Any downside to enabling G-Sync for Windowed Mode? It's only enabled for Fullscreen by default

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce Drivers Section' started by BlindBison, Aug 4, 2020.

  1. Netherwind

    Netherwind Ancient Guru

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    I haven't tried windowed FS for some time now. I just remember that when I used it, moving around windows like Spotify, Corsair iCUE and others with the mouse would make the window movement appear "stuttery".
     
  2. TimmyP

    TimmyP Guest

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    ^that is normal expected behavior
     
  3. Kelutrel

    Kelutrel Member

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    In my experience, when you enable gsync in windowed mode, there are certain Windows .NET applications (notably WhatsApp desktop client, and OCCT benchmark, and others...) that start to lag when you move the mouse.
    Maybe this happens only on my configuration, but I thought to post it here because it is quick to verify and may add latency in other cases too that may be more important (like games in windowed mode).
    Due to this, I usually keep gsync enabled in fullscreen mode only.
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2022
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  4. BlindBison

    BlindBison Ancient Guru

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    I've noticed this exact same issue
     

  5. Luckz

    Luckz Guest

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  6. PQED

    PQED Active Member

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    Yep, I have a profile where I add programs that interfere with windowed G-Sync alone (turn "G-Sync Application State" to "Off"), I just named it "G-Sync off" so it won't interfere with others.
    If needed, I just import it if it was wiped.
    RTSS is usually a good tool to detect 3D applications running: Shift+Click "Add" and you should see any active 3D programs; there are usually more than you think, and they can all affect performance.
     
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  7. bobrocks95

    bobrocks95 Guest

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    This topic seems decently active, figure I'll share my thoughts.

    So many games only offer borderless windowed these days. People would rather alt-tab every 10 minutes to check their Discord notifications than play a game with proper frame pacing. Go somewhere like the Special K forums and they'll balk at you for even mentioning fullscreen exclusive. I can't blame devs for not bothering with it when people just complain about alt-tabbing taking 5 seconds.

    For me, I've just now started to realize that when G-Sync is enabled for windowed/borderless windowed (non-flip model) applications, my framerate gets capped at 118.8 FPS for some ridiculous reason. Frame pacing becomes god-awful and every game is reduced to a stuttering mess, even if there's performance overhead and it's running right at that max. To quote from the first page of this thread:
    I have not found anyone else say they have this problem, but if you know how to spot bad frame pacing, suddenly every game looks absolutely terrible. I thought at first it was just Unity games being weird because Unity, but it's anything without exclusive fullscreen, IF I have G-Sync enabled for windowed applications. Turn it off and you get nice smooth 120 FPS, until of course the game can't quite hit that target and you lose out on the whole point of having a G-Sync display anyways.

    If Windows 11 is offering a fully automatic promotion to flip-model presentation for ALL borderless windowed games, and I don't have to sit there and think about it and mess around with Special K configuration and all that, then damn I guess I have an actual reason to upgrade to Windows 11 (and I'm sure break something else I use).
     
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  8. RealNC

    RealNC Ancient Guru

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    Fullscreen optimizations (enabled by default in W10) solved this already, didn't it?
     
  9. BlindBison

    BlindBison Ancient Guru

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    I've noticed some games stutter noticeably more frequently when using g-sync + borderless windowed over g-sync + fullscreen exclusive. And that's in the "best case scenario" for windowed mode since I'm on the most recent build of Win11 and have enabled their recent "improvements for windowed mode dxflip" option or whatever its called.

    As for your general/average users balking, you're right from what I've seen but I expect a big part of this is many users just genuinely do not seem to understand the ramifications of these options. Now, in fairness "sometimes" borderless windowed mode works basically identically in some games and I can't tell the difference and it has been getting "better" (iirc it even allows in-game v-sync to override the default windowed mode "fast sync" nowadays, but I'm not 100% sure there -- would need to retest).

    But yeah, every game should have a true fullscreen exclusive option in my view. Part of why "frame pacing" or whatever it is goes down the crapper with windowed mode enabled in general terms is because by default windowed forces unconstrained fast sync style v-sync which will look super jittery by its very nature (without g-sync at least that is). Again, I am surprised that the average user either doesn't see this at all or isn't aware of it to begin with. But then again it seems many users simply don't fully understand V-Sync or how to implement it optimally on PC (e.g. the blurbuster's low lag v-sync guide) and/or don't understand the differences between double buffering/fifo triple buffering and fast sync style triple buffering (etc).

