LCD Refresh Rate

[Grogan]

It's mostly a pointless thing on an LCD display, it's only emulated for synchronization purposes (it's inherent in how software talks to a display). It's not going to make your display look any better, there's no shimmering or scan lines. It's only if vsync comes into play (we generally don't mess with horizontal sync, it's inherent in the mode). So for games, that might be significant if you want higher framerates without tearing, or if you want Vsync to be a higher frequency/framerate.

For desktop use, it doesn't make one lick of difference for me personally, because I don't use compositors or vsync anything (and I'm talking about Xefuckingleven here, not Wayland or Windows... I hate compositing desktop window managers). Without compositors (or stupid menu animations etc.), everything just snaps into place even on older hardware. You'd be hard pressed to find a video with a higher framerate than 60 fps too (I don't have tearing). Most would be 30 or less.

I can change my refresh rate instantly, with

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xrandr --rate 165

(there's actually more going on than just that, though. xrandr is a front end, you could put in any arbitrary number and xrandr would change to the closest, supported mode, which is known by X11 from your EDID info)

I could tell X11 to use 165 Hz with a bit of config dropped in xorg.conf.d, or at the command line when starting it (passing options to xinit), however, it's pointless. If I run into a game (that doesn't itself have a refresh rate mode setting, most don't) where I'm not happy with vsync on, or off, I might set that natively first before launching the game, but so far I still like a smooth 60 Hz Vsync in most games, and Far Cry 6 works best for me with it's own refresh rate setting of 165 Hz and Vsync and any framerate limiting settings, Off. So far I've had no real need to run my display at 165 Hz.

The only thing that does for me, is cause a mode switch when I drop down to my amdgpu framebuffer console. An annoying delay of half a second or so. (It's the same mode as X11 otherwise)

[Grogan]

I did have something in mind, but hadn't tested the theory yet. Sometimes, it's just that vsync doesn't work correctly in a game and harms performance. I don't know why, implemented stupidly in some way (especially if it's adaptive). It's always been that way, even back gaming on Windows. Some games just didn't work correctly with vsync (but then you could use the override in the nvidia or ati control center)

Anyway, I was having better performance in Starfield with vsync turned off, but that caused tearing (minor) in some situations. I don't like tearing, so I turned vsync back on and lived with it. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't as smooth as I like, in some situations.

So... "xrandr --rate 165" before starting the game (actually before starting Steam just in case, it's pretty nosy about system configuration) and now the game works smoothly, with vsync turned off and there is no tearing anywhere.

There probably will be other games where I will want to do this.