V-sync

It synchronizes the game's rendered framerate with the refresh rate of your monitor, preventing frames from being only partially updated/refreshed on-screen (resulting in what's known as "tearing" or "shearing.")

TweakGuides has a page on it, as well as a screenshot example of shearing.

you should only use it on games made in early 2007 and earlier.OPRFWrestler112

:shock::question:

Uh huh. Right.

but vsync also lowers your overall fps, sometimes by drastic amountOPRFWrestler112

you should only use it on games made in early 2007 and earlier.OPRFWrestler112

V-Sync can be a double edged sword sometimes, depends on the game actually. While it will eliminate the tearing effect it can also cause slight stuttering in frame rates. To reduce this slight stutter, you need to raise the refresh frequency of the monitor.

If using V-Sync, I'd say that a monitor refresh of 80+ is best.

Oh and yes, it does reduce the frame rates but if you imagine that if your refresh rate is 60Hz, this means your screen is refreshing at roughly 60 times a second. But if your FPS is 80, this means there are 20 frames every second that are either only partially drawn on the screen or aren't drawn at all.

I play all my games with V-Sync, it hardly seems worth not using it to be honest.

Have fun

While it will eliminate the tearing effect it can also cause slight stuttering in frame rates. To reduce this slight stutter, you need to raise the refresh frequency of the monitor.NosmoKing1984

That's what Tripple Buffering is for.

[QUOTE="OPRFWrestler112"]you should only use it on games made in early 2007 and earlier.careyletendre

:shock::question:

Uh huh. Right.

Scratch what I said, I meant "if you have an older computer, you should only use it on games made in early 2007 or earlier." Damn tiredness :P

[QUOTE="NosmoKing1984"] While it will eliminate the tearing effect it can also cause slight stuttering in frame rates. To reduce this slight stutter, you need to raise the refresh frequency of the monitor.careyletendre

That's what Tripple Buffering is for.

Ah the mysterious tripple buffer...now your secret is revealed!

I honestly never knew what that did. I always thought it was like a DX7 version of Anisotropic filtering...I guess that would be Trilinear...now I see why I got them confused.

Well, I'm still trying to work out why Tripple Buff is even an option since if your frame rates drop you will get slugish reactions. This is very noticeable in any graphically chalanging game, very painful in Lost Planet as I remmeber (tech staff were constantly telling people to turn it off). Tripple Buff is fine when you have very stable high FPS but if your graphics card might drop frames a little it will hurt.