Way to enable G-Sync in GD?

[Drakkar Calethiel]

Got a new beautiful monitor with G-Sync today. (Viewsonic XG2703-GS) I enabled G-sync (and the G-Sync indicator) in the NV control panel and disabled VSYNC in GD. But still can't get it to work. Is it only supported by certain games? I thought literally every application does support it since the GPU communicates with the monitor to set the refresh rate on the fly without any help of the game?

Using a 980 dual SLI and the 416.16 driver. Also tried newer/older versions. (DDUd the driver every time)

[Jork]

this is gonna be a long write up, sorry about that, but i've used gsync for 5 years now and i have a lot of info to give someone who is new to it.

to first answer your question, in grim dawn's option menu, go in your video options under resolution, and make sure your resolution also matches your monitor's hz. IE: if you have 144hz and want to play at 1920x1080, make sure you pick 1920x1080@144hz under the options.

in windows control panel, make sure your monitor's refresh rate is set higher than 60hz as well.

every 3d game does support gsync when it comes to screen tearing and input lag becoming impossible. these features will work globally with everything without any headache, no matter what 3d game you're playing as long as gsync is enabled.

when it comes to refresh rates & framerates above 60 though, not all games support it due to different reasons. grim dawn does work okay with this feature, thankfully.

some engines have framerate caps, then you have other games like diablo 3 that seem to support framerates higher than 60, but all their animations were done at 60 fps so having any framerate/refresh rate above 60 makes absolutely no difference visually other than the game's physics being a little bit smoother.

then there's games like doom eternal which will only work at higher framerates/refresh rate if you ctrl+alt+delete, open task manager, and then go back into it. there's always headache with getting this part working and it's never consistent between games.

some people say turn off vsync as gsync is a form of vsync, then some people say have both on. i've had both cases work and not work for certain games. another annoyance is sometimes high refresh rates never work unless your game is on fullscreen instead of borderless window. i could go on, and on, and on about this.

as a side note, if you're interested in games i can confirm do a great job with gsync & high refresh rates - bioshock infinite and dying light are excellent games for this experience. if you already own those games, check them out with your new monitor in addition to grim dawn.

Originally posted by Drakkar Calethiel:

I thought literally every application does support it since the GPU communicates with the monitor to set the refresh rate on the fly without any help of the game?

this is definitely not true - at least not in my experience. i've always had to do a lot of manual fiddling just to get it set up properly and if you're playing a game with framerate caps, gsync won't do anything other than make screen tearing and input lag a complete impossibility.

the tech is great but sadly it's very spazzy, inconsistent, and annoying to figure out as every game is different.

[Drakkar Calethiel]

Gotta love long write ups, better than the condensed form without much back ground info!
To clarify: New monitor is a 2560x1440 165hz one. Monitor does show that gsync is enabled in its status. Monitor is set for its native resolution and maximum refresh rate in Win itself and the NVCP, it is also set as my main screen. Gsync is set for fullscreen and windowed applications. I tried both options, also tried to run all tested games in borderless window, exclusive fullscreen, and windowed. (depending on what the game supports of course). Some do say that you need to turn on vsync in the NVCP along with gsync, some do say that you need to turn it off. Really confusing TBH, even as a experienced user. :D

The only instances where I got gsync working for now is Borderlands 2 and Bioshock Infinite, tested 10 games ATM. (Terraria, MC, Witcher 2 and 3, Portal 1 and 2, FF14, Left4Dead2)

So I guess I need to fiddle around with each games settings to get it to work properly?

