Hello,
Support ticket - 10132901
I have a 144HZ ASUS Gsync Monitor.
Ive actually set the monitor in the system/nvidia settings to 120Hz to fix the issue with having other 60Hz monitors to prevent stuttering since they are divisible now with 120/60 instead of 144/60. Did try setting my other 2 monitors to 72Hz (so 144/72 would work) but one of them cant handle it so I settled for 120/60 which is still plenty.
GPU - RTX 2070 - Latest Drivers (Well...the issue has been across the last bunch of drivers actually)
CPU - Ryzen 2700x
Mobo - Asus Crosshair Hero VII
Ram - 16GB
Win 10 latest build.
I have also tried uninstalling my drivers using DDU (Display driver uninstaller) from safe mode etc. Tried older driver sand it still happens.
System is fine. It works with few other games I play and it passes stress test benchmarks etc with flying colors.
I recently quite playing World of Warcraft (Been a long time FFXIV player as well) but in WoW for example with gsync on in windowed mode or fullscreen mode I have none of the issues listed below. Im even using their in game frame rate limiter to limit Frames and Im having none of the issues as I will mention below. It works perfectly. Also I have very setting in WoW set to ultra including Maxx MSAA AA which are higher level settings FF XIV doesnt have. Its just an example by the way since its the closest game type I can think of in comparisan to FF XIV.
First reason im having issues and its related to the high GPU usage is I stream using OBS (Primarily for friends...I dont care about being a big streamer etc I dont stream often anyways) with the recently added "NVENC (NEW)" option that takes advantage of the new encoder chip in the RTX cards. With it being the RTX card it has the new NVENC encoder chip in it. Using GPU to encode with this new setting is a difference between night and day (comparing to the old NVENC option) and is very close to x.264 Fast/Medium (CPU) encoding now without the strain put on the CPU. Yes I know the Ryzen can handle it but the issue also happens when using X.264 (CPU encoding) because of the 100% still on the GPU causing a lot of stutter when streaming for my friends.
Second reason is the following Ive run into and temporary steps (while not the preferred steps to try and fix it) taken.
FFXIV runs my GPU at 100%. Avg Frame Rate is at 100 - 120. This will run it at 100% which is expected since the card is working harder to push out the higher frames.
When using the frame rate limiter in the past I was able to curb GPU use down to about 60% on 60FPS option limit since the card was no longer working as hard. This was also on an old system I no longer have without Gsync/RTX.
Now with my current setup and gsync/rtx it no longer works or has adverse effects.
In full screen mode on FF XIV I have the option for No frame cap, limit to 1/1 which is 120Hz (remember I capped my 144hz to 120 in the system settings to fix the stuttering issue with other 60Hz monitors) and limit it to 1/2 which is 60Fps and a few more options below that.
Well trying any of these in Full screen mode it does not work at all. It doesn't limit it.
So I tried borderless window mode. The limiter works there but setting it to 60fps limit breaks things and makes the game drop to an unplayable 15 to 17 FPS.
So I then proceeded to create an nvidia profile for FFXIV and disable gsync when playing FF XIV.
Everything works as it should. It will limit FPS in full screen or bordered mode with no problems and card will run about 50 - 60% GPU use giving me room to mess around with recording and streaming since OBS wont stutter all to crap any more. But with it off you notice the things that gsync cleaned up primarily the smoothness.
So this is telling me there is something wrong on Nvidias end or FF XIV's end or both?
Will there be any fix for this? Is FFXIV working with Nvidia on better driver implementation?
Sure people will say just disable Gsync then...but you do notice a major difference now between not using it and using it after playing with it on for a few months now. With it off you still catch micro-stutter and other hiccups here and there with it off. With it on even in crowded areas its butter smooth because its evening things out.
So does the FFXIV team have any suggestions or comments?
Do you guys even know this is an issue?..well I would hope so since there are many forum post on FFxiv and Nvidia reddit about it as well as on Nvidias own forums.
Is this an issue being looked into?