no matter on which way i achieve FPS >= 60 on Rainbow 6 (and other games), there is screen lag or tearing i do not know what it is exactly. Can anyone help?
I have tried all kind of monitors, starting from non HD, 60Hz all the way up to 144Hz.
Here are my specs:
- i7-2600 @ 3.40 GHz
- GTX 1060
- 16 GB RAM
In game settings: doesn't matter. The only way i can play right now is with Vsync on 🙁 But as soon as there is an FPS drop, i get 55 which is not really nice.
Best Answer
Tearing
That's because it is literally the only way to eliminate screen tearing. For more information about tearing, see: https://gaming.stackexchange.com/a/198195/46740
Obviously, when you play at over 60 FPS on a 60 Hz screen, you get tearing because your screen receives more frames than it can possibly display. As a result, you see stripes of all the different frames the screen has received, which looks like the screen has been torn.
As for why you still see tearing above 60 FPS on a 144 Hz screen, the likeliest reason is that the games you were using did not properly support screens above 60 Hz. In other words, you could only get over 60 FPS by disabling V-Sync, which is what causes tearing in the first place.
This can happen if the game engine implements V-Sync correctly, but still assumes that every screen is 60 Hz, and therefore limits its framerate to 60 FPS when V-Sync is turned on. Alternatively, the game actually lets you choose a different frame limit, but you left it at "default", which is usually 60 FPS.
Lags
When you push your GPU to its limit, framerates can vary wildly from low to high. This huge discrepancy can be perceived as a lag.
Imagine seeing a frame every 33.3 ms (30 FPS). Eventually, you get used to it, and you perceive it as (relatively) fluid. When the scene gets simpler, your GPU provides you with new frames every 16.6 ms (60 FPS), which is even more fluid. Eventually, you get used to that.
Now, when the GPU is alternating between 60 FPS and 30 FPS, you experience a fluid (60 FPS) framerate, which is occasionally interrupted by a lag (30 FPS). One way to prevent this, would be to limit your framerate to 30 FPS (aka. frame smoothing).
In your case, your GPU appears to be fast enough to output a constant 60 FPS, but struggles to keep up a constant 144 FPS. When you get used to 144 FPS, the sudden switch to 60 FPS is perceived as a lag.
The above phenomenon can get worse with V-Sync, but can be avoided with G-Sync or FreeSync (aka. Adaptive Sync). If your GPU can't provide a new frame when the screen is ready to display it, the GPU will have to wait for the next time the screen is ready. Suddenly, you need to wait much longer for the next frame, which is perceived as a lag.
G-Sync/FreeSync fix this by having the screen wait for the GPU in such circumstances. Thus, if your GPU can't provide a constant 60 FPS, but can still deliver a constant 59-60 FPS, you won't notice the lag as you would if the framerate changed between 30 and 60 FPS.