Is It Better To Enable Or Disable V-Sync For Gaming?

Screen tearing is a phenomenon where weird artifacts appear on the screen during gameplay. It usually manifests as horizontal lines or looks as if multiple images are being shown at once. It's more noticeable when a lot of things are happening on screen, such as explosions and special effects. Another scenario is during fast movements, such as quick camera rotations. Vertical synchronization (V-sync) was created to solve the problem of screen tearing.

A good rule of thumb is that if you don't notice screen tearing, keep V-sync off. Otherwise, enable it. Screen tearing happens when a high frame rate meets a low refresh rate. A frame rate is how many images the graphics processing unit (GPU) can render on screen per second, while a refresh rate is the number of times the monitor can update per second. So, with screen tearing, the graphics card would have sent several frames to the monitor before it had a chance to refresh its screen — for example, when a GPU pushes 60 FPS to a monitor with a refresh rate of 30 Hz. V-sync tells the GPU to wait for the screen to refresh before it renders a frame.

If you have a monitor with the right refresh rate, it can keep up with your graphics card. If not, you can enable V-sync in the game's graphics settings. You can also enable it globally on your computer if your graphics card supports it. You just need to access its control panel and you should find the option in the graphics settings.

V-sync can introduce another visual artifact — stuttering. For V-sync to work properly, it needs to match the frame rate to the refresh rate exactly. When the frame rate becomes lower than the refresh rate, that's another mismatch. If stuttering is not an issue, you might experience input lag. In most cases, the screen is holding the GPU back — but when V-sync makes the GPU wait, it can introduce input lag.

Both stuttering and input lag can be a huge problem if you're a competitive player. You can miss shots and react slower, leading to frustrating losses. These issues can be ignored in most single-player games because you're playing alone and enemy AI is more predictable than humans. The same goes for much slower single-player games, such as turn-based RPGs like "Persona 5 Royal" and "Baldur's Gate 3." However, in games that require quick reflexes and timing, like "Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice" and "Hi-Fi Rush," it can lead to unnecessary deaths.

If the input lag or stuttering is unbearable, it's best to see if your monitor supports FreeSync instead. It will essentially dynamically adjust your game's frame rate to match your monitor's refresh rate (as opposed to forcing it to wait). If there's no FreeSync and you have an Nvidia graphics card, you can turn on G-Sync instead. It does the same thing as FreeSync, but on the graphics card level. They're both types of adaptive sync technology, while V-sync is static.