About what vertical synchronization is and how it affects the performance of the graphics subsystem, it has been discussed more than once. You can even say that the topic is “bearded”, because it arose even at the time of the appearance of the first three-dimensional accelerators, when users who were eager for speed began to fight for every extra frame per second.
Not a dozen years have passed since then, but the question of how vertical synchronization can be turned off in games still excites the minds of many fans of 3D computer applications. This is because over the years of the evolution of the video subsystem, no global changes in the principle of image construction have taken place: the same frames, triangles, even the bits of the external color space are the same.
What is vertical synchronization? To understand this issue, it makes sense to recall the basics of the graphic component. As you know, in order to get a complete image on the screen, the video card gives out a whole series of static pictures - frames. To create the illusion of movement of any elements, some of them are changed. Thanks to their quick change, it seems that the picture is solid and, if changes are made, there are movements on the screen. It is much easier to understand what has been said if we turn to the analogy with a children's game, when similar drawings are created on the pages of a notebook, and with subsequent quick flipping it seems that the picture is “coming to life”.
Although the advent of liquid crystal (LCD) monitors has made adjustments to the construction of the image, the principle itself has remained unchanged. The speed with which a monitor can output the above-mentioned static pictures is called the frame rate. However, it is impossible to understand what vertical synchronization is without clarifying one more point.
The monitor circuitry merely displays what the graphics card sends to the screen. How much elementary static pictures can be changed per unit of time depends on its performance (as a rule, they mean a second).
Video processors of past generations did not differ in unprecedented speed, but monitors, on the contrary, tried to make them so that their scan was not less than 85 hertz (frames per second). As a result, the number of pictures transmitted by the video adapter to the monitor was less than the last one could display. But now the situation has changed. The frequency in LCD monitors rarely exceeds 60 Hertz (with the exception of devices that support 3D hardware), and video cards when working with many applications now form more frames. Vertical synchronization is the ability of the driver to coordinate two frame frequencies between each other by reducing the number of pictures that the card gives to the monitor. This allows you to get smoothness when displaying dynamic scenes. On the other hand, vertical synchronization ati (NVidia, Intel) is a kind of puts that do not allow the card to work in maximum performance mode.
You can control the synchronization in the settings of the video adapter driver. Its activation, prohibition or automatic mode is allowed, selected in accordance with the requests of the application itself.