Vertical Sync Questions.

up until just recently I thought that VSync synchronized the vertical pixels horizontals (or something like that I forget what I thought now I know what it does (face-palm).
Anywho, knowing this now, it raises some questions about its performance (for me anyway.)
Without VSync on, if A game renders 100 FPS, and then with VSync on (a 60Htz monitor) the frame rate is 60, is that just limiting the graphics card so it doesn't get overworked?
Is it good to have VSync on all the time, so the graphics card doesn't get overworked, and could possibly turn up the graphics settings now that it can cope with a lower frame rate?
Does it put any added stress on the graphics card to (how do I say this) allow for a 100 FPS down to a 60FPS? (if that makes sense)
If A graphics card can only output 30FPS for a game;
A: Is it a bad Idea to turn on VSync?
B: if turned on, will that just make things worse, because it can't even cope with half the frame rate to begin with?

Ba!nesy said:

up until just recently I thought that VSync synchronized the vertical pixels horizontals (or something like that I forget what I thought now I know what it does (face-palm).
Anywho, knowing this now, it raises some questions about its performance (for me anyway.)
Without VSync on, if A game renders 100 FPS, and then with VSync on (a 60Htz monitor) the frame rate is 60, is that just limiting the graphics card so it doesn't get overworked?
Is it good to have VSync on all the time, so the graphics card doesn't get overworked, and could possibly turn up the graphics settings now that it can cope with a lower frame rate?
Does it put any added stress on the graphics card to (how do I say this) allow for a 100 FPS down to a 60FPS? (if that makes sense)
If A graphics card can only output 30FPS for a game;
A: Is it a bad Idea to turn on VSync?
B: if turned on, will that just make things worse, because it can't even cope with half the frame rate to begin with?

Click to expand...

In my opinion VSYNC is great. What it does exactly is render a frame on your monitor at the refresh rate of the monitor. When you have a game running at 100 fps, you actually are seeing under 30 (eye limitation). Anyways 60 makes it look smoother. More than that, is just for make you feel you have a great computer.

Now, there might be some issues. If your card can't keep up most of the time with 60 fps, let's say you are playing a game like battlefield and in a scene with smoke and water where a lot of graphic power is required, then the card can't get 60fps, 2 things may happen: it will try to sync it at 30fps or even worse, it may skip some frames or give you some black splashes.
In the first case, if you are not using VSYNC and the card can't keep up with 60, at least it will give you as much as it can.


My advice is, turn it on, use FRAPS and check if the card is doing well at 60. If not, just turn it on because it will look uglier.

The other advantage is that you don't have your card rendering a lot of frames when is not needed. The deal here is (at least in my case with the hot gtx295) when I play with vsync on, temps are a bit lower, so are the fans and noise.