[Jork]

Originally posted by Drakkar Calethiel:

Gotta love long write ups, better than the condensed form without much back ground info!
To clarify: New monitor is a 2560x1440 165hz one. Monitor does show that gsync is enabled in its status. Monitor is set for its native resolution and maximum refresh rate in Win itself and the NVCP, it is also set as my main screen. Gsync is set for fullscreen and windowed applications. I tried both options, also tried to run all tested games in borderless window, exclusive fullscreen, and windowed. (depending on what the game supports of course). Some do say that you need to turn on vsync in the NVCP along with gsync, some do say that you need to turn it off. Really confusing TBH, even as a experienced user. :D

The only instances where I got gsync working for now is Borderlands 2 and Bioshock Infinite, tested 10 games ATM. (Terraria, MC, Witcher 2 and 3, Portal 1 and 2, FF14, Left4Dead2)

So I guess I need to fiddle around with each games settings to get it to work properly?

pretty much, yeah.

i did get gsync working just fine in grim dawn. i have vsync on in the game options, i have resolution set to 1920X1080@144hz (for you, you would want 2560x1440@165hz) in grim dawn's video options, and surprisingly it's working for me in borderless fullscreen.

if grim dawn still doesn't work properly, try putting it on fullscreen. if it still doesn't work, try turning vsync off in grim dawn's options. if that still doesn't work, try the trick i use on doom eternal via ctrl+alt+delete > open task manager > close task manager and go back ingame.

glad you checked bioshock infinite out on the gsync monitor. it's one heck of an experience.

i don't know why gsync is so annoying to get working on some games but it is what it is. it's worth it when it works.

also, if you play bethesda games, be careful - skyrim will freak out like crazy at any framerate higher than 60. fallout 4 freaks out at any framerate higher than 72. you might need to use nvidia inspector to forcibly cap your framerates as the .ini edits for those games to cap framework have never worked for me.

[Drakkar Calethiel]

So I did fiddle around a bit more, turns out that gsync only seems to work when games are running in borderless window except a few outlier that work in both fullscreen and windowed mode. Problem is, I loose a crapton of performace. In GD alone I loose around 50-80 FPS due to my crappy SLI setup. (dear NV and AMD, PLEASE RELEASE YOUR NEW BLOODY GPUS!!!!)
Something seems to be utterly broken for some reason. But when it works, oh boy, the experience is just AMAZING! Never experienced such buttersmooth gameplay! looks like the same fate than with +120Hz, once you seen it, you never want to go back. :D

Oh, also forgot to add: I'm using two monitors with the same resolution.

[powbam]

@Coronacop - Nice writeups on the topic. In all the years I've been on this board I actually haven't seen too much info on using Gsync with GD so it's good to get some knowledge on it here. I have yet to get a capable monitor of my own so I haven't been able to ever get direct experience (tho I would love one, I think).

Do you happen to know if Freesync performs/behaves the same or does it have its own idiosyncrasies?

[Jork]

Originally posted by powbam:

@Coronacop - Nice writeups on the topic. In all the years I've been on this board I actually haven't seen too much info on using Gsync with GD so it's good to get some knowledge on it here. I have yet to get a capable monitor (tho I would love one, I think).

Do you happen to know if Freesync performs/behaves the same or does it have its own idiosyncrasies?

no problem. it's a fairly niche market but definitely worth investing in.

i haven't ever tried freesync myself so i'm not sure how it compares to gsync.

if freesync ever ends up more uniform than gsync so you don't have to jump through all kinds of hoops between each game just to get it working, i'd switch in an instant.

gsync is great but my god, it's nonsense on how much random stuff you have to try before you can get it working for anything above 60. there's absolutely no consistency at all.

Originally posted by Drakkar Calethiel:

So I did fiddle around a bit more, turns out that gsync only seems to work when games are running in borderless window except a few outlier that work in both fullscreen and windowed mode. Problem is, I loose a crapton of performace. In GD alone I loose around 50-80 FPS due to my crappy SLI setup. (dear NV and AMD, PLEASE RELEASE YOUR NEW BLOODY GPUS!!!!)
Something seems to be utterly broken for some reason. But when it works, oh boy, the experience is just AMAZING! Never experienced such buttersmooth gameplay! looks like the same fate than with +120Hz, once you seen it, you never want to go back. :D

Oh, also forgot to add: I'm using two monitors with the same resolution.

that's unfortunate to hear about the performance loss. i'm just on a single monitor and i'm still on my xb270h which was (i think?) one of the first monitors to come out and support gsync.

i'd definitely imagine having more than 1 monitor complicates stuff a lot and might mean you have to jump through even more hoops than i have to.

hopefully you can figure it out and get it consistently smooth. very enjoyable when it works, for sure!

