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I can't stand screen tearing, which is why I always play with v-sync on. I'll rather have a little input lag. I honestly don't notice the input lag through my wheel in AC though, even when switching to and from v-sync (and I'm not going to start looking/feeling for it now ;)). But in other games the input lag can be quite high and very noticeable.

I assume you notice the screen tearing, even if your eyes may have gotten used to it? If so I suspect you will notice a drastic improvement with g-sync, which should remove all the screen tearing completely.
 
I can't stand screen tearing, which is why I always play with v-sync on. I'll rather have a little input lag. I honestly don't notice the input lag through my wheel in AC though, even when switching to and from v-sync (and I'm not going to start looking/feeling for it now ;)). But in other games the input lag can be quite high and very noticeable.

I assume you notice the screen tearing, even if your eyes may have gotten used to it? If so I suspect you will notice a drastic improvement with g-sync, which should remove all the screen tearing completely.
AC is the only racing game that I own that doesn't have any noticeable input lag when using v sync. Iracing is the worst and for me and unplayable using vsync.
 
(It's in his garage, and he usually races naked) :lol: It is a pretty sweet setup though.
Well, it's bloody hot in there! I have a ceiling fan above me and a pedestal fan aimed directly at me and I still get too hot.

I'm going to install an air conditioner above it soon though, and seal up the edges of the garage door. That should help. Perks of being an electrician, it's a lot more affordable to add things like that when all you have to pay for is the unit. When I end up selling the house or renting it out people are going to wonder why there is 2 way switching for the lights, a data point, a ceiling fan and an air conditioner in the corner of the garage. Perhaps I should leave a photo of my setup pinned to the wall as an explanation lol.

Ps. I at least wear undies. The only skid marks I want to leave are on the screen!
 
I'm going to install an air conditioner above it soon though, and seal up the edges of the garage door. That should help.

Or you could move to Indiana, we currently have snow on the ground and it's below freezing! Bonus, most of our insects can't swallow you whole. :sly: But then we don't get free entertainment like this in our front yard either. :lol:

 
I can't stand screen tearing, which is why I always play with v-sync on. I'll rather have a little input lag. I honestly don't notice the input lag through my wheel in AC though, even when switching to and from v-sync (and I'm not going to start looking/feeling for it now ;)). But in other games the input lag can be quite high and very noticeable.


Have you tried turning Vsync off and then locking your frame rate with RivaTuner? Works wonders for me in most games, and those pesky couple of games that still have screen tear in fullscreen mode - vsync be damned - don't suffer the issue in windowed or borderless windowed mode.
 
Have you tried turning Vsync off and then locking your frame rate with RivaTuner? Works wonders for me in most games, and those pesky couple of games that still have screen tear in fullscreen mode - vsync be damned - don't suffer the issue in windowed or borderless windowed mode.

That's what I do, vsync off and then lock my frame rate in the AC settings to like 83 or something. If I lock it at or close to 60 (my screens are 60hz) I get tearing and stuttering. This seems to run smoother/more consistent than using vsync.
 
Have you tried turning Vsync off and then locking your frame rate with RivaTuner? Works wonders for me in most games, and those pesky couple of games that still have screen tear in fullscreen mode - vsync be damned - don't suffer the issue in windowed or borderless windowed mode.
IIRC I tried that on my old cards in SLI, but I can give it another shot on my new single card.
 
Thank you for the thorough reply! I basically just want no studdering or screen tears and as less lag as possible - the reason I don't use Vsync. Sounds like GSync would be quite good to have. If I only had to buy the 1 screen I'd probably do it, but it gets a lot more expensive purchasing 3 of them.

Not at all urgent, to be honest I'm very happy with my current set up, it's pretty damn smooth.

I will just add a few thoughts from my own experience of late.

