I'm trying to understand why motion on my system feels unusually unsmooth whenever the frame rate falls below roughly 100–110 FPS. My setup is a Gigabyte M27Q running at 1440p and 170 Hz, an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, an i5-14400F, and 32GB of DDR5-6000 memory. G-SYNC Compatible and NVIDIA Reflex are enabled.
At around 150–160 FPS, motion looks very smooth. Around 120 FPS it is generally fine, but below 110 FPS I start noticing a lack of fluidity. At 100 FPS it is clearly worse, and 80–90 FPS can feel stuttery even when the frame-rate counter appears stable. I understand that lower FPS means longer frame times, so I'm not expecting 80 FPS to look identical to 170 FPS. What seems unusual is that it feels like micro-stutter rather than simply reduced smoothness.
This happens in several games, so it does not seem limited to one title. I have tried G-SYNC with NVIDIA Control Panel V-SYNC enabled and in-game V-SYNC disabled, as well as G-SYNC with V-SYNC off, different frame-rate caps, unlimited FPS, and various Reflex and low-latency settings. NVIDIA Control Panel V-SYNC seems to add input latency, and it does not fully resolve the issue at 80–100 FPS.
Frame Generation makes a dramatic difference in some games. For example, in War Dogs, the game can run near 120 FPS but drop to around 80 FPS during combat, where it feels noticeably rough. Enabling Frame Generation makes the motion feel much smoother. This has made me wonder whether the issue could involve frame pacing, monitor response behavior, or motion clarity rather than just the reported FPS.
GPU usage is often around 99%, while CPU usage is generally 50–60%, so I'm not sure whether this is related to a CPU bottleneck, GPU saturation, or my G-SYNC and frame-cap settings. Could monitor overdrive, frame-time consistency, or a different synchronization setup be responsible?
3 Answers
The biggest issue may be the large swings between 120 FPS and 80 FPS. Even if the average or displayed FPS looks good, changing frame times during combat can feel much worse than playing at a consistent lower cap. Try setting a cap that the system can maintain reliably, such as 80 or 90 FPS, and compare that with an uncapped 120-to-80 range.
With G-SYNC, a common setup is to enable G-SYNC, enable V-SYNC in the driver, disable in-game V-SYNC, and cap the game a few frames below the monitor’s maximum refresh rate. At 170 Hz, that would be around 162–165 FPS. If you prefer to avoid Reflex, use an in-game limiter when available, or RTSS as a fallback. Reflex can improve latency, but in some games it may reduce minimum FPS when the GPU is already heavily loaded.
Since the GPU is frequently at 99%, lowering a few demanding settings or capping the frame rate so the GPU has some headroom may improve frame-time consistency and latency. Frame Generation can also make motion appear smoother because it inserts additional displayed frames, although it does not improve the game’s underlying input response and may not be ideal for competitive play.
Lower FPS will inherently look less smooth than higher FPS, and Frame Generation makes the difference especially obvious because it increases the number of displayed frames. However, stable frame pacing still matters: a consistent 90 FPS should generally feel better than a game fluctuating between 120 and 80 FPS. Also make sure the game is running in a mode where G-SYNC applies reliably, since some borderless or windowed configurations can behave differently depending on the driver settings.
It may be worth testing the monitor’s overdrive setting. Some overdrive modes can overshoot or produce inverse ghosting when the refresh rate changes, which may make lower-FPS motion look worse. Try the monitor’s normal or disabled overdrive mode and compare it directly with the faster settings. Yes, it is safe to disable for testing; the main difference is that pixel response may be slower, not that it will damage anything.
I wasn’t sure whether disabling overdrive was okay, so I’ll compare the normal and disabled modes at the same frame rates.
That makes sense. I may be reacting more to the sudden 120-to-80 drops than to 80 FPS itself. I’ll test a stable 80 or 90 FPS cap and check whether GPU headroom improves the frame pacing.