Spring RTS Engine

This recent setting in nvidia drivers is super useful. It caps frame rate at refresh frequency, but doesnt start halving if you drop under refresh frequency. Reduces gpu power usage, eliminates tearing and doesnt cause drop to 30 fps if you go a smidge under 60. Works well with spring :D

it will be used in 89.0 with spring's own vsync cmd

PS: I changed the used vsync mechanism, so it won't be hardlocking anymore. Before the mainthread was locked while waiting for vsync, and so the time was lost. In 89.0 it will use a async system. Locking will only happen when the OGL buffer is full. The spring thread can then compute other stuff (e.g. simframes, next drawframe, ...) while the driver waits for vsync.
This + adaptive vsync should stabilize the FPS and make vsync much more usable in spring.

Thanks jK!

Beherith wrote:This recent setting in nvidia drivers is super useful. It caps frame rate at refresh frequency, but doesnt start halving if you drop under refresh frequency. Reduces gpu power usage, eliminates tearing and doesnt cause drop to 30 fps if you go a smidge under 60. Works well with spring :D

In RTS - works sometimes
In FPS - nope
In plane/car simulators - hell no

Drop in power usage definitely causes a drop in frames AND adds stability issues. Try that with PALIT cards for example. We changed 3-way SLI pack after 1 week BSOD kung-fu-ing ....

And btw why are you so happy when this is possible not only with nvidia cards?

Because I am the happy owner of a new nvidia card? This was not possible with my old card. Or is that too much fanboyism? Sorry, didnt mean to offend.

Since power and frame rate are connected, its logical that if you drop the power budget you will get less max frames. In this case, I'm dropping frames that dont even get fully pushed to my monitor. I have not experienced stability issues, but I dont own either a Palit card, or use SLI. Spring runs smooth as butter.

What do you mean it doesnt work in FPS or sims? Isnt that just dependent on the game's engine and not on the genre?

Beherith wrote:Thanks jK!

+1

Beherith wrote:This recent setting in nvidia drivers is super useful. It caps frame rate at refresh frequency, but doesnt start halving if you drop under refresh frequency. Reduces gpu power usage, eliminates tearing and doesnt cause drop to 30 fps if you go a smidge under 60. Works well with spring :D

That solution actually makes a lot of sense. It was SO frustrating to have your frame rate plummet to 30 just because your machine, during a high action moment, can only handle 55 FPS. A bit of screen tearing at that point is far preferable to "OMG I CAN'T CLICK THINGS I WANT ANY MORE". But it's not like any of those frames above 60 are actually helping you if that's what your display rate is.

For that reason disabling Vsync was always the first thing I'd do in any game. If they start using this more sensible option I'll move away from that though.

Beherith wrote:Because I am the happy owner of a new nvidia card? This was not possible with my old card. Or is that too much fanboyism? Sorry, didnt mean to offend.

Adaptive Vsync can be implemented in the games, or with thirdparty tool.
Just for the protocol for my hobby (and subjectively called 2nd work) use and GTX690 SLI, also put mainly nvidias into my friend's computers.

Beherith wrote:Since power and frame rate are connected, its logical that if you drop the power budget you will get less max frames. In this case, I'm dropping frames that dont even get fully pushed to my monitor. I have not experienced stability issues, but I dont own either a Palit card, or use SLI. Spring runs smooth as butter.

My opinion is based at least on my and other's user experience.
Palit was just an manuf example, what do you say about that same problems are in Gigabyte, Asus, Evga, Sapphire and XFX products, no matter what is the GPU?
Anyway Spring continues to have the problem with popping ground at some water maps. Imagine a block 1/4 of the map that contrasts its borders for a fraction of the second in random intervals ...

Beherith wrote:What do you mean it doesnt work in FPS or sims? Isnt that just dependent on the game's engine and not on the genre?

It's good to play FPS/sims with VSync=off to fix synchronization problems between graphics and network. Good example are HL1, HL2 engines, famous Quake 3 difference in jump height at different frames per second, Crysis needs Vsync=off to handle at sharp fps drop too random gun recoil, some arcade sims like NFS and Dirt bring camera effects that distract you more at frame drop ...