Calling it "motion blur" isn't really accurate, though it is a fairly close description of what's happening with lower FR's. What's happening is you are getting information too seldom in order for your brain to get a clear image of a moving object, whether it be passing scenery, or a passing car. Your brain interprets 60fps with some blurring effect simply because it is trying to interpret what it is taking in.

Your eyes most definitely CAN see the difference - don't believe any of the science to the contrary, because it is assuming one very big assumption, which I will not write about here because there is a real chance my theory on this could be worthy of a scientific paper. Someday I may talk to someone at the university nearby about helping to do some experiements proving why 60+hz is able to be noticed by a 60hz eye. People who think they can't see it are merely not noticing it. That's the take away.

But it is one of those things where, once you see the difference, you can't unsee it. Once you feel the smoothness, you can't unfeel it. Now that I have a 144hz monitor, I cannot stand any game at 60hz, so beware of that.

Stuttering will still occur unless you leave overheard room or have G-Sync or Free-Sync. The cost of G-sync is not necessary at this point. Put that money into a better card if you need the frames. In other words, people will try to run 120hz or 144hz in games with no regard to whether their card can push the frames. When framerates drop, they will see either tearing or stutter, even with high FR. (Though, the amount of time that frame is up on the screen is of course, shorter.) When framerates rise above your monitor's refresh rate, you will see tearing. Using nVidia's "Adaptive V-sync" avoids most of the ugliness when this happens by only turning on sync when frames go above 120hz in my typical example, and therefore the stutter of v-sync during lower framerates is avoided. But leaving some overhead should be a best practice for any game anyhow. Pushing your card to 99%, 99% of the time is foolish, IMHO.

So, to recap:
When framerates drop below refresh rate, and V-sync ON, it stutters.
When framerates drop below refresh rate, and V-sync OFF, no stutters, but noticably slower and less smooth gameplay.
When framerates rise above refresh rate, and V-sync ON, it avoids tearing. (but you will still see stutter at below refresh)
When framerates rise above refresh rate, and ADAPTIVE V-sync ON, it avoids tearing AND stutter, by means of giving you best of both worlds.
G-sync helps to smooth out gameplay when refresh rates and frame rates are not identical.

Frame Caps:
Useful if you desire not to use v-sync for whatever reason.
Useful for helping your GPU have some overhead. If your screen is incapable of more than 60hz, you may think hard about whether to ever let games go above that. Your games will be smoother, because low polygon areas are not keeping the GPU load high and when you go into a higher polygon area it is able to cope with it better.
Prevents your game from rendering many more frames than your screen is capable of displaying. (As far as I can tell, all 3D applications will still render more than your refresh rate even if adaptive v-sync is on. Capping it at just above refresh allows the games rendering to go high enough to initiate adaptive v-sync, but not so much that it is wasint resources.)
Especially helpful in conjunction with Adapative v-sync, where v-sync will only turn on when FR's go above RF.

In my 120hz example, use adaptive with framerate cap (in rivatuner) of 122.

Those who are not using v-sync but are saying they never see tearing, are simply incorrect. They may not notice a tear, and if they are using 120hz or greater, they may not be on screen very long, but they are there. But if it is acceptable to you as the gamer, then there is no problem :)

So, how do you get best of all worlds without going the G-Sync route and spending almost double? Adaptive v-sync AND leave some overhead in your graphics settings so that you never, ever (or hardly ever) drop below your desired refresh rate. So, in AC I typically run 120hz on very high settings. I could run higher settings buy would see more frequent drops in FR, amounting to stutter. I got all this equipment to see smooth frames, so I sacrifice a couple graphics settings to keep things smooth.

I hope this helps...
 
