Fallout 4 Screen Tearing?

[Bradders456]

Hi,
so I have a 60Htz Monitor with a GTX 970 graphics card. When my Fps drops below 60, I have this weird line that travels up the screen and goes away when my fps goes back to 60. I had my v sync on Adaptive and changed it to forced On which seems to have stopped it although now the game is a little less smooth. Is this screen tearing or a separate issue?

 

[azca]

yeah that's what happens with a monitor that doesn't have g-sync or freesync for AMD

 

[PsyKhiqZero]

Sounds like screen tearing. Especially if it goes away when you Force V-sync. But usually that's only a problem at fps above 60 (for 60hz monitors). What happens if your turn it off completely? That is turn vsync off in game as well as turning off adaptive v-sync

 

[Bradders456]

yeah that's what happens with a monitor that doesn't have g-sync or freesync for AMD

Does it occur when the fps dips below the refresh rate though,not just above it?

 

[firo40]

Fallout 4 cant handle vsynch forced off it causes the games physics to mess up, you end up going through the ground and walls. I would make sure in the nvidia control panel you have tripple buffering on and force vsynch on. Should help

 

[Bradders456]

So i've run some tests, and it seems that when I set my V sync to Adaptive (regardless of triple buffering) my fps would hit 59-61fps and that would then cause the screen tearing. When I turned my V sync on my fps maxed 60 and the screen tear was gone. I'm curious though, can a screen tear actually move up the screen or is a line straight across the middle of the screen? and also, can 1fps above the monitors refresh rate really cause such drastic screen tearing?

 

[PsyKhiqZero]

Yes. The position of the line depends on exactly the time the frames are rendered. When you see an fps number keep in mind that is an average and the frames aren't always spaced evenly. (for example 60 fps doesn't mean you make a new frame every 1/60th of a second.) This timing is what can cause micro stutter...but that's a different issue.

Screen Tearing occurs when you go above the monitors refresh rate. Essentially what happens is that multiple frames are combined into a single frames so that all frames rendered can be displayed. The line you see is where the frame was split. Above the line is one frame and below is technically another. V-sync sets it so that frames are ONLY rendered when the monitor is available to display. This is why it locks fps to 60. If you had a 144hz monitor it would be locked to 144fps.

If it's a problem try turning on Nvidia DSR (Dynamic super resolution). This will render the game at a higher resolution and downsample to 1080p. Effectively the performance loss should keep your fps between 50 and 60.