Gamer’s Graphics & Display Settings Guide
Triple Buffering
In the Graphics Process section of this guide under Step 8, an overview is provided of the way in which the graphics card holds rendered frames in the Frame Buffer. There are actually two buffers on modern graphics cards, the Primary Buffer and the Secondary Buffer, also often called the Front Buffer and the Back Buffer. Both are storage areas on the Video RAM of the graphics card, and the process of using two buffers at one time is called Double Buffering. It was only relatively recently that graphics cards had enough VRAM to provide two buffers at all resolutions, since a single frame of high resolution detailed graphics can take up a great deal of video memory, much less two of them.
The graphics card uses the secondary buffer to compose a new frame while the primary buffer is sending an existing completed frame to the monitor. When these tasks are done, the buffers are essentially ‘flipped’ around so that the recently completed frame in the secondary buffer now becomes the primary buffer ready to send to the monitor, while a new frame begins composing in what was the primary buffer a moment ago. This is repeated over and over and thus the use of two buffers means that the graphics card is not constantly waiting for a single frame buffer to be cleared before getting on with rendering more frames to store there. It’s like putting out a fire using two buckets of water instead of just one — one bucket can be filled with water while the contents of the other is being thrown on the fire, and then they’re switched and the process repeated; much faster than just using a single bucket.
There is still a problem with double buffering, and that is when VSync is enabled, the graphics card can often fill both buffers and then have to stop working on any new frames until the monitor indicates it is ready for a new frame for its next refresh. Only then can the graphics card clear the primary buffer, switch buffers and begin rendering the next frame in the secondary buffer. This waiting is what causes a drop in FPS when VSync is enabled on many systems, and is covered in more detail in the Vertical Synchronization section of this guide.
Wouldn’t it then make sense to have more than two buffers? Why not three buffers for example — that would give the graphics card more room to render frames without having to worry about where to store them before they’re sent to the monitor, even if VSync is enabled. Well there is an option which does just that, called Triple Buffering. And it generally does precisely what the name implies, it creates a third buffer in the VRAM, which we can call the Tertiary buffer.
Enabling Triple Buffering
Some games come with an option to enable Triple Buffering, either from within the in-game settings menus or using advanced tweaks (see my relevant game tweak guide). However if the game you are using does not have any such option, then you can try forcing Triple Buffering on the game using the methods below.
Enabling Triple Buffering for OpenGL-based games such as Doom 3, Quake 4, Prey or Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is very simple — go to your graphics card’s control panel and enable it from there.
However this won’t work for enabling Triple Buffering in Direct3D-based games, which are the bulk of modern games. Instead, you will need to use a utility called Direct3D Overrider (D3DOverrider) which comes with free RivaTuner utility.
Once RivaTuner is installed, go to your \Program Files (x86)\RivaTuner…\Tools\ directory and you’ll see the D3DOverrider directory. You can move this entire directory somewhere else, then uninstall RivaTuner if you don’t want to keep it — Direct3D Overrider is a standalone utility which doesn’t require RivaTuner. Launch the D3DOverrider.exe file and the utility will minimize to your System Tray/Notification Area. To view or alter its settings at any time, click on its icon. The default configuration in D3DOverrider is fine; that is, ‘Application Detection Level’ of Medium, ‘Force Triple Buffering’ On and ‘Force VSync’ On. If you want, you can set the ‘Start with Windows’ option to On as well, to ensure D3DOverrider is always active.
Now whenever you want to run a game with Triple Buffering, simply make sure D3DOverrider is loaded up in the background first before launching the game. As the game is launched you’ll hear a small notification sound indicating that D3DOverrider is working. If VSync is enabled, then Triple Buffering will also be enabled and will work to counter the negative performance impacts of VSync.
Problems with Triple Buffering
It may seem odd that if Triple Buffering resolves the problem of low framerates when VSync is enabled, it doesn’t appear as a standard option in many games, or is not enabled by default. There are three main concerns that appear to be the reason behind this:
1. If it is not properly supported by the game in question, it can cause visual glitches. Just as tearing is a visual glitch caused by information being transferred too fast in the buffers for the monitor to keep up, so too in theory, can triple buffering cause visual anomalies, due to game timing issues for example.
