Is this frame skipping ? ? ?

[ToastyX]

(06-28-2025 03:54 PM)1AGRESSOR Wrote:  i thought these are various response timings, and when lowered the strain of high pixel clock would improve response, smoothness etc...

added Lowest/Highest settings screenshots, i think highest causes more freesync flickering, ill need to test more

That was in response to overclocking monitors beyond typical pixel clock limits. The lower the blanking, the lower the pixel clock rate, which allows you to squeeze in a higher refresh rate within the same bandwidth. Those posts were referencing certain monitors that could do 450-500 MHz pixel clock with dual-link DVI, which was typically limited to 330 MHz. The graphics driver had to be patched to allow such rates.

The timing parameters mainly affect how long to wait between lines and frames. This was originally intended to give CRT monitors time to move the electron guns. Nowadays it's used to give monitors time to process the image or handle other parts such as audio. The total time per refresh is always the same, so it doesn't affect smoothness. The refresh always takes 1000/Hz milliseconds, so at 100 Hz, the refresh always takes 10 ms (1000/100), and at 200 Hz, the refresh always takes 5 ms (1000/200). The blanking affects how much of that time is spent during the visible portion (active) and the invisible portion (blanking). For example, if the total time per refresh is 10 ms, and the vertical resolution is 1000 lines, and the vertical blanking is 250 lines, then the total is 1250 lines, so it takes 8 ms to refresh the visible portion (1000/1250) and spends 2 ms during the blanking period (250/1250). If the vertical blanking were increased to 1000 lines, making the total 2000 lines, it would spend 5 ms during the visible portion (1000/2000) and 5 ms during the blanking period.

Increasing the horizontal blanking has no benefit other than to allow enough time to transmit audio through HDMI/DisplayPort. It's the vertical blanking that affects frame times, but at high refresh rates the bandwidth is already limited, so usually you can't increase it by much, and at 284 Hz, the total refresh time is already 3.5 ms, so the difference would be miniscule. Also FreeSync/VRR basically works by keeping the pixel clock at the max refresh rate while increasing the vertical blanking period until the next frame is ready, so it already works like this for lower frame rates, which means refreshing the visible portion would never take more than 3.5 ms even at lower frame rates. Without FreeSync/VRR, refreshing the visible portion at 60 Hz typically takes around 16 ms unless you increase the vertical blanking manually.