I’m in the market for a new monitor and was looking at some of the ones with G-sync. I have found a few older posts here and there that seem to indicate that Sims 3 does not play well with G-sync. That’s the only game I play on this desktop so why spend the extra money if I am just going to have to turn G-sync off! I would appreciate any advice.

PS: I have a nice 27 inch monitor, but it won’t connect to my new graphics card which only has the HDMI connection. My old monitor doesn’t have that for some reason. it’s only a few years old, but it only has the connector with all the prongs.

There's no reason why G-Sync shouldn't work with Sims 3. It might not be very helpful though.

The way G-Sync works is, the monitor waits to receive the entire frame from the graphics card before displaying it. This is opposed to vertical sync, where the GPU waits until it's rendered the entire frame to send it to the monitor (in addition to syncing the rate at which it produces these frames to the monitor's refresh rate). So the G-Sync and v-sync accomplish the same goal—preventing the issues that occur when the monitor displays parts of two different frames—from the opposite ends of the pipeline.

Point is, there's no reason NOT to get a G-Sync monitor, but there's also no particular reason you need it. The feature is useful mostly when people want to run a game at its max framerate rather than capping fps, which in turn is only (marginally) useful for games that reward quick reaction times.

As a side note, what graphics card do you currently have? I was under the impression that all the recent models supported both DisplayPort and HDMI, so it's worth double-checking all of the GPU's ports, of which there may be four or five, depending on the model.

puzzlezaddict, Thanks for all your always valuable help. Now I’m curious. With G-sync, do you not even need V-sync? Thus abolishing the need to cap fps?

I upgraded my old system to an RTX 3050 because that was the latest GPU that fit with my old system (according to a friend). And I did it myself believe it or not! (With help from some YouTube videos and a techie friend on speed dial) It only has 4 slots on the back, an HDMI and 3 display ports. It was this one:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QB28Y5M?ps ... ct_details

I’ve not noticed a huge difference with Sims, but my editing software now runs smooth as butter.

Anyway, my old monitor only has DVI, which is what I used with my old graphics card, and vga. I got a vga to hdmi adapter but it didn’t work. The monitor wasn’t recognized. If a new Gsync monitor isn’t going to make a substantial difference in Sims 3 graphics or speed, maybe I can find a dvi to display port adapter that would work.

G-sync won't cap the fps at the GPU level. What it does is force the monitor to hold the data it receives until it's ready to display the entire next frame, and then display only that frame. So the graphics card can send as many frames as it can render to the monitor, and the monitor will wait until it can fully display a frame rather than refreshing in stages.

The TL;DR is that if you want to cap the workload on your GPU, which I'm guessing you do, you need to use v-sync or an fps limiter of some sort. G-sync alone won't do it. And since you'll be using one of those tools, G-sync becomes redundant.

I will say that there are some very nice monitors that don't have G-sync that might make your game look a lot better than it does now, depending on your current model. But it's not necessary to buy one, and perhaps your current monitor already looks good enough.

I don't know if I'm explaining this well, so in case you want the long version:

Imagine a monitor refreshing from top to bottom (at a very fast rate). With no special settings, it'll put the very newest data on the screen at the moment that part of the screen refreshes. So maybe when it starts refreshing at the top of the screen, the newest frame is x, but by the time it gets to the bottom, the newest frame is x + 1 or even x + 2, because the GPU is cranking out frames faster than the monitor can keep up with. So at certain moments, the screen can be showing parts of two or more distinct frames.

This is a problem when fps is higher or lower than the monitor's refresh rate, because either way, the next frame can arrive as the monitor is refreshing, causing the monitor to display part of that frame along with part of the previous one. At the low end, the monitor might display part of the same frame for two refresh cycles because the new one isn't ready yet, then display part of the newer one once it arrives. Either way, you get screen tearing if you look closely enough, that is if anything is moving.

G-sync monitors can actually change their refresh rate at the low end as well, so if a game is running at 42 fps, you see all 42 frames as they're ready, minus a very small delay.

V-sync says to the GPU, you can only render frames at the maximum rate the monitor can display, then send them on, so the monitor always has one frame to display. G-sync means the monitor doesn't care what the GPU is doing, it picks the newest frame available at the moment it's ready to start refreshing and displays that, even if a newer frame comes in as it's still refreshing. G-sync is therefore mostly about aesthetics (no screen tearing) and how much lag exists between a frame being ready and the monitor displaying it.

puzzlezaddict, Thanks for explaining in a way I can understand. It seems so simple once you explain it.

