Smoothing out Skyrim with v-sync

A

adrift02

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 10, 2006
Messages
467
So this fix worked for me (thanks Tim James) and I wanted to see if anyone else has success removing most of their stutter.

Tim used Dxstory to force a fps limit of 60fps. This worked for me with and without vsync. Keep in mind stutter still pops up a bit but the difference was dramatic.

Any of you with dramatic stutter panning around, give it a try and let me know what it does for you. Very curious to see if this makes things better as vsync stutter is common with my 6970 (it helped BF3 too).

Edit: btw, any program that can cap your fps without recording should work. I just don't know of any others.
 
Last edited:
Why are you calling this vsync stutter if the stutter occurs whether or not vsync is on, and is fixed by an fps limiter whether or not vsync is on?
 
It smooths out the game without v-sync as well but not because of stutter; I'm pretty sensitive to the jerkiness that happens when at ~80fps on a 60hz monitor (as an example). The panning stutter only happens with vsync.

I'm specifically asking those with vsync stutter to see if it helps.
 
While I haven't tried the FPS limiter, I've had issues with stuttering in other games related to this. Crysis 2 was a horrible offender. Even with vsync on, the game was really choppy (even if I was always at 60FPS) but when you cap the FPS at 60, it's as smooth as glass.

9 times out of 10 you don't notice things as much until you try walking and moving the camera at the same time.
 
Solomutt said:
That isn't stutter. That is tearing.
Click to expand...

I know exactly what tearing is, as it's actually very apparent using a FPS limiter without vsync. What I see when I'm getting ~80 fps is a "jerkyness" during movement, almost like frames get dropped. I assume it's due to the framerate being too out of sync from the monitor refresh rate as it gets better at ~120fps and above (and shifts to different FPSs running a 75hz monitor). Apparently it's normal and I just notice it more than others, I even saw it on my friends rig running an entirely different setup and a Nvidia card. You can test it for yourself, run a game with a 60hz monitor, cap your framerate at ~80-85fps and move side to side with something like a pillar going across the screen. It won't move near as smooth as ~60 fps.

But that's off-topic and has nothing to do with what I wanted to test (v-sync stuttering). It's exactly what Domingo described. Seems to be a running issue with AMD, unfortunately I don't have my 560ti around to test Nvidia.
 
I had TONS of problems with it on my ATI 5870 and while it affects my GTX570 here and there, it isn't quite as bad.
I don't think it's related to graphics cards so much as it's the monitor you're on. I'm playing on my TV and it's more pronounced on one TV than another. When hooked up to my old monitor, it's barely there at all.
I think some monitors don't like getting odd signals and framerates.
One such example would be seeing 61FPS on a game with vsync on. In theory that shouldn't be possible, but it is...because the exact refresh rate might not by 60Hz right on the dot.
 
Does the game use triple buffering? If it doesnt call for triple buffering through the driver the frame rate cannot fluctuate freely. Only integer fractions of the monitor's refresh rate (i.e. 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5 etc.) are possible. In the case of the refresh rate of 60Hz, the only possible framerates would be 60fps, 30fps, 20fps, 15fps, 12fps

So in many cases the framerate will "jump" from 60 to 30 frames per second, which can be quite noticeable. As long as the graphic card can maintain the 60 frames per second at all times, this doesn't hurt at all, but every drop below 60 fps will reduce the actual framerate to 30 fps.
 
I got the same problem when I hooked the game up to my TV. It runs fine on my 120Hz screen, but on any of my 60Hz devices I get massive stuttering when I'm supposed to have a high frame rate (when looking straight down and spinning around for example). Thought it was SLI at first, but it was just because SLI bumped up the framerate too high. All of this was done with vsync enabled.

Limiting the framerate works very well, the stuttering isn't really noticeable anymore. Supposedly nvidia has implemented a function for framerate limiting in an upcoming driver. Will be nice to not have to use some shady application for this.

Thanks for the help! :)

i7 930 @4200 | 2xGigabyte GTX460 | Asus P6T Deluxe Pro | 3x2GB Corsair XMS3 @1600MHz | Win 7 x64 | Intel 80GB X25-M
 
Last edited:
Glad it helped guys. I still don't understand why it helps though, hah. I mean v-sync is already supposed to be capping at 60 so you would think an overlay limit of 60 would be redundant. :confused:
 
adrift02 said:
Glad it helped guys. I still don't understand why it helps though, hah. I mean v-sync is already supposed to be capping at 60 so you would think an overlay limit of 60 would be redundant. :confused:
Click to expand...

Here are several quotes (I'm not the expert!) from a thread on 3dguru:

the real problem is running using vsync on a framerate that exceeds the refresh as the input frame gets buffered down to the next in the queue which is switched in at 16ms intervals.

you can fix this mostly by using a frame cap of just under 60 (you'll need triplebuffering though so it doesn't get cut in half) since input is rendered to screen 'just on time' rather than being padded down to the vblank delay.

120hz monitors ALWAYS flip the frame in at 8ms intervals regardless of the frame rate so you don't need 120fps to get smooth gaming on a 120hz display.
Click to expand...

Theres also a difference between how D3D and opengl apply vsync.

D3D always displays every frame in the queue, whilst opengl can selectively drop frames, so D3D is hit by additional lag, whilst opengl has the same lag when you vsync a high frame rate.
Click to expand...

There's other very interesting info in that thread from Infinity7_00's anonymous source.
 
its logical to assume a FPS limiter makes things smoother as without rate limiting your system is always pushing as hard as it can so as soon as something goes wrong there is no buffer to prevent the stutter whilst if you cap the frame rate and keep hardware load not maxed out then there is spare capacity to deal with spikes in demand etc.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top