I had heard that framerate should be capped to 3 frames below the max of the monitor.
Do I then go and disable in game vsync, and manually enable Vertical Sync through Nvidia “Manage 3D settings” on a game by game basis? Is on the one I should use or fast for the Vsync setting through NVIDIA control panel?
Or should I just stick with in game vsync?
You turn vsync OFF, actually!
Vsync synchronizes the number of frames your game will produce to the refresh rate of your monitor. Gsync (and Freesync) allows for variable framerate meaning you don’t get tearing no matter how many frames the game will spit out. You cap it, so that it won’t overwork itself making more frames than the display can show.
You can think of vsync as in synchronizing your game to follow the capabilities of your monitor. Gsync/Freesync on the other hand, makes the monitor follow the capabilities of your game (or GPU).
Now here’s a caveat: that’s how I understand it, and I could be totally wrong! If so, I’ve been doing my settings wrong for past 2 years. I’m too looking forward to other replies!
GSync requires VSync to be turned ON or you will still get some minor tearing usually near the bottom of the screen. The Frame Cap is used to never actually use ONLY VSync with it’s input lag increase once your FPS hits the max refresh rate.
I’ll go with your method.
On my displays (LG) you can open OSD (monitor’s own menu for brightness, contrast and all other settings) and it shows me some stats about current mode. It’s where Gsync shows up as on or off, alongside hdr, resolution, refresh rate etc.
May be a good place to check whether Gsync properly “engaged”.
This is what I did too! In my case, it was partly because my monitor (Samsung Odyssey G8) had issues with flickering when games had high frame rates (e.g. 2D games and game menus) without the fps cap.