Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

I just watched a video saying that if your monitor is 60Hz, then at the most you can only see 60 FPS. I generally get well above 60 FPS, but my monitor is only 60Hz. Should I set the fps limiter to 60 so I don’t make my gpu perform any harder than it needs to? Is this true about the 60Hz thing?

It is true. If your framerate goes over 60fps on you monitor, you’ll get screen tearing. There are 2 option to choose. First is vsync, this will prevent tearing from happening at all, but can result in artificially low framerate. The other option is to set the fps limiter. This doesn’t always prevent tearing, but will reduce the stress on your gpu (and therefore reduce the heat it throws into your room). Personally, I always set vsync – screen tearing drives me nuts, especially when it the diagonal kind.

Exactly.
If your monitor is refreshing the image @60 Hz but the source is giving more images some times the monitor will show 1 frame and then the next one the monitor will show is actually 3 or more frames later and that is what is called screen tearing.
That is what vsync correct.

Ah no, tearing is when parts of two or more frames are sent the the monitor for display, which is what happens when VSync is off. When VSync is on with a game generating frames faster than refresh of the monitor, frames will be dropped and you may noticed jitter and lag.

For monitors, hertz is how many times per second that it can draw an image on the screen, so a 60hz monitor can do 60 frames per second, a 240hz monitor can do 240 frames per second.
V-sync (vertical refresh synchronization) is used to make sure that one image per refresh cycle, 1hz/1frame is drawn completely before the next one starts.

V-sync will drop frames because they’re excessive. The v-sync algorithm you choose determines whether you get perceptibly smooth frames or choppy frames. If you can enable v-sync for a game in your graphics driver, it will be the smoothest – the people who make the graphics drivers get paid to make your gaming experience the smoothest and cleanest. The second option for most is to enable it in the game engine, this can result in less than smooth visual perception.

Since we’re hear talking about smooth graphics performance, I want to let you all know a neat trick to fixing choppy performance.

I use windows 7 right now and after some time playing flash videos, I noticed that gw2 is perceptibly choppy and has a slight input lag on the client side. I found that it is attributed to the Aero interface becoming more and more unstable over time during flash video playback.
Windows has a shortcut option in the compatibility tab called “Disable Desktop Composition”, what this does is turn off the Aero interface while the application is running. However, I have come to find out that it has trouble turning it back on after the application exits. So instead of using that option I have a batch file on my desktop for when I notice the choppy behavior that turns it off and back on again. This restores the performance, removes the visual problems, and is a case-by-case resolution instead of a blanket solution.

If you’re interested, copy this into a .bat file

net stop uxsms
net start uxsms