Gsync Monitor Useful?

Discussion in 'TSW General Discussion' started by shamanspark, Apr 18, 2021.

  1. shamanspark

    shamanspark Member

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    I think about buying a GSync monitor to smooth the stutters up.
    Do you think it does make sense?
    "Normally" i get about 50-60 fps, in hard environment i fall back to 25-30 fps or lets say 35-45 fps.
    Depends on track etc.
    Does such a monitor make sense at all in this "low" fps environments??
     
  2. Crosstie

    Crosstie Well-Known Member

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    G-sync matches your GPU's output with your monitor's refresh rate, reducing stutter and screen tearing. It's expensive and only works with NVIDIA GPU's. You really need a monitor with a fast refresh rate and a high end Graphics card to take full advantage.
    It won't help you get better performance or higher FPS, though.
     
  3. pinter

    pinter Member

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  4. shamanspark

    shamanspark Member

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  5. Callum B.

    Callum B. Well-Known Member

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    It won't reduce or mitigate tile-loading stutters (which is what you see dropping your in-game FPS) but it does look nice for games where you can maintain a continuous framerate. I personally have a Freesync monitor paired with my Nvidia GPU and though it looks nice and smooth for games like ATS or most AAA titles, it doesn't have much effect on TSW since the tile-load stutters completely overshadow the variable-refresh improvement.

    Cheers
     
  6. geloxo

    geloxo Well-Known Member

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    After Nvidia updated their drivers this is not the case anymore. You can use a freesync monitor with Nvidia cards. All you need is a 10xx, 20xx or 30xx series card and the latest Nvidia drivers. The natively supported g-sync monitors have a special Nvidia HW chip ("Nvidia taxes" for their developement) which made them more expensive, while freesync solution from AMD is open source and cheaper. Provided that the freesync ones are certified (tested) by Nvidia they work perfect and therefore they are called g-sync compatible. That guarantees that they behave the same as an official one. Mine is one of those and I have had no issues so far. Normally the downside is that their working g-sync range is not from 1Hz to the top refresh of the monitor as the ones using the HW chip, but from 48hz to the top refresh typically. Below that value some can still double the refresh to match the lower ranges (e.g: work at 60Hz to match a 30fps situation), as Callum explained in another post. But honestly any game below 30fps looks horrible, even if synced, so this should not be an issue.

    Cheers
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2021
  7. geloxo

    geloxo Well-Known Member

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    By the way... Which is the best solution to record videos while using g-sync monitors? Unfortunatelly the improvements from g-sync are only visible at the g-sync monitor running the game itself but recorded videos will still stutter and suffer from the fps drops, at least in the first tests I did (most likely I did something wrong as I´m still not so familiar with that). Screen cloning, which is the method I used to feed my video capture so far, disables g-sync as cloned monitors currently need to run at same refresh in windows. Any suggestions from those who had used this feature for longer times than me?

    Cheers
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2021
  8. Crosstie

    Crosstie Well-Known Member

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    I didn't say it works only with G-sync monitors. Only that you need an Nvidia graphics card. I'm well aware that Nvidia has incorporated compatible monitors.
     
  9. shamanspark

    shamanspark Member

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    Just wondering, if i go on ultra, the gpu goes mad at 100% cpu stays 50%
    If i go one step back, to high/middle the gpu goes at 50% cpu stays 50%

    16gb ram, not fully used

    so why do we have 20 fps in some areas??
     
  10. mattdsoares

    mattdsoares Well-Known Member

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    At this point if you own an Nvidia GPU and are in the market for a new monitor there is little reason NOT to buy at least a G-Sync compatible screen now that Nvidia has opened that up.
     
  11. mattdsoares

    mattdsoares Well-Known Member

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    That depends on the monitor. They each will have their own adaptive sync range. For example, mine works from 41-60 FPS. So if my framerates are within that range then the adaptive sync will work. However if I don't limit my fps to 60 OR my fps falls below 41, adaptive sync won't work and I may get screen tearing. Also, adaptive sync (whether freesync or Gsync) won't necessarily smooth stutters. They'll eliminate screen tearing. Most game stutters aren't caused by a mismatch between refresh rate and fps. Most are caused by fps drops and spikes caused by your GPU, CPU, and the game itself. A Gsync monitor will do nothing to fix that.
     