Calling it "motion blur" isn't really accurate, though it is a fairly close description of what's happening with lower FR's. What's happening is you are getting information too seldom in order for your brain to get a clear image of a moving object, whether it be passing scenery, or a passing car. Your brain interprets 60fps with some blurring effect simply because it is trying to interpret what it is taking in.
That description is a bit foggy. :) The motion blur on LCD screens is caused by what is known as the sample-and-hold effect.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463407.aspx
Quote from Blurbusters.com: "Your eyes are in a different position at the beginning of a refresh than at the end of a refresh; this causes the frame to be blurred across your retinas"

Now that I have a 144hz monitor, I cannot stand any game at 60hz, so beware of that.
With the big exception of BBR, I agree. :)

When framerates rise above refresh rate, and V-sync ON, it avoids tearing. (but you will still see stutter at below refresh)
When framerates rise above refresh rate, and ADAPTIVE V-sync ON, it avoids tearing AND stutter, by means of giving you the best of both worlds.
To be clear: Adaptive v-sync is just: v-sync on when fps is above refresh, v-sync off when it's below.
In other words, when fps is above refresh rate: adaptive v-sync = v-sync.

a-vsync_zpsnrzndgxe.jpg


G-sync helps to smooth out gameplay when refresh rates and frame rates are not identical.
Yes, by making them identical at all times. The monitor (slave) adjusts its refresh rate in real time to the fps received by the graphics card(s) (master).

(As far as I can tell, all 3D applications will still render more than your refresh rate even if adaptive v-sync is on.)
No, adaptive v-sync = v-sync when fps is above refresh rate. Therefore the fps is capped at the refresh rate.
3 ways to cap your framerate:
V-sync
Adaptive V-sync (v-sync on when fps above refresh, v-sync off when below)
Manual cap such as Rivatuner

In my 120hz example, use adaptive with framerate cap (in rivatuner) of 122.
That should not be necessary, since the adaptive v-sync caps the fps at 120.

Those who are not using v-sync but are saying they never see tearing, are simply incorrect.
Those who are not using v-sync but are saying they never see tearing, are probably not lying. :)
 
I've noticed a very clear pattern of framecaps in addition to v-sync creating more consistent smooth performance. I suggest you try it. Watch your GPU usage stay more flat (not flat, just more flat) as you go around a complex scene. With only one of the "syncs" on and no framecap, the game, driver, and monitor seem to fight and make compromises more often to try and make it sync, and that seems to result in less consistent framerates. (I learned about this on the pCARS forums by someone who was doing a lot of testing with framecaps etc. I can corroborate this from my own experience, though it is not scientific.)

Your adapative v-sync graphic shows what I was trying to describe. Agreed.

Not seeing tearing: I don't believe I said anything about people lying, just not noticing something and assuming by not noticing it, that it must not be there. They may be telling the truth about their experience, but their experience may also be incomplete. Some people notice different things when viewing the same things... all I was saying.

There is a simple technical fact that when you have more frames made available by your games than can be shown on your screen, that some either need to be dropped entirely or tearing will occur. There is no way to totally eliminate tearing, where one part of the screen is displaying one frame, while another portion of the screen displays another frame, unless you use v-sync or some other "sync". Even setting the frame cap to be identical to your monitor's refresh rate does not accomplish this because those numbers, while they may be identical in value, are not necessarily going to happen at the exact same time, hence in "sync". There is no mechanism at work to make sure that the frame is given to the monitor at the precise moment it is ready for it. (Part of this may be down to the fact that a "60" fr is actually a 59.98 or something... usually rounded up. Those two numbers are not the same, and so every couple seconds you may see a tear. Again, there is a difference between seeing something and noticing it. (and even more difference between noticing and caring)

The tricky part here is that "torn" frames can come and go so fast that you might not notice the horizontal line of misaligned scenery elements between the two game-based frames, and your single screen refresh. Any time the refresh rate is not a product of the refresh rate, there will be tearing. The ratio between these two numbers will help figure out how often it will tear. Maybe some are getting FR's so consistent that it only tears once every few seconds and only one frame. That would be very hard to notice. it requires staring at the appropriate scenery elements as they pass or move. However, once you train yourself to see it, you see it even when not carefully paying attention to it. The flipside of this is that, as long as you are heavily concentrated on your gaming decisions, and the stutter or tearing is not very pronounced, you notice it less and less. (our peripheral vision is less capable of noticing small details)

I sit and stare at the background while watching a race replay in order to notice the most minor skips, stutters, and tears. That is not something everyone does. If one stares at the car or the area in front of the car, there isn't as much motion, so any anomaly would be less noticeable as well.

