Whats the deal with 4870 and vsync

Heres my system cause my sig isnt up to date:

Q6600 (G0) @ 3.6
2GB of Corsair Dominator 1066 @ 1250 5-5-5-12
Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi
HIS 4870 @ 490/1100
PC Powe&Cooling 750 Silencer PSU
LIAN LI custom made case
Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit

ok, now, why can some games vsync while others cant? So far, Halflife 2(all), COD4, FEAR, and UT2004 will. UT2004 would only do it if i changed the game config other wise it wouldnt, so trust me when i say i have tried that on all games. All my other games wont. Like.....Farcry, it just refuses to vsynce. Why? Is it because the drivers are so new and it takes time or am i missing something? I wont play a game unless its vsynced as i hate tearing and it makes the games run smoother as lomg as the fps stay abouve the refresh rate which is generally at 85. Any help would be great! Ive tried ATI tool and Riva Tuner doesnt support the 4000 series just yet. I think its too new but perhaps im missing something that someone could point out to me. Like i said, ANY help or advice would be great. Thanks so much.

could be driver problem, i am not sure. for older games, you should be able to force vsync on them.

I've noticed the same problem here. Hopefully updated drivers fix this issue.

The Vsync option in the Catalyst Control Center doesnt work under Vista. If the game doesnt have a vsync option you will need D3D overrider which comes with rivatuner or use ATI Tray Tool.

Renesis13B said:

The Vsync option in the Catalyst Control Center doesnt work under Vista. If the game doesnt have a vsync option you will need D3D overrider which comes with rivatuner or use ATI Tray Tool.

Click to expand...

I just stick with D3D Overrider. It works.

"I just stick with D3D Overrider. It works. "

I tried ATI tool and rivatuner but they dont support
the 4000 series ATI cards as of yet. Trust me, its the first thing i did! Now, a game like Farcry DOES support vsync in-game under its video option and still it doesnt work leading me to believe that the card was rushed out and made only to work with the very most popular games, ie, HL, COD4, ect... It just seems wierd that i changed the game config for UT2004 and got it to work but changing the game config for Farcry did nothing. I know farcry is old, but i wanna run all my old games to see how much better they play than my old 8800GTX (clocked past Ultra speeds). And as stated before, i dont play games unless they are vsyned. Games are too choppy with-out it. In my personal opinion. So, driver issue cause of new card everyone???

I had the same problem when I tried the 4850. BF2 would not vsync I tried everything it just wouldn't do it, and the game was way way to choppy to play without it. I hope Ati fixes this

Can anyone with a 4850/4870 try older games and see if vsync works? Like BF2 etc.

D3D Overrider is a separate program that comes bundled with rivatuner. you dont need to run rivatuner to use D3D Overrider. Even if the vsync option is broken D3D overrider should be able to fix it.

Vsync should work threw CCC as it should. Nvidia's cards are fine with vsync. If Ati's doesn't work then that's a big big letdown with these new cards....I really wish someone would either confirm this or deny it...

CCC vsync does NOT work in Vista. I am playing Dead Space on a 4850 and have newest ATI drivers. Deadd Space has this quirk that if you enable vsync in the game, it drops your frame rate to half of what it really is i.e. monitor refresh 60fps, Dead Space will set it to 30fps. The controls in the game are very sluggish if you do this. The workaround is to turn off vsync in the game and force it on in the video card settings. Well I can tell you it does not work in CCC. I have Ati tray tools and unlesss I setup a profile and force it on there (which I read works but haven't tried) it doesn't work either in the 3D settingsbrought up with right click. I don't want to mess around with profiles, so I'm going to give D3D Overrider a shot.

marc

Just tried Ati tray tool profile and it works. I just made the simplest profile called it vsync, set the executable to Dead Space, on the last tab, Where it says force vsync in Vista, clicked drop down and set to ON, saved profile...that's it. Fired up game, worked perfectly.....Thanks Ray Adams.

Read that only the latest beta version 1.6.9.1374 of Ati tray tools supports this....Google it.

marc

I've found that Vsync in CCC under XP does not work. I don't mean it runs buggy, I mean it does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Guess I will have to try ATI Tray Tools....

Theres 3 places to enable vsync

D3D overrider (in D3D games)
CCC
The game itself.

If it's on in all 3 places and still not working, try tuning it off in one place and switch around which 1 or 2 are switched on at once.

I'm sure there are more applications that will force vsync as well.

marcnapier said:

CCC vsync does NOT work in Vista. I am playing Dead Space on a 4850 and have newest ATI drivers. Deadd Space has this quirk that if you enable vsync in the game, it drops your frame rate to half of what it really is i.e. monitor refresh 60fps, Dead Space will set it to 30fps. The controls in the game are very sluggish if you do this. The workaround is to turn off vsync in the game and force it on in the video card settings. Well I can tell you it does not work in CCC. I have Ati tray tools and unlesss I setup a profile and force it on there (which I read works but haven't tried) it doesn't work either in the 3D settingsbrought up with right click. I don't want to mess around with profiles, so I'm going to give D3D Overrider a shot.

marc

Click to expand...

Actually that likely means that VSYNC is *WORKING*. With VSYNC enabled, if you can't hit 60FPS then the FPS will drop in half to 30. This is just due to the way VSYNC works, and is a limitation of double-buffering, not of ATI (Nvidia does the same thing). Your option is to either try and enable triple-buffering or lower the settings so you can maintain 60FPS.

Also, last I heard both ATI and Nvidia's control panel options only force VSYNC for OpenGL games, NOT DirectX games.

The control-panel option will enable 'regular' double-buffering vsync in D3D or OGL, but will only enable triple-buffering in OGL.

This is quite annoying, since triple buffer vsync is clearly superior to double-buffer!

This was a terrible let down for me also after coming from 8800GTS to the 4870 1gb. With Nvidia, I had no issues using the driver settings to set triple buffering and Vsync. Yeah, everything works fine with Overrider, but I shouldn't have to use 3rd party programs. I'm probably going to go all out this time and get the GTX 295 so I can go back to the green side.

Yup vsync doesn't work in vista or windows 7 for either Ati or nvidia if the game doesn't have it as an option in the control panel of the game. Only way to make it work is like people said with the D3d over ride. But then in some games like BF2 you get kicked by punkbuster for some stupid reason. This issue is mainly why I'm still using windows xp

Mikerocks2112 said:

This was a terrible let down for me also after coming from 8800GTS to the 4870 1gb. With Nvidia, I had no issues using the driver settings to set triple buffering and Vsync. Yeah, everything works fine with Overrider, but I shouldn't have to use 3rd party programs. I'm probably going to go all out this time and get the GTX 295 so I can go back to the green side.

Click to expand...

It is the *exact* same with Nvidia. Nvidia's control panel triple buffering also only enables it for OpenGL games. You have to use a 3rd party override program with both camps. Again, this is not a problem with ATI at all, but of vsync, double buffering, and DX itself. Nvidia's drivers do the exact same thing as ATI's drivers in this case.