why are some games stuttery at > 60fps?

[Brent_11]

I've never really understood why some games are stuttery at 60- 80fps and only get smooth at > 110 fps using a 60hz monitor. I mostly play racing sims, so for example rfactor 2, assetto corsa, Iracing all do this. Some don't get to >100 fps so then I use vsync which smoothes it out but then I have to deal with input lag.

Then there are other games where vsync is not required eg: bf4. Does anyone know what's going on here?

 

[bystander]

Have you tried V-sync? V-sync should make it smooth, though it may add some latency.

If it still doesn't feel smooth with V-sync on with solid 60 FPS, there may be some other issues.

If you only feel the stutter without V-sync, you must be sensitive to the tearing and unevenness of frame delivery.

You may also be very sensitive to latency, like myself, where you get motion sickness below 80 FPS in 1st person games, if that's the case, a very low latency monitor with higher than 60hz may be a good upgrade for you.

 

[Herobrine]

Your GPU is? Some have low memory bandwidth (19 Gb/s) or low memory (1Gb). The stream processors(CUDA for nVidia) are halting until data arrives from memory.
If that's not the case then it's stuttering. No real fix. Best thing is to lock frames to multiple of 60 (30,60,90 [that's 1.5 not exactly multiple but works on mine monitor],120) or Vsync (Adaptive Vsync if your GPU supports it, forced through driver). Or your computer throttles somewhere (CPU, GPU) due to overheating.
PS: Battlefield is highly optimized game (actually Frostbite 3 is highly optimizes engine) so stuttering and tearing isn't there 90% of the time slight drops (5-7 fps) at worst even on low end hardware. The games where stuttering occurs most likely are eating all of the VRAM or have poor memory allocation (getting too technical here)

 

[Brent_11]

I've got a saphire nitro rx480 4gb and a i5 4670k OC'd to 4.2ghz. As I said in OP, Vsync makes it smooth, but then I have to deal with input lag which sucks for racing sims, but I still choose that over stuttery image. I'll try locking frames to 90 and see if that makes a difference.

 

[Herobrine]

Use Adaptive Vsync (Vsync only when framerate reaches monitor refresh rate) if there is on AMD. At least on nVidia there is. Or use Adaptive Sync if your monitor supports.
Or as bystander said, you might be sensitive to delays. A 120hz or Adaptive Sync (better choice) monitor will do

 

[Brent_11]

It might be placebo, but locked at 90 actually felt pretty good for IRacing. More testing required. I wish I could get those adaptive sync monitors, but for racing I use triple screens, so it might break the bank!

 

[bystander]

The truth is, V-sync does smooth out video in a couple of ways, if you reach your refresh rate. Not only does it make the frame times very consistent, it applies back pressure to the renderer, which makes the game engines generate frames with a better time sync. The bad thing is it does add latency. A FPS cap may also apply that back pressure.