2. It uses additional Video RAM, and hence can result in problems for those with less VRAM onboard their graphics card. This is particularly true for people who also want to use very high resolutions with high quality textures and additional effects like Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering, since this takes up even more VRAM for each frame. Enabling Triple Buffering on a card without sufficient VRAM results in things like additional hitching (slight pauses) when new textures are being swapped into and out of VRAM as you move into new areas of a game. You may even get an overall performance drop due to the extra processing on the graphics card for the extra Tertiary buffer.
3. It can introduce control lag. This manifests itself as a noticeable lag between when you issue a command to your PC and the effects of it being shown on screen. This may be primarily due to the nature of VSync itself and/or some systems being low on Video RAM due to the extra memory overhead of Triple Buffering.
However it appears that most recent graphics cards and most new games will not experience major problems by enabling Triple Buffering. Given the fact that it can help to both remove tearing while also preventing the significant FPS drop encountered when VSync is enabled, it is at least worth trying for yourself to see the results on your system.
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Rivatuner v2.
24 released | eTeknix
Andy Ruffell / 14 years ago
Rivatuner v2.24 has been released today and we have the story for you here and how to download it.
Enjoy
Rivatuner v2.24 released
Rivatuner has been updated towards version 2.24 RivaTuner is a complete powerful tweaking environment, providing you everything you may need to tune NVIDIA GPU based display adapters. The widest driver-level Direct3D / OpenGL and system tuning options, flexible profiling system allowing to make custom settings on per-application basis, both driver-level and low-level hardware access modes, unique diagnostic and real-time hardware monitoring features and exclusive power user oriented tools like built-in registry editor and patch script engine make RivaTuner’s feature set absolutely unmatched. RivaTuner supports all NVIDIA display adapters starting from Riva TNT family up to the latest GeForce series and widest range of NVIDIA drivers starting from the oldest Detonator 2.
08 up to the newest ForceWare drivers family. In addition to complete NVIDIA hardware support, RivaTuner also provides support for display adapters based upon newer ATI graphics processors. All RivaTuner’s features besides driver-level tuning options are also available on supported ATI hardware.
Guru3D.com is Rivatuner’s official homepage, click here to find version / build / changes and FAQ information.
Direct download URL: click hereVersion 2.24:
- Fixed bug in hardware monitoring module causing hardware monitoring based scheduled tasks to be ignored due to improper initialization on RivaTuner startup.
- Fixed erroneous 100MHz memory clock reading on G9x GPU series based display adapters caused by bug in memory clock frequency generator source clock detection code.
- File system redirection is no longer disabled when executing a patch script under 64-bit OS to prevent the issues with missing file system browser dialog when pressing the Continue button.
- Heights of sticky graphs in the group are now updated properly when manually editing fixed graph height settings in the properties of any graph of the group.
- Fixed bug into startup daemon routine of RivaTunerStatisticsServer and D3DOverrider utilities causing these tools to be started and reside in memory without displaying tray icon under certain conditions.
What’s new:
- Added database for ForceWare 182.06.
- Added Catalyst 9.2 drivers family detection.
- Updated PCI DeviceID database for ATI display adapters.
- Improved Logitech G15 keyboard LCD support in hardware monitoring module:
- RivaTuner no longer maps OSD text to Logitech keyboard LCD, now there is separate Show in LCD option in the data source properties window allowing you to define independent output configurations for OSD and LCD.
- Previously available power user oriented MapOSDToLCD regitry entry is no longer in use.
- Previously available power user oriented LCD font size adjustment option is now also available in the data source properties.
- New dynamic LCD re-connection mode ensures proper LCD output when LCD software is being restarted dynamically.
- Added heuristic on-die fan PWM controller detection for G92 based display adapters to provide proper low-level fan control and reference fan duty cycle monitoring for both reference desing and alternate display adapters using the fan connected to alternate on-die PWM controller (e.g. Palit GeForce 9800GT series).
- Improved detection algorithms for core and memory clock frequency generators switching to PCIE bus clock on NV40 and newer NVIDIA graphics processors. The algorithms are still experimental, so both core and memory clock frequency generator bypassing detection can be forcibly disabled via EnableNVPLLBypassingDetection and EnableMPLLBypassingDetection registry entries.
- Updated RivaTunerStatisticsServer v3.1.1 bundled utility. This version is a maintenance release, it doesn’t contain new features besides the fix mentioned above.
- Updated D3DOverrider v2.
