Help Request: Frametime displays wrong value when capped with RTSS, but not the Driver limiter

I have a custom overlay configured via HWiNFO64 and RTSS.

In my top image I am importing the Framerate and Frametime data from RTSS.

If I use the Nvidia Control Panel FPS limiter set to 60 (this occurs regardless of game for context), then the overlay/frametime value imported from RTSS correctly displayed 16.7 ms unless there is a genuine drop in framerate.

Meanwhile if I cap the framerate to 60 with RTSS instead of the driver limiter, the frametime imported from RTSS displays incorrect values. Though the framerate never actually drops below 60, the frametime displayed seems to be completely wrong.

I have tested this in several games and it seems very unusual/I don't get why this is happening. If I cap to 60 with Driver, it correctly shows 16.7 ms, if I then switch that cap to RTSS at 60 instead, the frametime displayed is all wrong and only occasionally seems to show 16.7 ms. I recall asking about this over on HWiNFO forums sometime ago, but my recollection is that they said these values are just imported from whatever RTSS reads so I'm just sorta confused why this could be happening. Thanks!

 

OK I'll try and rework the overlay to just use RTSS for the FPS/Frametime values, but I am very curious why this difference would be present. Strangely in-game limiters or the driver one display the correct frametimes, but when reaching an RTSS limit then importing those values over to the HWiNFO overlay, the frametimes are very wonky and only rarely display the correct value (16.7 ms in this case).

Not sure why it's happening like that, but in my own tests the RTSS limiter works a bit better (certainly in some games) than the Nvidia driver level limiter so I plan to keep using it (great work by the way RTSS is a must-have tool for any PC gamer imo).

Anyhow, I'll go ahead and rework the overlay to use RTSS natively. Thanks a lot,

 

I'll ask there again, thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.

 

Apologies, I must be confused then -- in my own tests across two different machines, this behavior only occurs when using the RTSS limiter and reaching it. It does not occur with any in-engine limiter nor any of Nvidia's driver limiters when using the exact same setup -- when using those, the frametimes are displayed correctly as expected.

Thus, it seems that there is some difference specifically when the RTSS limiter is being used. Perhaps I am misunderstanding your meaning when you say:
> "It is a case of you switching to different application and seeing frametame taken from wrong source."
If this were so, then why does the issue NOT occur when i'm either not capping the framerate at all or when I use different limiters? There must be some cause or difference specifically associated with using this setup (importing RTSS data into HWiNFO + reaching an RTSS framerate limit).

If I'm wrong, I apologize, this is what I'm seeing on my two PCs however. I think I might be misunderstanding you by the sounds of it. Sorry for the trouble, just trying to determine why the one case differs from the others. Of course I am able to work around this by simply using the driver level limiter or in-game ones, but I find RTSS's limiter often is perceptually a bit smoother to my eye in certain titles which is why I consistently use it. Thanks,

I did not mean to misrepresent what you were saying, apologies. That's the main reason I made sure to link the original so that people could view your replies directly.

 

Now I'm really confused lol In any case thanks for your time, I'm sorry for the trouble. I know you have to correct people saying the wrong stuff about your application a lot so I didn't mean to contribute to that, just trying to determine what's going on. Thanks,

 

Thanks, that's helpful -- I'll look into some guides for setting that up. To clarify, I *never* run more than 1 3D Application / Game at a given time, it seems to me that would probably be pretty darn taxing on your system and slow down the game you're actually playing.

I appreciate any insights you can provide, but I do hope you don't feel pressured to reply to these threads. My aim is that maybe anybody who uses the tool and has observed this type of behavior could reply if they happen to know something. If it's you or another user or if it's nobody (assuming nobody knows or has seen what I have), that's fine too. I expect you're pretty busy. I do want to go to the effort of actually making the thread though as otherwise I'd never get any insight whatsoever on these kind of things. For example, I find sites like Reddit are far far worse for getting any useful information about these kinds of issues/behaviors so the best place to post questions is here.

Thanks for your time in any case, I can look into different overlay solutions inline with your recommendation (or perhaps just stop using the frametime display as FPS appears to work fine).

 

That's helpful to know, when you said "3D application" I assumed you meant more than one game running.

I will look into the custom overlay recommendation you provide and I appreciate the recommendation, I was not intending to misrepresent anything you'd said in my HWiNFO thread, I only made it to begin with since I thought you had meant initially that it was not an issue with RTSS, but rather HWiNFO64.

> "custom far nicer overlay"
Well, it is a lot more minimalist/nicer looking to me than anything I was ever able to achieve with MSI Afterburner or with only RTSS as a standalone. I'd argue overlay aesthetic is a grey area of subjectivity, but yes I expect similar-ish looking setups can be achieved with other tools.

It seems that I have agitated you and I apologize for that, but I'm not sure what better recourse there is than making a thread here in search of more information/understanding why what I'm seeing occurred. Thank you for your time and the valuable tool you've authored, I use it virtually every day.

 

Thank you very much for this insight, I really appreciate it. For what it's worth I took your advice and have decided to switch my overlay to the MSI Afterburner one. I did really like "visually"/layout-wise what I was able to do with HWiNFO64, but if the readings that it imports from RTSS are so inaccurate, I can't really use it for what I hoped to.

I know it took effort/time for you to check that out, thank you very much for your efforts. You've really helped me out! Sorry to have troubled you over this. Thanks for RTSS, it's on all my PCs (it's impressive how your external limiter manages to be more accurate/superior on the whole to many in-engine limiters in my experience -- some games like Hunt seem to prefer RTSS over Nvidia's driver level limiter seems to me and games like Far Cry 6 do much better being limited via RTSS in terms of perceived "smoothness" vs its own internal limiter for example).

Would you mind if I took a screenshot/quoted your words here and passed that along to the HWiNFO64 dev? It may be something helped for Martin to know, but of course I don't want to misrepresent your phrasing or anything so it'd just be a direct quote or screenshot with a link to this thread. Thanks,

 

You were right (no surprise there )

I was able to achieve virtually the same overlay (even with custom colors) via the RTSS plugin for custom overlays. With MSI Afterburner to import the CPU frequency and temps (everything else I wanted was already there with the stock RTSS app) it all worked out and now frametimes represent themselves as expected.

Thanks a lot! I use your apps all the time, much appreciated. Sorry to have taken up your time, I found some previous threads where you'd already hashed out much of this so that's my bad, apologies.

 

Nice, thanks a lot! Will move over to the beta then, much appreciated

 

I did have one question if you get a spare moment, apologies I've probably just overlooked something obvious, but I noticed "memory usage" from MSI Afterburner reads out slightly different values to RTSS's GPU memory usage:


I had thought both were meant to represent VRAM usage, but I imagine I've just misunderstood at the MSI value is meant for something slightly different or some such. Thanks!