    My fear here is that the devs themselves perhaps don't fully understand these things and thus don't bother with a fullscreen option because they themselves only use windowed mode. This is more common than one might think -- consider how many (especially Japanese devs for whatever reason) devs implement 30 fps totally wrong on console with awful frame pacing because they just used standard 60 hz v-sync with an inaccurate fps cap instead of utilizing actual system level half refresh rate v-sync + a correctly tuned fps cap instead.
     
    Last edited: Nov 7, 2022
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  10. BlindBison

    BlindBison Ancient Guru

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    My understanding was that this feature merely turned fullscreen mode itself into a hybrid option (which wasn't good in some games -- the Fromsoft games for example on DX11 I had to disable this feature to get G-Sync to work correctly in fullscreen mode -- this is still true today). As far as I know FSO didn't change how windowed or borderless windowed mode works, but correct me if I'm wrong.

    EDIT: Oh whoops, I think I misread your comment, apologies.
     

  11. bobrocks95

    bobrocks95 Guest

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    Right, completely fair point that the fullscreen optimizations in Windows 10 was already supposed to give you the best of both worlds for exclusive fullscreen. It definitely hasn't led to more exclusive fullscreen support though unfortunately.

    Sucks that the windowed optimizations haven't fully solved the problem either. Props to the Windows team for trying to improve things at least, since exclusive fullscreen doesn't seem to be coming back any time soon. Of course there's the headache of the TPM module stuff for me keeping me from upgrading, so I'm not exactly running out to get 11 right away...
     
  12. ramthegamer

    ramthegamer Ancient Guru

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    So now after researching about g sync enabled on freesync monitor using nvidia card, the best smoothness with very low input lag is to enable g sync and v sync in control panel for the specific game, and reflex on in game
    Even for cs go, v sync has to be on to be able to have the best smoothness while limiting fps to 141 on 144hrz monitor
     
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  13. kman

    kman Master Guru

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    V-sync ON (in control panel) V-sync OFF ingame
    -3 max fps limit (Eg:144=141)

    That's basically what the blurbuster guide tells you to do.
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2022
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  14. BlindBison

    BlindBison Ancient Guru

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    In general terms I expect that should work pretty well. Occasionally you may run into an oddball that requires in-game v-sync for whatever reason but in such cases you can just switch that game's profile to use the 3d app v-sync mode I expect. As a general default the blurbuster's guide makes sense to me.
     
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  15. X7007

    X7007 Ancient Guru

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    so what do we get with for freesync tv/monitor 120hz and can we use the same settings for projector 60hz?

    gsync off
    fixed monitor
    low latency mode on
    vsync fast
    cap fps to 116 and 58 for projector
    game vsync off
     

  16. bobrocks95

    bobrocks95 Guest

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    Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but for a Freesync/VRR display I think you'd still turn G-Sync on. Your settings would have a ton of screen tearing with G-Sync completely off I'm pretty sure.
     
  17. dr_rus

    dr_rus Ancient Guru

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    Gsync is Nvidia's name for VRR/AS just like Freesync is AMD's. You need to turn Gsync on for it to work anywhere.
     
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  18. X7007

    X7007 Ancient Guru

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    so which are the correct settings to use? there are too many to choose from.... in the old days we had no input lag and now we have triple of it... the hell. in point which settings??
     
  19. RealNC

    RealNC Ancient Guru

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    Limit your FPS to about 3 below the refresh rate. Maybe more when using very high refresh rate monitors (like 180Hz, 240Hz, etc.) It might be better to use a percentage instead (3% of the refresh rate.)

    When using an in-game limiter, monitor the FPS to see if the limiter is actually accurate and sticks to the limit. If it exceeds the limit, lower it further, or switch to using RTSS or the nvidia control panel to set an FPS limit. Those are very, very accurate.

    That's about it.
     
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  20. dr_rus

    dr_rus Ancient Guru

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    If we use NULL's limiter rule then it's +2 fps to subtract for each +60Hz.
    So -2 on 60Hz, -4 on 60-120, -6 on 120-180, -8 on 180-240, etc.
     

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