TO test, try various v-sync and framecap settings and watch a replay of a race. (something that does not require your attention as the gamer). Then, pick a piece of scenery that you can track (shift your eyes to stay fixed on element as it passes) as it passes your vision. I use red/white curb pieces, though they are not as easy to distinguish at higher speeds if you have only 60hz monitor. Try several types of scenery pieces.) Do this over and over as your framerate changes. This will eventually reveal any problems if they are occuring. (Again, as others have rightly said, each individual chooses if something is a "problem" for them personally)

If there is no cap or sync on, and your framerates go above your refresh rate, every so often, you'll see at least a tiny tear in the scenery as it tries to move. At high refresh rates, the tear may only be misaligning scenery elements by a couple pixels. Depends on the speed of the motion in the scene as well.
 
You've certainly spent a bit of time studying this, I'll give you that. Now that you mention it, I think someone at Anandtech mentioned that they used manual cap in addition to v-sync to get smoother performance. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time, but maybe I should test it to see if I notice any difference.

Smoothness is a strange beast when it comes to framerates. I have noticed on AC replays what can only be described as micro-stuttering (uneven output of frames but at regular intervals, if that makes sense), even on my single 980 Ti. Very discrete, but it's there. I discovered this a while ago while doing what you describe under To test.
 
Hi guys, do you guys know if AC runs well on Xeons? I just got this PC for video and photo editing (bought it second hand). Now seeing that the xbone version will be running at 900p and it has been delayed I thought of maybe just getting the pc version. Would this card be able to run a single screen at 1080p @60fps?

Dual Xeon X5660 2.8GHz Base Frequency (12 Cores - 24 Threads)
24GB DDR3 Ram, SSD for OS and algo a raid hdd... graphics card is nothing extraordinary, just a gtx750ti (yep not 780)
 
You've certainly spent a bit of time studying this, I'll give you that. Now that you mention it, I think someone at Anandtech mentioned that they used manual cap in addition to v-sync to get smoother performance. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time, but maybe I should test it to see if I notice any difference.

Smoothness is a strange beast when it comes to framerates. I have noticed on AC replays what can only be described as micro-stuttering (uneven output of frames but at regular intervals, if that makes sense), even on my single 980 Ti. Very discrete, but it's there. I discovered this a while ago while doing what you describe under To test.

hmm... pCARS i've noticed, does have the micro-stutter, but I haven't noticed it in AC since optimizing it for my system. There is a jitter reduction setting in pCARS which reportedly helps stop it.

In AC, I do have my card (GTX970) overclocked on memory and gpu. I definitely don't recommend anyone copy someone's OC settings and just go for it, instead go perform one of the simple OC's that you can find in guides online. I used this one, but I used a combo of testing in 3DMark and Heaven benchmarkers...

my settings ended up being (Using MSI Afterburner)
Power limit (%) = 110
Core Clock (MHz) = +70
Memory Clock (MHz) = +315

I mention overclocks because I suspect that an OC on one's memory clock helps textures load and unload faster. It seems to make framerates smooth and is possibly more important than a GPU clock speed OC. More power isn't necessarily better than more smooth execution of loading/unloading.

Edit: Add URL
 
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Hi guys, do you guys know if AC runs well on Xeons? I just got this PC for video and photo editing (bought it second hand). Now seeing that the xbone version will be running at 900p and it has been delayed I thought of maybe just getting the pc version. Would this card be able to run a single screen at 1080p @60fps?

