Why do 60fps gif look smoother than when I'm playing a game at 60fps?

Vsync doesn't improve frame times, although it can affect them for better or for worse. What vertical sync does is synchronise your graphics card's output with your monitor's refresh. This prevents tearing, and - in a perfect world - it means that frames are evenly spaced apart.

However, it's not quite so black-and-white. Here are a few neat things about vsync:

  • Vertical sync will remove screen tearing in fullscreen modes, but it can introduce slight input latency
  • Vertical sync with low, inconsistent framerates may introduce stuttering, since you may have two monitor refreshes that show one frame, then one monitor refresh that shows another, and so on.
  • Playing in a windowed mode without vertical sync will actually introduce input lag on all recent versions of Windows. Windows enforces its own vertical sync, and if it's not used in tandem with an application's vertical sync, it will likely make motion appear much less fluid. If you have a game that has a borderless fullscreen mode, toggle between it and native fullscreen mode without vertical sync enabled, and you'll likely see this behaviour first-hand
  • As mentioned above, vertical sync can cause stuttering, especially with inconsistent framerates. Triple buffering can greatly alleviate this, however, at the cost of some slight additional input lag.

Personally, I always play with vertical sync enabled, and I also use triple buffering alongside it whenever possible. I cannot stand screen tearing in native fullscreen modes, and the way that Windows causes non-vsync'd programs to stutter in windowed modes makes my experience less enjoyable.

But you're playing on PC! Play around with settings. The beauty of this platform is that you have choice, and you can tailor your configuration to whatever best meets your needs. If you don't much mind screen tearing, then disabling vertical sync may make things feel a hair smoother. If you prefer an artifact-free experience, then keep vertical sync on and do what you can to maintain a consistent framerate.

/r/pcgaming Thread Parent