Think You're Getting 120FPS with Frame Generation/Unlocker? Double Check
**TL;DR, when VRR - G-Sync/(maybe?)Freesync is enabled, Genshin seems to be restricting the monitor refresh to 60FPS regardless what the GPU is rendering at**
It of course may behave differently in your system.
A couple days ago, I decided to try out Smooth Motion. It seemingly turned on fine. Checked in MSI afterburner, and the GPU was reporting a solid 120 FPS.
However, it didn't look any different in game. Odd. Out of curiosity, I decided to open my monitor's OSD to see what it was refreshing at. Since it's a G-Sync compatible monitor, and G-Sync was turned on in both the monitor settings and Nvidia settings, I expected to see 120Hz to match the render rate, except, no.
The monitor was only refreshing at 60Hz. No wonder it didn't look any different.
I tested Smooth Motion on another game with a 60FPS lock (Nier:Automata), to ensure that there wasn't something broken on my end, and it worked fine. Both the GPU *and* monitor reported the 120FPS they should have been.
Today, I decided to try out the FPS Unlocker. Same issue. Regardless what the GPU reported rendering at, the monitor would only refresh at 60Hz. I had the power saving mode enabled - i.e., it drops the game to 10FPS when tabbed out, and *that* worked perfectly; the game clearly dropped to 10FPS when I tabbed out, so the Unlocker was working fine.
To verify for sure that the monitor was only refreshing at 60FPS, and it wasn't just software getting confused, I used my phone camera's slow motion mode at 240FPS to record my monitor, and the results were like what is shown above.
These videos were originally shot at 240FPS, slowed down to 1FPS. Both of the above videos were shot with the FPS unlocker active, uncapped to 160FPS.
The video on the right side is what I'd been looking at until now. The GPU was reporting rendering at 160FPS, but the monitor was still only refreshing at 60. You can see that the image on the right side is only changing once every \~4 seconds = 4 frames, and in a 240FPS recording, that'd be 60 refreshes per second.
The solution? Disable VRR. I changed Genshin's settings to use a fixed refresh rate at my monitor's native 160Hz refresh rate (which is also why I have the unlocker set at 160FPS). The result is the video on the left.
Due to the framerate mismatch between the monitor and camera, there's a lot of ghosting from frame transitions being captured, but you can see for sure that the monitor is *actually* refreshing at something higher than 60FPS.
It of course may behave differently in your system.
A couple days ago, I decided to try out Smooth Motion. It seemingly turned on fine. Checked in MSI afterburner, and the GPU was reporting a solid 120 FPS.
However, it didn't look any different in game. Odd. Out of curiosity, I decided to open my monitor's OSD to see what it was refreshing at. Since it's a G-Sync compatible monitor, and G-Sync was turned on in both the monitor settings and Nvidia settings, I expected to see 120Hz to match the render rate, except, no.
The monitor was only refreshing at 60Hz. No wonder it didn't look any different.
I tested Smooth Motion on another game with a 60FPS lock (Nier:Automata), to ensure that there wasn't something broken on my end, and it worked fine. Both the GPU *and* monitor reported the 120FPS they should have been.
Today, I decided to try out the FPS Unlocker. Same issue. Regardless what the GPU reported rendering at, the monitor would only refresh at 60Hz. I had the power saving mode enabled - i.e., it drops the game to 10FPS when tabbed out, and *that* worked perfectly; the game clearly dropped to 10FPS when I tabbed out, so the Unlocker was working fine.
To verify for sure that the monitor was only refreshing at 60FPS, and it wasn't just software getting confused, I used my phone camera's slow motion mode at 240FPS to record my monitor, and the results were like what is shown above.
These videos were originally shot at 240FPS, slowed down to 1FPS. Both of the above videos were shot with the FPS unlocker active, uncapped to 160FPS.
The video on the right side is what I'd been looking at until now. The GPU was reporting rendering at 160FPS, but the monitor was still only refreshing at 60. You can see that the image on the right side is only changing once every \~4 seconds = 4 frames, and in a 240FPS recording, that'd be 60 refreshes per second.
The solution? Disable VRR. I changed Genshin's settings to use a fixed refresh rate at my monitor's native 160Hz refresh rate (which is also why I have the unlocker set at 160FPS). The result is the video on the left.
Due to the framerate mismatch between the monitor and camera, there's a lot of ghosting from frame transitions being captured, but you can see for sure that the monitor is *actually* refreshing at something higher than 60FPS.
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