  12. mattdsoares

    mattdsoares Well-Known Member

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    That's not really enough system info to give an opinion for you. What GPU and CPU are you using? What resolution are you playing at? TSW2 is not a very graphically intensive game even at ultra, but if you try running it on a potato, yea you might struggle. Your CPU usage is staying the same because the difference between High and Ultra may not include effects that put much additional strain on the CPU, but may on the GPU instead.
     
  13. shamanspark

    shamanspark Member

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    Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700 CPU
    GeForce RTX 2060 Super
    WQHD @ 2560 x 1440
    16 GB RAM

    Windows 10 newest version, Nvidia Drivers newest version
     
  14. mattdsoares

    mattdsoares Well-Known Member

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    If you're getting 20fps on Ultra with a 2060 Super at 1440 there is something going on. Are we talking consistent 20fsp or periodic short drops?
     
  15. shamanspark

    shamanspark Member

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    München Augsburg at munich start i got 23 fps
     
  16. shamanspark

    shamanspark Member

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    quote: "Normally" i get about 50-60 fps, in hard environment i fall back to 25-30 fps or lets say 35-45 fps."
     
  17. geloxo

    geloxo Well-Known Member

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    The 20fps are just caused by heavy tiles or by screen scaling usually and this simply indicates your system is not able to perform well for the required rendering load (so either GPU, CPU or both are not able to follow each other or just both are too weak for that particular situation). In all routes there´s always a heavy tile that is simply too much for any system. You have to live with it or just reduce some of the graphical settings but in most cases it´s just that the tile itself is populated with a lot of tracks or objects next to a big station, so you most likely have also several trains inside and so on. The worse for performance...

    The screen scaling used for antialias in game is very demanding. You are running at wqhd which is indeed a high resolution already, so if you use any extra scaling or if you add a lot of details to game the system suffers. But having a close to 100% usage does not mean that the GPU has a problem. Indeed it means it´s being working to the best performance it can deliver. The proof is that you can reach 50-60fps in any other regular situation, so system is able to handle game well. If you had the opposite after going ultra on settings (low GPU usage and high CPU usage) then this may point to a CPU bottleneck. But what I have seen is that TSW2 is normally more demanding on GPU side, as directX 11 helps a lot to optimize the CPU usage. Other games like old Flight Simulator for instance are terrible and required a huge CPU usage and no matter if you had a NASA computer, as it will always work bad in performance on cities and heavy airports.

    Anyway check that you are not adding too much extra efforts to system by using any crazy engine.ini settings (specially very high viewdistances, LODs, shadows or a combination of those settings).

    Cheers
     
    Last edited: Apr 19, 2021
  18. shamanspark

    shamanspark Member

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    engine.ini :

    [SystemSettings]
    r.TextureStreaming=0
    foliage.LODDistanceScale=3
    r.ViewDistanceScale=5
    r.Shadow.DistanceScale=3
    r.Shadow.CSM.TransitionScale=2
     
  19. geloxo

    geloxo Well-Known Member

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    Those two are the problem, specially the first. A 5 in the viedistance is too much. Take into account that with 2 on that variable you can lose 5fps, with 3 around 10-15fps and with 4 close to 20fps in a regular tile with a station and a city next to it. This one adds detail to distant tracks and also increses the amount of objects in the scenery. Both are painful. I have mine set at 3 and it´s even too much on yards like the Tees Valley ones for instance, and I have a 2080Ti card, so imagine... Better would be to use 2, and just 3 if you can´t live without distant details.

    The second has less impact and you could keep it, provided that you reduce the viewdistance, but it still hurts and it does it a lot. Where it hurts more is when you have a city and/or forest close to tracks, for instance in the arrival to Reading in GWE route. There you may lose quite easily 10 fps just by the shadows.

    Cheers
     
    • Helpful Helpful x 1
  20. pinter

    pinter Member

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    shamanspark - what type of hard drive do you have you game installed on?

    I recently upgraded my system to a NVMe drive and it hardly stutters on loading at all. Some routes I get consistently around 70fps, some a bit below 60, but with the adaptive refresh rate it's not really noticeable. That's with running all the graphics presets on Ultra at 2550x1440 with a GTX 1070.
     
  21. shamanspark

    shamanspark Member

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    Samsung SSD 860 QVO 1 TB
     

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