Forum Discussion

8 years ago

Turning on V-Sync

Hi there,

I would like to enable v-sync as I heard it will help with game performance.. and anything to make Sims 3 run smoother I'm always down for.
However I am a complete noob when it comes to this and I'm posting to get some advice from ya'll..
https://i.imgur.com/cVFSrDa.jpg
Do the settings look alright? Also, Vertical Sync has multiple options - Off, On, Adaptive, Adaptive (half refresh rate) and Fast.
What is the difference between these options, and which one should I select?

Thanks :)

12 Replies

igazor
8 years ago
What is compulsory is keeping the frame rate (fps) capped. Vertical sync is the best way to do that if it can be arranged, some players especially on Win 10 need to use Nvidia Inspector or RTSS in addition to (not instead of) vertical sync to be effective.

Unlike newer games, TS3 has no built in fps limiter (TS4 has one) because back when the game was designed in 2008-09 most cards on the market were not capable of throwing such high frame rates. This has changed as time has passed. Frame rates in excess of the refresh rate of your monitor are the equivalent of digital noise that your monitor will never be able to interpret and if they run into the hundreds or thousands they make the card work way too hard for nothing. They also lead to graphics glitches, screen tears, lag, crashes, and after a while can overheat and burn out your card on you.
InfraGreen
8 years ago
I killed my last video card by not playing with VSync (and poor cooling but that's not what this thread is about). Don't waste hundreds of dollars like me.

VSync only works in fullscreen by the way! If you want a cap of framerates in windowed mode, use a third party app like RivaTuner.