run it or not. I expected a perfectly smooth experience, and tbh, I was a bit disappointed. It was actually not my rig that was failing me, but somehow I noticed an annoying input lag in some games. It's not that I noticed it only on my new PC, but I always thought it would be due to my old PC's performance that there is an input lag. In general, I didn't use to care much about it.
But then, it really bugged me. I am not one to be so super critical, but this was annoying as hell. So, after a few minutes of good old google-fu, I found the culprit: V-Sync!

That sneaky little ba... I mean mustard is causing an input lag for a lot of games. It is due to it's technology and the fact that it caps your FPS to your refresh rate of your monitor (So, e.g. 60hz would cause your game to be capped at 60 FPS). I won't go into detail about how exactly it is working that much, if you are interested, you can google it yourself. After disabling it for a few games, the input lag was really gone! But my excitement was rather limited, as I then finally saw the purpose behind V-Sync: to eliminate Screen Tearing. In my humble opinion, it looks incredibly awful, and I soon found that it is so immersion breaking that I could just not properly play any game. Some people say that they rather take the sacrifice of screen tearing rather than having to experience this annoying input lag. I believe it depends on what type of gamer you are.

Nevertheless, I did not want to just accept the fact that I have to endure one of these two issues. So I kept searching the vast fields and glorious estates of Google, and I finally stumbled upon something that really changed my gaming experience.

Fast V-Sync

It's a different technology, and I don't know how exactly it works, but it's awesome. It does not cap your framerate (from my experience it does cap it for some games at the double refresh rate, so in my case 120 FPS), and therefore you have no input lag. However, it still completely removes any screen tearing, as if you were using classic V-Sync!

I have set up a very simple picture tutorial to make your games use fast sync. Here you go. It should be pretty self explaining. I'd recommend turning off V-Sync in your game first to avoid interference with the two technologies. Also, if you game is not listed right away in NVIDIA control panel, you can just add it with the button to the right of the list.

I use it with all my games by now and would never want to go back to traditional V-Sync.

I made this post because I think very few people know about this awesome feature, and it is useful for most gamers imho. If you like it, please bump this thread and spread the information:)

7 years ago

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Do you use Fast Sync?

View Results
Yes, it is awesome!
No, it is too much work...
No, It does not work for me :(
No, I am not using an NVIDIA card.
Not yet, but I'll surely try it out!
tl;dr

I have no idea why, but reserved™

7 years ago
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Modest bump I^v^I

7 years ago
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Fast sync is must option for Nvidia gpu users.

I know G-sync is best, but otherwise fast sync and adaptive sync comes next to it.

Highly recommended.

7 years ago
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I agree. Considering that G-Sync is unfortunately rather expensive (especially compared to freesync, which works a bit differently, but the result is the same), and fast sync is "shipped" automatically with your GPU, I think that it is actually a must have for most users:)

7 years ago
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From my experience, games that your system is able to generate high frame-rates for, especially if they're MP competitive with a high need for the least input lag, FastSync tends to be the best option, even though it puts a higher load on your GPU. For everything else that creates less/equal FPS than the monitor refresh rate, I tend to go with GSync to avoid i.a. unnecessary high power consumption. And yeah, screen tearing is the worst ;x.

7 years ago
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Oh, I didn't know that it creates a higher load on your GPU. Never really had a look into the load difference tbh.

Yeah, if you have G-Sync as an alternative, that's ofc a great thing:)

7 years ago
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yes it's same load as no vsync since it's rendering the same high amount of frames (unless it's capping to double like you described on one game, unless that game itself is capped to coincidentally double your refresh)

7 years ago
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i prefer the idea of gsync/freesync since you dont waste power & do not have tearing or stuttering when fps dips

there are also methods to reduce input lag with standard vsync, i can definitely confirm that certain engines need to be hard capped to the refresh directly (you can try this in source engine, open up TF2 specifically, compare fps_max 300 to fps_max 60 to fps_max 59, you should see high to medium low to low input lag in that order, you can even see it when dragging options screens around as the windows mouse cursor is not part of the game's rendering)

for games without a proper limiter, you can use RTSS (afterburner) or radeonpro if that still works (yes even on nvidia)

another method that i dont have first hand proof with is changing the amount of frames queued ahead (nvcp goes down to 1 from default 3, some game engines let you tweak it directly)

can you confirm if setting adaptive vsync in nvcp results in the same input lag as appcontrolled->game vsync? try the TF2 fps_max test in particular with adaptive

by the way, since fastsync doesnt necessarily align to the refresh when the game is rendering, that means microstutters are fully possible because the game time is at one frequency while the specific frames that arent dropped will continuously vary in latency after your input (but not greater than for example 16ms for 60hz)

7 years ago*
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Hm, I didn't notice if adaptive v-sync causes the same input lag, I only noticed that it does cause some input lag... That's why I switched to fast sync.

Didn't know about RTSS yet, though I tried limiting via NVIDIA Inspector, but with unfortunately only with sobering results...

I guess you are right with G-Sync/freesync, but since (at least G-Sync) is quite expensive, this is currently my go-to option:)

And I didn't know that it could allow microstutters... I noticed in Dishonored, but I could avoid it by using the in-game limiter. Was not aware this this could have been caused by fast sync, thanks for the heads up:)

7 years ago
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you mean unlimited dishonored was smooth with vsync, stuttery with fastsync, & i presume also stuttery with any sync disabled? (good time to check how much fps the gpu is capable of)

i once again have yet another test for you, theoretically the worst case of fastsync is if the game is only rendering one or a few fps higher than the refresh, it should result in very obvious stuters at 60hz, so you can try this TF2 with fps_max 61 to 65

i kind of wonder what happens on fastsync with fps below refresh, it must stutter the same as vsync, but then wouldnt the input lag be the same as double (not triple) buffered

speaking of hz, a side effect of high refresh like 120hz+ is that tearing AND stutter is less pronounced, in fact a 55fps game on 120hz will have half the stutter amount per stutter (but probably double the stutters) compared to the same 55fps on 60hz

(i never mentioned i dont have a powerful nv gpu to test fastsync myself, not sure if midrange fermi even supports it)

7 years ago*
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No I actually mean it was stuttery with vsync enabled, disabled, and fast sync while it was unlimited. It worked smoothly as soon as I enabled the limiter.

I can't test out the TF2 stuff right now. Will do when I am able to, from my experience in the last 2 months, only Dishonored 2 hat this stutter issue, and it was easily solved. Didn't notice it anywhere else

7 years ago
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I always played without V-sync, thinking that there was no other option, so thank you for this.
Is screen tearing something that happens often without V-sync? I never witnessed it in years (I think).

7 years ago
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Or you can just play it in windowed mode without Vsync as Windows in that case does a very similar thing natively.
And by similar thing, I mean that Fast V-Sync is just a fancy name of implementing triple buffering in DirectX.

7 years ago
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Then that's the answer, I always play in window mode.
Cheers!

7 years ago
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That's a good idea as well! Though depending on the game there could be major performance issues... But in fact nothing unsolvable i guess.

7 years ago
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