I just got a 144 Hz monitor (Acer XB270HU in case anyone’s interested).
Mostly for getting smoother pattern scroll in Renoise and general use, not gaming per se, since I’ve always detested having to go back to the 60 Hz stone age from the old 160-200 Hz CRT days.
It helps a bit in Renoise compared to my old 60 Hz screen, but the difference wasn’t as dramatic as I was hoping. I’m not sure how the “limit fps” thing works in Renoise though. Max is 100 fps, apparently. I can’t discern a difference when changing the control on the fly. Does it require a restart? I also tried changing in Config.xml to 144 Hz, but it didn’t seem to do anything. If that feature is disabled, what does Renoise do, try to output at the highest possible fps, or is it still limited somehow?
It would be helpful if there were a debug view showing the actual fps output by Renoise, to troubleshoot. Any way to enable this?
I’m on Windows 7.
Furthermore, do the developers have any opinions on G-Sync/FreeSync? As in, would there be a point in supporting that, trying to figure out the optimal fps (and thus monitor update frequency) for the least janky pattern scroll possible at the current playback speed/LPB? I’m aware G-Sync only works in full-screen, so Renoise would have to be run in actual full-screen, not windowed full-screen, I suppose.
If you disable the FPS limit in Renoise’s preferences, it will refresh as fast as it can (up to 800-1000 FPS) with the expense of a higher CPU load. The “final” refresh rates depend on the DirectX (or CoreGraphics) drivers though and operation system implementations. Really hard to say what exactly the final FPS rate that you see on your monitor will be because all that stuff goes through a bunch of layers. Such things can only be controlled directly by applications when taking over exclusive control of the video output - running fullscreen - like games do.
What’s more relevant here though, regarding pattern scrolling speed, is the audio buffer size. The bigger the audio buffers, the more “blocky”, more buffered the scrolling will be too, cause we’re showing the actual processed playback positions in the GUI. So if you want even smoother pattern scrolling, try using smaller audio buffer sizes too apart from disabling the FPS limits.
One thing worth mentioning about 144 hz monitors is that you have to address the change in the desktop settings. Otherwise your system still thinks you’re on 60 hz.
