Capping the frame rate with the engine

[fenderjaguar]

For those who are interested, you can actually cap the frame rate with the engine, rather than at nvidia driver level (which increases input lag and doesn't even cap at the exact frame rate specified) or with an external piece of software such as RTSS (excellent) or Dxtory etc.

 

Simply force vsync off at nvidia driver level, then switch vsync on in the game. If you are running at 60hz, your options are fairly limited, either 60 fps or 30fps.

 

If you have a higher refresh rate monitor, such as 120hz or 144hz, you can force highest refresh at nvidia driver level, but the engine will believe it's running in 60hz if you select that frequency in the GTA V graphics options. Regardless, if you force highest refresh from driver level with a 144hz monitor, you'll still be in 144hz mode refresh rate with vsync disabled, but the game engine will still cap the frame rate at 60 fps if you select vsync on and 60hz in the GTA V graphics options menu.

 

Also, for those with a high refresh monitor, you can also cap the frame rate at other multiples of the refresh rate too. If you locate the config file at my document > rockstar games > GTA V > settings.xml, you can open with notepad and locate the line:

 

<VSync value="1" />

 

0 is off, 1 is cap at the refresh, 2 is cap at half the refresh.

 

However, you can set any multiple of the refresh too. So for example setting to 4 would cap at 36 fps on 144hz.

 

It's a shame we can't make the engine believe it's running at any refresh rate, because then we could simply enter our target frame rate into the <RefreshRate value="60" /> line. It's a very quirky way to cap a frame rate, but it does work, regardless of whether vsync is running or not.