Dual Xeon X5660 2.8GHz Base Frequency (12 Cores - 24 Threads)
24GB DDR3 Ram, SSD for OS and algo a raid hdd... graphics card is nothing extraordinary, just a gtx750ti (yep not 780)

I would guess that your cpus are fine and cpus in games like this affect mostly the number of cars you can run on the same track, being that the cpu is mostly used for physics calculations. Your GPU may not give you very pretty graphics at 1080/60, but it will probably run at some lower/med settings smoothly.

There are basically three things that need to be compromised and balanced...

Graphics settings
framerate
screen resolution

If your priority is on Framerate and res, you'll need to compromise on graphics settings.

Overall, you'll probably love having the PC version so you can take advantage of all the great mods!!
 
I would guess that your cpus are fine and cpus in games like this affect mostly the number of cars you can run on the same track, being that the cpu is mostly used for physics calculations. Your GPU may not give you very pretty graphics at 1080/60, but it will probably run at some lower/med settings smoothly.

There are basically three things that need to be compromised and balanced...

Graphics settings
framerate
screen resolution

If your priority is on Framerate and res, you'll need to compromise on graphics settings.

Overall, you'll probably love having the PC version so you can take advantage of all the great mods!!

Great, thanks! Yep locked 60/1080p is crucial for me, I got used to that with Forza and feels great. I bought F1 2015 and pCARS on Xbone and it's horrible with their massive fps dips. I won't mind sacrificing on eye candy to achieve that.

I will try it, it would be cool if there was a demo available though.
 
Hey folks. I'm totally new to AC and decided to download it (I literally just downloaded the game) since I just built a rig and GTS doesn't exist anymore. Any advice on settings would be greatly appreciated.

Basic PC specs:
MSI Z170A mobo
MSI GTX 980 4GB
i76700 4.0 (OC to 4.4)
32GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance
Monitor Samsung ultra wide curved 34" at 3440x1440
Fanatec CSR with Club sport pedals

Sucky part is that my wheel has been acting funny on my PS3 lately. I'm not totally sure why, but when playing GT6, the cars pull to the right as if the wheel is turned that direction. Trying to turn it back requires a lot of force, as in I don't want to break the wheel force. There is some degree of turnability but we're talking 30 degrees to the right only. Any who had this happen let me know and if it can be fixed. Please. I'm dying without my wheel.

Anyway, THIS GAME LOOKS FREAKIN AWESOME!!!!!! I've only just booted it up and did a quick benchmark test while handling my 3 year old and LITERALLY new born son (a week old today) and my 3 year old was just completely mesmerized. Can't wait to start tweaking!
 
Any advice on settings would be greatly appreciated.

This is assuming you're on about graphical settings, I can't help you with your particular wheel.

I didn't have a 980, I went from a 970 to 980ti, but at a guess and with that resolution (aiming for 60fps), I would say max everything out, then turn down both "shadow resolution" and "reflection rendering frequency" to medium. Run the benchmark and see how your 980 deals with it.

If you're dipping below 60fps then you should lower the reflection frequency to low or the reflection quality to medium. Or there's the option of overclocking your GPU if it hasn't been already and you're ok with doing that.
 
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This is assuming you're on about graphical settings, I can't help you with your particular wheel.

I didn't have a 980, I went from a 970 to 980ti, but at a guess and with that resolution (aiming for 60fps), I would say max everything out, then turn down both "shadow resolution" and "reflection rendering frequency" to medium. Run the benchmark and see how your 980 deals with it.

If you're dipping below 60fps then you should lower the reflection frequency to low or the reflection quality to medium. Or there's the option of overclocking your GPU if it hasn't been already and you're ok with doing that.

Thanks. I'll give that a shot and see what happens.
 
I'm about to buy a new computer as my laptop recently died, and think I'll go back to a tower due to the smaller price for good performance. I don't plan on running any of the lastest AAA games, so I'm not going to spend fortunes on high end overclockable equipment. That said, how would AC perform on higher settings with an i5 6400 2,7 GHz quad-core CPU paired with a GTX 960 2GB GPU?