This is my current monitor: Amazon.com: Acer G6 G276HL Gbd 27-Inch Full HD Widescreen LCD Monitor (1920 x 1080) (VGA & DVI Ports) : Electronics
If you have some examples of monitors that would make my game look better I'm all for that!

Also as a side note, I installed a 1 TB SSD into my desktop tonight. I thought of you and thought you would be proud of me!! Before this is over with I WILL be able to put together my own system hehe

That's a reasonably good monitor, but I think you might like the look of an IPS screen with a higher resolution and a high refresh rate. Many people can't tell the difference between 60 or 75 Hz and higher, but many can, and for us, everything just feels smoother, both in gaming and in everyday use. QHD (2560x1440) is the sweet spot here; your current GPU would struggle at 4k even at 60 Hz. But you likely could play at QHD with a (mostly) higher refresh rate, aside from when Sims 3 is being extra difficult.

So in theory, the specs you'd want to look for in a new monitor are:

• IPS panel: the best-quality color range and brightness (yours is VA, which is still pretty good)
• 2560x1440 resolution (yours is 1920x1080)
• high refresh rate (at least 120 Hz; above 165 is mostly a waste of money)

However, in practice, you might not get as much benefit out of an upgrade, particularly with the refresh rate if you're using a lot of custom content that makes the game more demanding. On that note, you could monitor fps over a play session, either formally (like with MSI Afterburner) or just by having the counter on-screen and keeping an eye on it. You could also tell the GPU to render the game at a higher resolution: the setting is in the Nvidia Control Panel and is called DSR. (Let me know if you'd like to test and need a walkthrough.) That would give you an idea of how the graphics card handles that higher load before you spend any money on a new monitor.

The other suggestion I have is to actually go to a physical store and look at monitors. For example, Best Buy always has floor models playing colorful videos. If you ask to see a monitor with the above specs (and you have the tech make sure it's actually running at above 60 fps), you can get a sense of how much of an improvement you'd actually see under ideal conditions. For the refresh rate, the easiest test is to drag a File Explorer window around the screen at 60 fps and at 144 or so and see whether you notice a difference. I definitely do, and I also notice when in-game fps drops into the 70-80 range, so I'm happy to have a 144 Hz monitor. But that's me, not you.

It might be that you put off this upgrade until you have your next computer, whenever that is. It just depends on whether you perceive an improvement with a higher-spec screen, and that's entirely subjective.

A few examples, in case you're curious what's out there:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-27 ... Id=6471364
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... _wqhd.html
https://www.amazon.com/LG-27GL83A-B-Ult ... B07YGZL8XF
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ZeeGee post_id=92462 time=1672106867 user_id=13415 wrote: Also as a side note, I installed a 1 TB SSD into my desktop tonight. I thought of you and thought you would be proud of me!! Before this is over with I WILL be able to put together my own system hehe

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I'm definitely proud of you, but I'm not surprised at all. (I always believed in you.) It sounds like you're already halfway there in terms of being able to build your own system. Whenever you're ready to do that, you know where to find me.

puzzlezaddict, Sorry it took so long to answer. Life got crazy.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I tried changing the DSR to 2560x1440 in the Nvidia Control Panel, which changed the smoothness to 33%. I'll test it out and see how it works. And I'll swing by Best Buy and look at the monitors there, though I really like that Samsung you linked. I'm not sure if I'm eagle-eyed enough to notice the different but I sure can tell a difference between my current monitor (which is now hooked up with a DVI to display port cord, duh) and my laptop monitor which has a 300 hz refresh rate. I always thought it was because the screen was smaller and I just couldn't see it as well.

Thanks for your confidence. I can't BELIEVE how much I've learned about computers just trying to keep my Sims 3 game running!

(igazor if you see this please give us the kiss cheek emoticon!)

ZeeGee post_id=92566 time=1672539923 user_id=13415 wrote: I can't BELIEVE how much I've learned about computers just trying to keep my Sims 3 game running!

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I know what you mean. Some people may not be aware, but I'll never forget that Windows itself was basically a foreign concept to me, and a completely unwelcome one at that, until igazor started whispering Bootcamp in my ear. And in a few short years I went from holding my nose for the sake of running Sims 3 reasonably well to geeking out over hardware and sort of knowing how to troubleshoot system issues. I wouldn't have even started down that path if the Mac version hadn't been so problematic.

And don't worry about the late reply; it never bothers me. I'll be around whenever you have more questions.