Enhanced Sync is overrated

Calm down, dude. Are you going to call a SWAT team on me now?! It's me "missing out". Remember? Don't lose your temper.

 

The amount of ignorance on this forum is reaching an all-time dangerous high. Don't come and tell me you're waiting for someone to confirm the "theory" we're speaking of. That only indicates that you never actually read anything that you were provided with. It's very insulting - we provided evidence for the "theory"...

"Theory"...

Keep waiting for the official response from Nvidia & AMD LOL.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong. Our argument revolves around which way is best if the FPS exceeds the Refresh Rate.

If anything, I can just spend the extra frames on Ultra Shadows, 8X MSAA or whatever intensive image quality settings so that the FPS > RR scenario needs not apply.

 

Or comes close to matching it within ~3FPS.

Good luck keeping a consistently high minimum. G-Sync / FreeSync isn't magic - low framerates still look worse than high framerates. If a game's framerate exceeds your refresh rate 10% of the time (e.g. 240FPS), with the other 90% within a comfortable range of, say, 100-144FPS, would you raise your settings so that this 10% becomes 144FPS? Your 90% range would then become 60-86FPS. Not even close to the same experience.

This also doesn't work for a game that runs at a high framerate no matter what, like CS:GO or older games - even if you run them with supersampling resolutions.

Hence, just cap your framerate for the high FPS scenarios, choose settings that get you within a comfortable range, and enjoy the game. You can never guarantee that you won't hit a framerate higher than your refresh rate. Ever tried playing Doom / Wolfenstein II? I get FPS as low as 86FPS and as high as 250FPS+ on Wolfenstein II.

 

Good call.

 

edit

 

V-Sync on does not have the same behavior when G-Sync / FreeSync is on. When FPS < refresh rate, G-Sync / FreeSync is delaying the monitor refresh until the frame is completed. When FPS = refresh rate, G-Sync / FreeSync mimic V-Sync on behavior and you get almost the same extra latency as V-Sync on.

https://www.blurbusters.com/gsync/gsync101-input-lag-tests-and-settings/4/

 

What about using Chill with Freesync to limit the FPS and have Enhanced sync enabled in the Radeon settings? Does Chill act as FRTC which is bad as stated in previous posts? If in game vsync is enabled, does Enahnced Sync take over? Too many choices.

 

I don't have much information about Chill, but I honestly can't see it being different than FRTC in terms of capping the framerate. Indeed, if AMD had come up with a better, lower latency solution for framerate capping, then we should have seen it being used in FRTC. I don't claim to know why, but driver-level framerate caps seem to add a frame of latency vs. their in-game / RTSS counterparts.

So, in this situation, I would think FreeSync + Chill + Enhanced Sync = FreeSync + FRTC + Enhanced Sync. If the framerate cap is placed below the refresh rate, then Enhanced Sync has no effect unless the framerate cap misses its target and you get, for an instant, a framerate higher than your refresh rate. In that case, Enhanced Sync would become active and you would get jitter due to mismatched framerate and refresh rate.

I don't see the point of enabling Enhanced Sync when you have a framerate cap with FreeSync enabled. It will never activate in normal circumstances, and in the anomalous case, would deliver a result worse than V-Sync on (frametime compensation).

 

I m playing Assetto Corsa with FRTC at 72fps (75Hz Monitor) and FreeSync active. This has been the case for a long time now. The last few days i'm practicing on Nordschleife Endurance with 919 Hybrid 2015. My best time with those settings was 7.18.278 until a few minutes ago. I disabled everything and let frames fly (around 150). On the first lap i did 7.15.395.

 

1) FRTC has been updated in Adrenelin drivers, so a lot of the old issues with it no longer apply. (Read the release notes)
2) Chill uses FRTC as part of its function.
3) If you set up Chill to your FreeSync range, maxfps-3, then your game will operate in FreeSync mode. VSync on/off will only apply if the game dips below the minimum Chill range.