I'm asking because the system requirements for AC aren't very specific in terms of CPU size besides four cores for Intel units. I think the GPU I mentioned will do fine.
 
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I'm about to buy a new computer as my laptop recently died, and think I'll go back to a tower due to the smaller price for good performance. I don't plan on running any of the lastest AAA games, so I'm not going to spend fortunes on high end overclockable equipment. That said, how would AC perform on higher settings with an i5 6400 2,7 GHz quad-core CPU paired with a GTX 960 2GB GPU?

I'm asking because the system requirements for AC aren't very specific in terms of CPU size besides four cores for Intel units. I think the GPU I mentioned will do fine.
Depends on whether you just want 1080p resolution, or if you want larger, triple screens or VR. The 960 will do 1080p just fine, the others will be trickier.

Also note that the GTX1060 should be along at some point soon and will get you a lot more performance for the same price, and also drop prices of older cards in the process, so now is not the ideal time to buy.
 
Depends on whether you just want 1080p resolution, or if you want larger, triple screens or VR. The 960 will do 1080p just fine, the others will be trickier.

Also note that the GTX1060 should be along at some point soon and will get you a lot more performance for the same price, and also drop prices of older cards in the process, so now is not the ideal time to buy.

I'm going to use one screen only and 1080p is enough. I'm more worried about the CPU though. The i5 6400 is a mid-range unit, so how will AC tolerate that?

Thanks for the heads up on the GTX1060. I'm not in a position to wait as there are a few reasons why I need a good computer right now. I can always upgrade the GPU later on but I doubt it will be necessary in the foreseeable future.
 
I'm going to use one screen only and 1080p is enough. I'm more worried about the CPU though. The i5 6400 is a mid-range unit, so how will AC tolerate that?

Thanks for the heads up on the GTX1060. I'm not in a position to wait as there are a few reasons why I need a good computer right now. I can always upgrade the GPU later on but I doubt it will be necessary in the foreseeable future.
AC is only CPU intensive if you want lots of AI at the same time, as far as I'm aware. With a good midrange Skylake quad core I find it unlikely that you'll have many issues, since most AC tracks are limited to 24 cars anyway. The i5 6400 is a perfectly decent CPU with lots of horsepower after all.

I've got an i7 6700k and compared to my 6 year old i7 I definitely noticed less CPU load and slightly higher frame rates on the grid when running maximum size fields, but my old CPU could still handle 24 car fields well enough.


.... But imagine I'm mistaken and you find yourself getting better performance by sticking to 16 or 18 AI... Would that be a problem?
 
AC is only CPU intensive if you want lots of AI at the same time, as far as I'm aware. With a good midrange Skylake quad core I find it unlikely that you'll have many issues, since most AC tracks are limited to 24 cars anyway. The i5 6400 is a perfectly decent CPU with lots of horsepower after all.

I've got an i7 6700k and compared to my 6 year old i7 I definitely noticed less CPU load and slightly higher frame rates on the grid when running maximum size fields, but my old CPU could still handle 24 car fields well enough.


.... But imagine I'm mistaken and you find yourself getting better performance by sticking to 16 or 18 AI... Would that be a problem?

Ok, that's good to know. The number of AI cars is the least of my concerns as I definitely prefer solo driving in games like these. I wouldn't really care if I'm driving against 10, 12, or 16 AI cars, should that be the case.
 
I'm going to use one screen only and 1080p is enough. I'm more worried about the CPU though. The i5 6400 is a mid-range unit, so how will AC tolerate that?

Thanks for the heads up on the GTX1060. I'm not in a position to wait as there are a few reasons why I need a good computer right now. I can always upgrade the GPU later on but I doubt it will be necessary in the foreseeable future.
@mister dog uses the 960. Maybe he can shed some light.
 
Yeah i5 with a 960 works perfect, i can put everything on high and a couple of things on max and i have a steady framerate.
 
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