V-sync problem

L

Lepy

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 28, 2004
Messages
65
I have a geforce go 7200 in my HP DV6000. I have a strange problem where games only run smooth with v-sync enabled from the nvidia control panel.

If I have v-sync enabled, and start a game (such as GTA: San Andreas) everything is in working order. If, however, I disable v-sync and play a game, after anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes of play time, the game will suddenly slow down to a very poor fps. Before this slowdown occurs though, the fps of the game will be better than with v-sync enabled (and higher fps is the reason to disable v-sync for me).

Basically, I want to squeeze out the most out of the already lackluster 7200. Disabling v-sync should give me a higher fps than enabling it (which it does before that sudden drop in fps), so why does disabling v-sync cause a sudden drop in fps? Is it a refresh rate problem or something? I just want to be able to disable v-sync without having this sudden fps drop come about. Any ideas?
 
is it actually a drop in FPS you're seeing or is it tearing that you're seeing. Sorry if that's an elementary question for you but I'm not aware of your technical saviness. A lot people will mistake tearing for low FPS and tearing is actually pretty normal in a lot games if you have a weird refresh rate incompatability between the vid card/monitor/game (thus the need for v-sync).
 
My laptop is a HP DV6000
AMD X2 Mobile TL-56
Nvidia Geforce Go 7200
2 gigs of ram
Running XP SP2

Only unless my understanding of tearing is completely flawed, I'm pretty sure its an actual drop in FPS that I'm experiencing. Using FRAPs, GTA in specific runs at an almost constant 30fps with v-sync enabled in the nvidia control panel.

When I disable v-sync, the frame rate is even more stable and stays even closer to 30fps for about a minute or so, then the frame rate severely dips to around 10fps and never recovers. It does this for all my other games as well.
 
I have never heard of any connection between v-sync and a severe drop in FPS. My understanding is the ONLY thing v-sync does it make sure that you get frames only on a screen refresh and not in between screen refreshes... Strange issue indeed.
 
Turn off tripple buffering in GTA SA. something like that.
 
Do you have the option to allocate memory to the video card in bios? Maybe the video card memory is becoming overwhelmed once levels start to load. :confused:
 
I tried turning off and on triple buffering and while v-sync was off, and the game still slowed to 10 fps after a minute or so. I also tried using dxtweaker with v-sync on which didn't help either. I tried a new driver version as well, but the problem persisted. Any other ideas?
 
The bios on my laptop are about as bare as a bios can be unfortunately.

This problem isn't specific to GTA. It happens with all games (Freedom Force, NWN2, etc.). I know that disabling v-sync worked before because I had to disable it to get NWN2 running well (and NWN2 won't run now for some reason). Not sure what happened to make it change though because I don't play games all that often on my laptop.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top