0.1 bundled utility. This version is a maintenance release, it doesn’t contain new features besides the fix mentioned above.
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Games are slow — NVIDIA WORLD
- Check that your graphics card meets the video system requirements of the game.
Update the NVIDIA driver. - Using the RivaTuner and GPU-Z utilities, check that the video card with the AGP interface does not work in PCI-compatible mode, the video card with the PCI-Express interface works with at least x16 bus lines. If yes, please refer to the specific FAQ: AGP, PCI-Express.
- Try disabling V-sync rendering using the NVIDIA driver panel or RivaTuner. When V-sync is enabled, the FPS number cannot exceed the display refresh rate. In practice, if the system does not have time to calculate frames synchronously with the vertical scan cycles of the image on the display, the number of FPS is additionally reduced immediately by two or four times. If even after turning off V-sync, the FPS number is still less than the refresh rate of the image on the display, and image errors occur, try turning V-sync back on and using triple buffering. It is preferable to enable triple buffering in the application specific settings. If this option is not provided in the game, then for applications using OpenGL, you can force triple buffering to be enabled in the NVIDIA driver panel.
For applications using Direct3D version 9and older versions, use the D3DOverrider.exe utility from the RivaTuner distribution (in the Tools\D3DOverrider folder with RivaTuner). It should be noted that the inclusion of triple buffering increases the load on the video memory. If the amount of video memory is not enough, there will also be a drop in performance. - If you are using the card’s TV output, check if the «Clone» or «Extend» multi-monitor modes are enabled in the driver’s control panel — these modes reduce performance and may interfere with the normal operation of games. nine0004
- If the video card is based on GeForce FX and newer GPUs, the cause may be protection in the driver. Refer to the dedicated FAQ.
- If you are using a multiprocessor system (multiple processors, multi-core processor, or processor with hyperthreading), you must install the update or SP3 on Windows XP. If you are using an AMD processor, you must also install the processor driver. You can also try to run the game with all game processes running on only one specific processor.
To do this, use the Task Assignment Manager utility. There is also a way to modify the game executable so that the operating system only executes it on one processor. To do this, use the imagecfg utility by running the following command in the command line: imagecfg.exe -u game_file.exe. After this procedure, copy protection, fraud protection (anti-cheat) and future patches may stop working. nine0004
- Notebooks may be experiencing problems with NVIDIA PowerMizer power saving technology. For information on disabling this technology, see the dedicated FAQ question.
- It is recommended to install the latest service pack for the operating system, especially on Windows Vista.
- If you are using a processor that supports 64-bit extensions and a 64-bit version of the Windows XP or Vista operating system, it makes sense to try the 64-bit version of the game. Some games have built-in support for 64-bit systems, you just need to run another executable file or select the appropriate option when installing the game (Chronicles of Riddick, Crysis, Gothic 3), for others there are separately downloadable patches (Unreal Tournament 2004, FarCry, Half-Life 2).
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- Lower the game’s image quality settings. First of all, reduce the degree of post-processing of the image — FSAA and AF. The most resource-intensive settings are usually texture quality, shadow quality, and HDR usage. A significant load on GPUs up to the 8X00 family is created by such effects as Bloom and Motion blur, up to the GTX 200 — Global Illumination and Ambient Occlusion (the latter can be enabled for some games in the driver control panel, «Backlight Shading»). nine0004
- If the game uses the PhysX physics acceleration technology, try disabling this technology in the game. The reason may be the incorrect use of technology by the game, or the lack of processing power of the GPU for the simultaneous calculation of graphics and physics.
64-bitChronicles of RiddickCrysisFarCryGothicHalf-LifeUnrealGamesFPSFSAAHDROpenGLPhysXPowerMizerVsyncautobrakedrivercontrol panelantialiasingWindows XPVistaAGPCPUPCI ExpressclonenotebooksAMDGPU-ZRivaTuner
- Disabling PowerMizer power saving
- Problems in Splinter Cell: Double Agent
- Problems in World of Warcraft
- Problems in FarCry
- Full screen anti-aliasing (FSAA) settings in the driver are not applied to the game display
- When running 3D-applications and
- Problems in StarCraft II
- Flickering and freezes in Unreal 2, Unreal Tournament 2004 and games based on their engine
- Problems in Crysis
- Problems with compatibility of some chipsets with video cards based on NVIDIA
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