The reason I play with VSync Off is because I use the method above, so selecting Enhanced Sync is just to not enable VSync on the driver level. Since I never go above maxfps-3, VSync/Enhanced Sync choice is irrelevant. Plus my FS range is down to 36, so if fps dip to under this, I get choking in game as it transitions out of FreeSync mode. VSync off minimizes this. This usually happens when my desktop system has to still load info to the gfx card, and is playing catch-up. Laptop system is much faster with load latency, so is much less of an issue.

 

actually the only thing they did for frtc is add vulcan support... do you know of something else?

 

According to AMD's settings guide, Vsync driver setting is only applicable for OpenGL games. So for Vsync you have to use the in game setting anyway for most games. I increased the Freesync range from 48 - 144Hz to 30 - 144Hz using CRU so I am never out of Freesync range and I rarely go below 50FPS anyway except for GTA with mods.

 

Well thats clearly wrong as "Always on" works for me with DirectX games(disabled ingame),
infact for example one Vulkan title, vkquake doesnt work with it lol

 

A guide with examples and figures (i.e. refresh rates etc...) is going to be much needed soon.
I just begun fiddling with Enhanced Sync and Chill and am very confused as to the how's, do's and do not's.
Right now I'm in the blind experimenting phase, not knowing exactly what I'm doing and playing it purely on perceived performance, as if it seems there are no strict rules about the various feature's usage and combos and the fact they are so game dependent.
Here's hoping some good soul will eventually come up with an in depth and straightforward guide for AMD peeps willing to get the best out of their games.
Running a 390X with no Freesync monitor, btw.

 

Can you link the settings guide?

EDIT: found it - http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/DH-012.aspx#Link9

So, yes, V-Sync on in-game / via third-party tool.

 

I still don't understand why does the driver vsync setting only apply to OpenGL (who uses that anyway?), and why framerate control only works in fullscreen.
That makes it borderline useless.

 

Thanks for the info. Because of FPS cap I didn't mentioned it
But enhanced sync isn't mentioned.
FRTC doesn't work for me even in Full Screen...

 

This is a derelict case of neglect on AMD's part.

NVIDIA used to be miles ahead of AMD because 1.) driver-level V-Sync can be forced upon DirectX games; 2.) Adaptive V-Sync.

Luckily, G-Sync and FreeSync completely changed the game for the better.

 

With a heavy heart, I hereby dismiss the use of FreeSync in conjunction with some FPS limiter. To anyone who wants to open fire on me, let's just be friends and agree to disagree. Everyone should bear the questioning mind of science and see what works for them and what not.

This is what happened. A 2013 game known as "Remember Me" runs fantastic with FreeSync On and in-game V-Sync On on MY Gaming PC. Hoping to be pleasantly surprised, I enabled the MSI Afterburner FPS limiter (@141 FPS, 3 FPS below the maximum 144 Hz/FPS threshold) and switched off in-game V-Sync.

The verdict of the G-SYNC 101: Optimal G-SYNC Settings & Conclusion article ought to be as follows: The lowest input latency WHILE using G-Sync is achieved by setting the FPS limit at 3 FPS lower than the display's maximum refresh rate. Notwithstanding it, the overall input latency champion is "G-Sync off + V-Sync off" @ Uncapped FPS.

To my horror, both jittering and screen-tearing returned. The FPS counter showed 80-90 FPS but my perceived FPS were 20-30 FPS.

Yeah, I hear you. it's just ONE game. But this got me thinking. Has Blurbusters overlooked gameplay smoothness when all they wanted to investigate was input latency? My web browser's search box found no results containing the word 'smooth' from their article.

HECK, BLURBUSTERS'S G-SYNC 101 GUIDE ABSOLUTELY DID NOT MENTION 'FREESYNC' FOR ONCE.

OP's Verdict:

Laidback about input latency but determined about smoothness in action, I am standing my ground to recommend FreeSync On + In-game V-Sync On.

Last but not least, FreeSync On + Enhanced Sync On + V-Sync Off delivers gameplay smoothness on par with FreeSync On + In-game V-Sync On.

Don't hesitate to use it if In-game V-Sync comes with a nasty FPS limiter. [For instance, Dead Space 2 in-game V-Sync caps FPS to 30.]