GUIDE: How I enabled V-sync in Windows 7

[Kuky]

The one and only thing really putting me off so far from going away from XP and switching to Windows 7 was lack of V-sync even if enabled in graphics driver (yes I want V-sync On otherwise there is image tearing on the screen). The good news is you can actually enable V-sync easily and you only have to do this once to enable it and I am very happy about this so if anyone else has same issue and would like to do the same thing, this is what I did:

 

1. Downloaded RivaTuner

2. Installed RivaTuner in C:\RivaTuner directory

3. Navigated to C:\RivaTuner and Copy/Paste the D3DOverrider folder into C: drive

4. Uninstalled RivaTuner and went into windows registry to:

 

...HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Wow6432Node/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run

 

5. Created new String Value and named it D3DOvrd then modified as: "C:\D3DOverrider\D3DOverrider.exe" MSRun

6. Rebooted and checked the little green cross (icon for D3DOverrider) is minimised in windows tray

7. Now add DCS.exe to the list of xxxx.exe and set Aplication Detection Level to High and Forced V-sync On

 

Now every time I reboot the D3DOverrider is on automatically and when it detects DCS.exe running it enables V-sync... voila...working V-sync in Windows 7

 

oh and I forgot to say, I have an ATI card and enabling V-sync in CCC does not work (V-sync On all the time is ticked but does not work in games)

Edited November 19, 2009 by Kuky

[InFireBaptize]

by enable, do you mean forcing v-sync off to gain more fps!

Not 100% sure but tripple buffer only works in openGL not directX!

[VMFA117_Poko]

Is RivaTuner for Radeon cards only?

[Kuky]

should work for nVidia cards also

[VMFA117_Poko]

Great! I must try that.

[159th_Viper]

Ta :)

[muz]

...or you could use the driver settings built into either NVidia forceware or ATI Catalyst Command Centre or use something else like nHancer or Ati Tray Tools and setup application specific profiles.

 

(I'm not aware that the V-Sync settings in Win 7 don't work - but I can definitely confirm that V-sync in Ati Tray Tools DOES work properly under Win7 x64). I will test v-sync functionality using purely CCC out of curiosity (as I'm curious if it's a general problem or configuration dependant).

 

I run ATT under Win7 x64 for this sort of stuff, with very basic default settings applied via Catalyst driver settings.

 

I'm not saying your post is wrong - just pointing out alternative ways of doing this, as "there's more than 1 way to skin a cat" and some people prefer using different methods (depending on their needs).

Edited November 20, 2009 by muz

[Kuky]

^^^

I believe that with ATI Tray Tools you could do the same but you'd need to create a profile for every game and start it in order to enable it... this way you don't need to do anything as it's set to run automatically on windows startup.

 

For ATI cards enabling V-sync in Catalyst Control Centre does not work in game... I have tried it alredy numerous times and with different Catalyst versions. I know may people claim they don't get any tearing even with V-sync off but that either must mean they are runing some 3rd party utility to enabe it or they just don't notice it, or don't care :)

 

For me I always run with V-sync on so this is a must have

 

PS: I have found Black Shark running better (higher framerate) in Windows 7 64bit then XP professional.. maybe it's the 64bit giving the boost, and if this is to I hope Flaming Cliffs 2.0 does the same

Edited November 20, 2009 by Kuky

[JG14_Smil]

I have always used D3D O/R to get my vsync, but now that I am running in a window for multi monitor, vsync doesnt help at all with tearing. Would love to get it to work in windowed mode BS. D3D O/R provides smoother framerates also.

[EtherealN]

First off to the guy that wondered - yes, RivaTuner works for nVidia cards as well. I use it to manage my overclocking and fan settings for my 9800GTX+.

 

PS: I have found Black Shark running better (higher framerate) in Windows 7 64bit then XP professional.. maybe it's the 64bit giving the boost, and if this is to I hope Flaming Cliffs 2.0 does the same

 

This is actually well documented. The reason is not the 64bit issue (it's a 32-bit process, though it appears aware of large adress spacees, so there should actually be a small overhead from a translation layer), it's the fact that Vista and 7 both were designed for multicore processors at the start, whereas they were just a figment of random people's imaginations (pretty much) when XP design work started. XP has been given "support" for multicore processors since then, but since it's pretty much tacked-on with a bit of hindsight onto an old product it doesn't work as effectively in loadbalancing.

 

What Vista and 7 is better at here is pretty much just flipping a demanding singlethread application between the cores in the system to ensure that it is always resident in the one with the least workload, whereas it is my impression (from looking at past benchmarks in old threads) that on XP it'll get assigned to a core and then just sit there even if other processes end up stealing processor time from that core too - which is a case where Vista and 7 would quickly flip the dcs thread over to another core to ensure that it always has a maximum of processing potential available. So what can be said is that in theory you could get the same performance or better with XP (due to it's lesser OS overhead), but you'd have to finetune the system to the point where you are absolutely certain that it'll never, ever, place other threads on the core that's the dcs.exe process ends up landing on. Which isn't practical.

Edited November 20, 2009 by EtherealN