Shuttering and tearing are two problems that many people experience while playing games. This not only kills the interest in the game but makes a game’s frame rate look ugly. Windows 10 promises to reduce this by offering an option to enable variable refresh rate under Graphics Settings. See how to customize the Variable Refresh Rate for games in Windows 10 v1903 and later.
Enable Variable Refresh Rate for games in Windows 10
The main purpose of any graphics card is to provide a buttery-smooth experience for gaming. To do this, a graphics card pushes images to your PC screen as fast as it can. However, most devices monitors refresh their image at a set rate. So, when the graphics card delivers frames outside the set schedule, the display screen shows a portion of one frame and the next frame onscreen simultaneously. This makes the image look distorted as it splits in two (Screen Tearing). This phenomenon only worsens with increasing dynamic frame rate of the game.
Variable Refresh Rate feature is offered to optimize games for displays and graphics cards that support variable refresh rate.
Variable refresh rate feature is disabled by default. So, to enable it, you’ll need to go to Settings > System Settings > Graphics Settings.
Under the ‘Graphics Settings’ section, you’ll find these 2 options
- Variable refresh rate
- Graphics Performance Preference
Locate the slider below the first option and turn it to ‘On’ position.
When enabled, the option will reduce screen tearing and allow a higher frame rate by enabling the option for the games for games that don’t support it natively.
Simply restart your computer and allow the changes to take effect. Please note that for PCs equipped with NVIDIA GeForce graphics, this option will not be visible.
Hope this helps.