Acer Nitro 5 - Nvidia Control Panel: GTX 1050 to HDMI, still no fast sync, DSR, etc

anarcheril

So I've come to learn that the laptop gaming market is a complete ***** farce, and I really hope I can save any value I thought I was getting from this hardware and not just a gimped piece of *****. Long story short, I love being able to hit 100fps in Doom 2016 only to either have abysmal 2 frame tearing without vsync (don't even ask me how optimus manages to ***** up sending the frame buffer to the iGPU that bad) or with vsync there is so clearly an extra delay from the iGPU holding the frame, for reference I have a 60hz side monitor on my desktop rig where not only with vsync off is tearing barely noticable for reference. 

So here is my problem after several hours of research, if on my nVidia control panel, and windows 10 display settings, when I plug in an HDMI monitor it says that display is being sent from the 1050 and not the my iGPU (HD 630), and yet I still have no DSR options, no fast sync option, and yes I even disabled my laptop monitor so there was only HDMI output through the the dGPU.

How the ***** do I fix this?!!

I've collectively spent 20 hours now, undervolting and tuning my CPU, and overclocking and heat testing the GPU and full setup, only to get a ~15% performance increase that is immediately ***** all over by either the frame delay or vertical tearing on nVidia optimus. I've come to accept that I simply will not be able to game comparable at all despite blowing past 60fps, to which vsync would normally be acceptable, if it weren't doubling an already ~50ms input delay. So how do I get this basic feature set of the 10xx back when I'm at least at home using an external display?

anarcheril

I don't get it, are they expecting you to come from last generation console gaming. Anyone who has built a custom desktop before should be livid nVidia optimus is not advertised on every page, on every box the product exists. "This is a gimped piece of *****, we're missing half the features of 10xx+ cards and enjoy looking at nice frame numbers, because we know if you looked at the actual frametime delay you'd be playing on a ***** nintendo switch before the next frame hit the iGPU buffer"

anarcheril

Alright after further experimentation, as I somewhat expected, there is some sort of derp in the implementation here. As currently if I play Doom 2016 in windowed mode at 1920x1080 without Vsync, I will not get tearing and the frame delay is effectively on par with what I would expect from 60hz and a decently fast TV response time. If I go into borderless or fullscreen, tearing galore, especially noticeable when the game introduces a locked rate (DOOM during the first person 60fps cutscenes), or I can turn on Vsync and get what legitimately feels close to 50ms input delay overall. The same is true for Crysis 1.

So currently the work around is to play with Vsync off in windowed (not borderless) mode, if I'm being completely honest there might be some tearing, but I couldn't notice it and it definitely was not happening during the cutscenes in DOOM or Crysis.

Hopefully this can help inform someone at Asus to hopefully change optimus integration for borderless fullscreen. If I get low input delay time and effectively no tearing, what the hell is going on where I lose visual quality and/or performance when I want to play my games without the start menu at the bottom of the screen?

andylb

@anarcheril said Hopefully this can help inform someone at Asus to hopefully change optimus integration for borderless fullscreen. If I get low input delay time and effectively no tearing, what the hell is going on where I lose visual quality and/or performance when I want to play my games without the start menu at the bottom of the screen

You obviously have a lot of in depth knowledge on this subject. This however does seem more of a Nvidia and/or a game specific problem rather than an Acer problem, does your games support site have any reference to these issues? By the way this is the Acer website not Asus lol

andylb

It truly does seem game specific, I just Googled the problem and there are tons of hits from users using many different laptops
https://www.google.com/search?q=doom+2016+problems+with+borderless+fullscreen&oq=doom+2016+problems+with+borderless+fullscreen&aqs=chrome..69i57.18594j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

anarcheril

andylb said:

@anarcheril said Hopefully this can help inform someone at Asus to hopefully change optimus integration for borderless fullscreen. If I get low input delay time and effectively no tearing, what the hell is going on where I lose visual quality and/or performance when I want to play my games without the start menu at the bottom of the screen

You obviously have a lot of in depth knowledge on this subject. This however does seem more of a Nvidia and/or a game specific problem rather than an Acer problem, does your games support site have any reference to these issues? By the way this is the Acer website not Asus lol

Lol yeah I was rage derping out, and in my rage of all the features missing from the 10xx+ series cards with Optimus integration had me so angry I, A) Forgot to see what features were still there and That windows 10 has a forced triple buffer vsync, hence the much reduced input delay AND no tearing I was seeing and describing.

THE FIX
Long story short, for fullscreen use in game vsync and enable triple buffering on the nVidia control panel, with in game setting vSync.

FUTURE GAMING LAPTOP PURCHASERS
And for those looking to get ANY gaming laptop from here on out, make sure there is a MUX switch to get direct access to the GPU. This is so clearly an oversight in laptop manufacturing and production I can hardly believe nVidia was so zealous in their feature set advertising over the past several years only to find hundreds of ghost threads of people confused why their expensive 10xx cards are on a feature set from the 2000's simply because they bought a laptop.

Still looking into...
How maximum pre-rendered frames and quick draw for directX and openGL are set on the optimus version of nVidia control panel.

andylb

Glad you got a handle on it mate, thanks for the update