One of the big things to remember with VRR is that you will incur a latency penalty of a couple of frames if your game is running right at the maximum refresh rate of your display. This is why it is usually recommended to set a system wide framerate cap a few frames below the maximum supported value.
For most modern gaming monitors, this isn't a huge deal. Cap your game at 140 FPS on a 144hz display and it will feel as snappy as it probably would have uncapped. Though if you have a lower end (or ultra high resolution) display that caps out at something much lower, like 60, then I can definitely see how leaving it uncapped with VRR disabled would feel a lot snappier.
Early Freesync-branded displays could also be a bit of a crapshoot for a variety of reasons, but this has gotten much better in the last 5-6 years.
One of the big things to remember with VRR is that you will incur a latency penalty of a couple of frames if your game is running right at the maximum refresh rate of your display. [..] For most modern gaming monitors, this isn't a huge deal. Cap your game at 140 FPS on a 144hz display and it will feel as snappy as it probably would have uncapped.
That sounds very weird to me, why would that be the case?
(also FWIW i'm using Linux so a system-wide cap isn't exactly possible, though at least with games i can simply run them via mangohud)
On Linux I use Mangohud or libstrangle to cap framerates. For me it is not a major annoyance though, as I only play a few games regularly on Linux. I still boot into Windows after I'm done with work and play most games there.
My understanding of why this causes a problem is that the CPU starts running ahead of the GPU, and queues up frames to be rendered. So it shouldn't be a problem with games that support Nvidia Reflex or some other feature to limit pre-rendered frames.
Yeah freesync is just causing uneven frame times if the game is not running higher than the monitor refresh rate and with monitor pushing above 144hz is harder and harder. At some point frame time will be so small that this unevenness will be unnoticeable but in the most common price range adaptive sync at half monitor rate is a better experience
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One of the big things to remember with VRR is that you will incur a latency penalty of a couple of frames if your game is running right at the maximum refresh rate of your display. This is why it is usually recommended to set a system wide framerate cap a few frames below the maximum supported value.
For most modern gaming monitors, this isn't a huge deal. Cap your game at 140 FPS on a 144hz display and it will feel as snappy as it probably would have uncapped. Though if you have a lower end (or ultra high resolution) display that caps out at something much lower, like 60, then I can definitely see how leaving it uncapped with VRR disabled would feel a lot snappier.
Early Freesync-branded displays could also be a bit of a crapshoot for a variety of reasons, but this has gotten much better in the last 5-6 years.
That sounds very weird to me, why would that be the case?
(also FWIW i'm using Linux so a system-wide cap isn't exactly possible, though at least with games i can simply run them via mangohud)
On Linux I use Mangohud or libstrangle to cap framerates. For me it is not a major annoyance though, as I only play a few games regularly on Linux. I still boot into Windows after I'm done with work and play most games there.
My understanding of why this causes a problem is that the CPU starts running ahead of the GPU, and queues up frames to be rendered. So it shouldn't be a problem with games that support Nvidia Reflex or some other feature to limit pre-rendered frames.
Yeah freesync is just causing uneven frame times if the game is not running higher than the monitor refresh rate and with monitor pushing above 144hz is harder and harder. At some point frame time will be so small that this unevenness will be unnoticeable but in the most common price range adaptive sync at half monitor rate is a better experience