I bought this snazzy new monitor that is able to give up to 75Hz, uses HDMI, etc, etc... Of course, I thought it would be nice to see the frame rates with VSync off, and the number FRAPS showed after doing that were crazy. That was all find and good, but I could not get over the fact that I could somehow see the ground and architecture textures being redrawn as my character moved. Once I re-enabled VSync, the world was smoothly generated again.

Is this normal?

Totally normal. When the FPS goes too high the image tears.

But to be honest, there's really no benefit going any higher than 60FPS. Your average movie is only at 25-30 FPS.

As long as that is normal, I am fine. I thought it had something to do with the frame rates being too high, but I did not know what the anomaly I was seeing was. ^___^


Thanks for the reply!
- Tomlong75210

Movies use motion blur to make it smoother though. So it looks smoother then a game at 24FPS.

Does Oblivion's motion blur shader offer that effect as well?

Couple of answers here:

1) No, motion blur shaders don't do real (rendertime) motion blur. The "fake motion blur" from OBGE is even less close to approximating it. It's just a looks 'neat' thing. - Just had a look and actually I'm wrong. There is a proper (postprocessing) motion blur plugin for OBGE, it's scripted using OBSE. Apparently it's heavy on the FPS tho so no idea if it's a net benefit

2) V-sync isn't limited to 60fps, it synchronises the graphic card update to your monitors refresh rate. So if your monitor is 75hz then you'll get a maximum of 75fps.

3) V-sync works by dropping updating the screen either at the refresh rate of your monitor, or once every other rerfresh, or every 4... and so on. e.g. you get 60, 30, 15 fps. The solution to this is something called triple buffering which is NOT part of directX. You need a third party tool to enable triple buffering in Oblivion (the check box in your graphic card options is for open GL not directX).

To enable triple buffering in Oblivion you need either D3DOverider for Nvidia cards or ATI Tray Tool.

Thanks you for the in-depth reply. What is the purpose of triple buffering? Should I enable that? I have an HD 5870.

You should. It basically means your graphic card stores 3 frames instead of 2 and so it can synchronise with your display without being restricted to halves of the monitors refresh rate. I can't picture the math of it quite now (semi brain dead at the moment). i.e. you get vsync without the downside. Obviously this takes more graphic memory but a 5870 has 1gb?

You need ATI tray tool to enable this tho: it has an option to intercept directX calls and enable triple buffering.


- I just tried the motion blur mod and it's quite cool. It's probably a matter of taste tho: basically it blurs the entire screen if you pan the view.

HD5870 have 1GB or 2GB, and mine has 2GB VRAM.

I am downloading ATI Tray Tools now. I do not have OBGE installed, so that motion blur mod is out for now.


Edit: Where do I enable the triple buffer option? I have not interest in overclocking, by the way...

Edit: I found the buffer option. This thing will not OC my GPU by default, right?

Edit: This tool offers some nice features, by the way.

I don't know. I use D3DOverider since I have an nvidia card.

Well, I found an auto-overclocking thing, and it is turned off. I have not messed with the manual settings, so I would hope that it would leave those alone. I have the triple buffer enabled now, but I have yet to run the game. Rebuilding a setup in a new environment is no joke...