SpecialK's Frame Rate Limiter Review (DX11 based): Comparing Frame Time Consistency And Approximate Latency.

[RodroG]

Hi everybody, @Kaldaien contacted me some time ago and asked me for the possibility of performing a tentative SpecialK's frame rate limiter review on DX11-based scenarios.

Now, I'm happy to share with you such review, published and fully available for reading in the r/allbenchmarks subreddit and linked below.

Here's the analysis:

https://www.reddit.com/r/allbenchmarks/comments/gohkn9/specialks_frame_rate_limiter_review_dx11_based/

And here's the TL;DR Tentative Conclusion(s) (DX11-based):

• Frame time consistency-wise, the SpecialK's frame rate limiter was significantly better than both RTSS and NV v3 limiters in all DX11 scenarios, while RTSS and NV v3 were overall on par in terms of frametime stability.
  
• Approximate latency-wise, the NV v3 limiter was significantly better than both the SpecialK and RTSS limiter in all DX11 scenarios, being the SpecialK limiter better than the RTSS one too.
  
• However, if we also consider a usability / performance approach between the different FPS limiters, the most balanced and overall recommended option, would be the RTSS limiter instead, which is easier to get working in all games and to be set up vs. the SpecialK limiting method, that is a bit difficult to get working on certain games/clients and it will require to tweak its "Tollerance" setting on per game-basis in some cases to prevent certain instability issues.
  
• Therefore, based on all the prior data and notes, and when the SpecialK mod is injected succesfully and its limiter is set up properly on a per game-basis, we can clearly state that the SpecialK's frame rate limiter is by far the most consistent and accurate FPS limiting method on DX11-based scenarios. That is, under certain scenarios, the SpecialK limiter can be considered an excellent and recommended alternative to cap your FPS and guarantee the stadiest and smoothest framerate, and specially as a recommended alternative to any suboptimal in-game limiter.

Hope you like it! Please, leave your comments and feedback wherever you prefrer.

[iStarTAC]

Hi! Great analysis! Do you think the better latency on NV3 is due to be on the driver ? I really think Speciak needs a "dumbed down" UI for the people that only want to use the simple stuff.

[RodroG]

Originally posted by iStarTAC:

Hi! Great analysis! Do you think the better latency on NV3 is due to be on the driver ? I really think Speciak needs a "dumbed down" UI for the people that only want to use the simple stuff.

Hi! You're welcome and glad you like it. On you question I don't know, not sure, because there are other hidden NV limiter versions (you can set them via NvidiaProfileInspector) that performs differently though. I'd say only Nvidia know how its NVCP Max Frame Rate setting works and it's implemented.

[[SK] Kaldaien]

Originally posted by iStarTAC:

Hi! Great analysis! Do you think the better latency on NV3 is due to be on the driver ? I really think Speciak needs a "dumbed down" UI for the people that only want to use the simple stuff.

I actually pursued this because I have been thinking about rather than "dumbing down" Special K, actually isolating the limiter into an open source standalone library. I was not sure how it stacked up against other solutions, and did not know if it would be worth the effort to do.

Releasing a standalone library would be the best course of action, people may create their own minimal injector or even integrate the limiter directly into a game instead of creating one from scratch that stutters like mad ;)

As TBombadil mentions, there is still some configuration work necessary to get ideal results. I am not sure whether these need to be user-facing configuration parameters or if a developer interested in the best results possible could tune them once and apply on all systems. This is all very encouraging though.