1. Always disable VSync on a VRR or GSync compatible monitor
You will never experience ‘tearing’ on a monitor that supports Variable Refresh Rates (VRR) or GSync, so there is no need to turn on VSync. VSync will actually add input-lag since it will wait for a synchronization with your monitor.
Also, Vsync will limit your fps to the refresh rate of your monitor. So if you want immediate responsiveness: disable VSync, especially on a VRR or GSync monitor.
Also, I don’t consider this a tip because it’s so obvious: but always check you’re running at the highest possible refresh rate for your monitor!
2. When gaming on a TV, always use Full Screen in stead of windowed full-screen mode
You should know modern high-end TV’s have amazing image processors. So if you game in a resolution lower than what your television supports (e.g. 1080 or 1440p on a 4K TV), make sure your PC sends out a signal that is scaled down to this resolution.
Don’t let your PC do the resizing of the image, but try to let your TV’s image processor do the heavy lifting. This way, whenever I use ‘fullscreen’ on my LG C9 Oled, the image quality of 1440p games is nearly as good as native 4k. But if I used windowed full-screen, the image looks significantly more blurry.
Of course, DLSS and FSR will help you to ‘upscale to 4K’, but not all games support this and -in my experience- the AI-image processing chip in my high-end TV does an even better job with less artifacts.
3. Enable frame interpolation on your TV to add free FPS
On top of the previous tip, said TV image processors hold another trick up their sleeve. Remember the ‘soap opera effect’ in movies? You may or may not like frame interpolation in your movies, (that’s a different discussion) but when your GPU is hitting just 28 to 35fps in a game you’ll love it. When you enable motion smoothing, which is a kind of ‘low-budget’ DLSS 3 frame interpolation, you’ll experience much smoother frame rates. It works very well, but the only trade-offs are some (barely noticeable) added input-lag and here and there some small image artifacts.
I wouldn’t recommend this for extremely competitive shooters where every millisecond or frame counts, but in most racing games or games like Tomb Raider or Jedi Fallen Order/Survivor, this will add a lot to the experience.
4. Avoid throttling by undervolting your videocard and setting an fps limit
As I discussed in this post before: If you consider e.g. 60 or 90fps ‘enough’, you can set a system-wide fps-limit to your GPU. It will save you energy, heat and noise… and it might even expand the lifespan of your GPU and CPU. (Read more on how to do this…) It’s the same reason Switch games often run at just 30fps when you’re using the console on the go.
Also -especially on laptops- this will avoid your entire PC to throttle due to overheating. Said heat can damage the hardware and your battery.
5. Check your ports and cables to see if you are using maximum bandwidth
The HDMI, Displayport, Thunderbolt and USB-C standards are a complete mess. Perhaps you are using the wrong port or cable for your monitor? Some PC’s have multiple video-outputs, but -just like with classic USB ports- some are more capable than others… So carefully check the specs of your PC and its ports… and those of your monitor! Often monitors have a Displayport (DP) input and a HDMI input, but the capabilities of ‘DP’ are often much better, especially on older monitors.
Also, cables matter! Not all HDMI, USB-C or thunderbolt cables are equal! I remember ‘unlocking’ higher refresh rates on my monitor by just upgrading from an older HDMI cable. Keep this port comparison table at hand to make the best possible matches! Also avoid cheap long cables if possible, they are more prone to image/data loss at high refresh rates. You could have good image quality at 1440p 60hz, but little green specs could appear at 4k 120hz with HDR…
6. Turn off overscan and “pixel shift” on your Oled TV for pixel-perfect mapping
‘Overscan’ is a thing from the past. They used to crop old analog TV signals because they had often carried some ‘dirty edges’, containing encoded data like teletext. But for some reason a lot of TV makers still consider it a good idea to do this for HDMI signals as well… So if your PC, console or set-top box’s screen edges seem to be partially cut off, your image is probably set on ‘overscan’. Change the input to ‘just scan’ or ‘exact’ or any other mode that shows the exact, full resolution image.
Because what happens is that e.g. your 1920 x 1080 image is cropped to 1900×1060, and then stretched out back to 1920×1080. This will end up in blurry pixels.
Also, a lot of modern Oled TVs prevent burn-in by using pixel shift. In this case they’ll move your image by a few pixels from time to time. It’s not very noticeable, but can also cause blurriness or even details on the edge
7. Put your monitor on ‘natural’, ‘filmmaker’ or Cinema mode
The visual quality of AAA videogames has increased exponentially in the last decade. They are often as cinematic as the average blockbuster movie. So if you want to experience these games they way they were meant to be played, make sure your don’t over-saturate the colors, brightness, sharpness and/or contrast settings. Most TV’s or monitors offer a ‘natural’, ‘Filmmaker’ ‘Expert’ or Cinema mode. These modes should put most of the settngs in the right place.
You can always consider to professionally calibrate your monitor as well, but that often requires specific extra hardware.
That’s it for this post! I hope you learned something and got something out of it.
If you have more unexpected tips to increase the visual quality or performance in games, feel free to share them in the comments!