[Drakkar Calethiel]

@powbam Do it! Just from once experiencing it, I would say that it is absolutely worth the money. The gameplay is just that much smoother, especially if you can't maintain the maximum refresh rate. even tho GD now runs at a way lower framerate, it looks and feels smoother. It's definitely not placebo, my GF felt the differenceeven tho she didn't know when it was active or not.

Borderlands for example gives me the feeling that I changed my GPUs, the lack of tearing and super low input lag is a great experience!

[Jork]

Originally posted by Drakkar Calethiel:

@powbam Do it! Just from once experiencing it, I would say that it is absolutely worth the money. The gameplay is just that much smoother, especially if you can't maintain the maximum refresh rate. even tho GD now runs at a way lower framerate, it looks and feels smoother. It's definitely not placebo, my GF felt the differenceeven tho she didn't know when it was active or not.

Borderlands for example gives me the feeling that I changed my GPUs, the lack of tearing and super low input lag is a great experience!

yeah - the first thing i noticed about switching to gsync was how awful screen tearing really was.

you never notice how bad screen tearing is, until you get a gsync monitor which makes tearing completely impossible. the gsync chip in the monitor is in perfect sync with your GPU which is how the tech works.

thankfully, gsync will always do this for all games with no human sacrifices to ch'thon required. it's worth it for that feature alone.

[Drakkar Calethiel]

Originally posted by Coronacop:

Originally posted by Drakkar Calethiel:

@powbam Do it! Just from once experiencing it, I would say that it is absolutely worth the money. The gameplay is just that much smoother, especially if you can't maintain the maximum refresh rate. even tho GD now runs at a way lower framerate, it looks and feels smoother. It's definitely not placebo, my GF felt the differenceeven tho she didn't know when it was active or not.

Borderlands for example gives me the feeling that I changed my GPUs, the lack of tearing and super low input lag is a great experience!

yeah - the first thing i noticed about switching to gsync was how awful screen tearing really was.

you never notice how bad screen tearing is, until you get a gsync monitor which makes tearing completely impossible. the gsync chip in the monitor is in perfect sync with your GPU which is how the tech works.

thankfully, gsync will always do this for all games with no human sacrifices to ch'thon required. it's worth it for that feature alone.

I always said that I never really see tearing, I was damn wrong. Looks like that you have to experience it before you can judge. Same with TN vs IPS. I had the asus 278HE as my main monitor for 6 years. For a TN panel it has great colors and is really bright, no wonder since it was a 3D-Vision monitor. (still can remember playing tons of games in 3D, Witcher 2&3 and WoW looked AMAZING, an experience that I will never forget!) But now that I switched to an IPS one, I never want to go back. The colors are super crisp and games really come to life now! Also had really good luck with backlight bleeding, only the lower corners show some minor bleeding.

Now I only need to get gsync properly working to get the ultimate gaming experience. (at least for me it is :D) Well, and a new GPU, those 6 year old ones are really showing their age now^^

[Drakkar Calethiel]

Originally posted by kreeg:

Something is definitely amiss. I get 144 FPS on my G-Sync monitor and I didn't have to fiddle with any setting but my hardware is much newer than yours.

I wish I could help but it looks like you have already attempted just about every fix I could think of. But I would advise staying with the latest drivers unless they were giving you performance issues. The 416.16 are nearly two years old.

I did try a couple drivers, but the 416.16 gives me the best stability and still supports 3D vision. I hope I get it to work properly when Ampere launches. SLI could also mess with it, or the fact that I do have to make a custom resolution profile for my second monitor because windows is too dumb to set the native refresh rate.