Guild Wars 2

Both Frame Limiter and Vsync appear to set my fps around ~60 fps. What is the difference between the two settings? Which do I run, or do I run both?

I generally have both off, my game runs at about 120 FPS on a 1920×1080, windowed full screen. My monitor is 60hz. My GPU however runs pretty hot and I probably dont need to be above 60 fps anyways so that is why I am asking.

Frame limiter will I think limit the monitor itself on how many frames to be displayed, not the graphics card processing. If you have a 120hz monitor, it’ll operate at 60hz. Vsync limits the GPU to 60fps which then also eliminates tearing completely at the expense of deliciously crystal clear, high frame rates (assuming your monitor goes above 60hz.) Though even if you have a 120hz or even a 144hz monitor, visual vertical tearing is much less noticeable.

Vsync will not reduce Graphics unit heat. Heat of a graphics unit is completely generated by the frequencies it’s running at and how much load is put on the chip and RAM. Such as my graphics cards, Asus DCUII OC R9 290X. They run at 1050 MHz core and 1350 MHz GDDR5 when active. They warm up pretty good to starting at the 60s and topping out at around 85 Celsius. These R9 290X graphics cards are armed to the teeth with 2,816 stream processors and a colossally gigantic 4GB 512bit GDDR5 array so when all of it is in use and both graphics cards are fully enabled, it takes a lot to cool them. The reference designs fail at high loads. Reference 290s and 290Xs will start throttling at 95 degrees Celsius to avoid thermal damage. AMD dropped the ball this time around. R9 295X2 was their comeback however, atl east they got the top of the line enthusiast card right. Anyway, I digress. Ahem.

When they’re running cool, it’s because the frequencies have switched to a more idle mode to just process basic things like driving the displays for Windows and small tasks that are not 3D.

I don’t think low idle graphics card frequencies were a thing until maybe a handful of graphics card generations ago. Maybe like Radeon HD 2900 series and GeForce 8800. But it’s definitely an important feature now to prolong a high end graphics card’s life nowadays.

Vsync is what’s used to traditionally stop screen tearing. A newly rendered frame won’t be displayed to until a vertical sync, independent of the rendering rate. Assuming your refresh is 60Hz, the problem is if you are rendering frames at say 50fps then four frames would be displayed for 1/60th of a second while one for 1/30th and the motion will look jittery, but tear free. It’s a hardware generated limiter.

The Frame Limiter is to … well … limits how often a frame is generated. So if it gets a frame done early, the game kicks back and waits before it starts to render the next. Here it’s a software generated limiter. The idea is to provide a consistent frame rate of no more than 30 or 60 per second which lines up nicely with VSYNC on with a 60Hz LCD monitor. So reduced jitter and no tearing.

Plus if your system is overheating like on a laptop, the limiter is a way to reduce the workload at times when your generate more than 30 or 60fps like roaming around a zone on your own.

If you are not seeing Tearing with Vsync disabled, don’t enable it.

Frame Limiter will lower the maximum amount of frames your graphic card renders.
The benefit of this includes lower temperatures and power consumption.
Set the frame limiter to the same value of your refresh rate and you should have no drawbacks.

Vsync does almost the same thing, it will automatically limit your fps, lower temps and power consumption plus reduce/remove tearing.
Vsync may cause a small performance drop and it only works on full screen mode so keep this in mind.

My gpu fan is dying, personally I always have either vsync on or frame rate limited to 30-60, this keeps the gpu cooler and the falty fan running at lower speeds.

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ you dont need to take my word this software is great to keep track of fan speed/voltages/temperature/clocks you can download it and check for yourself