So you’re wondering whether you should keep your Radeon Enhanced Sync on or off. You face lag when you turn it off and you face screen tearing when you turn it on, the real reason for why it happens is because of the FPS which we’ll get to later on in this post.
I’ll tell you whether you should keep enhanced sync on or off and I’ll also tell you the best option. But first,
What Exactly Is AMD Radeon Enhanced Sync?
We have the traditional V-sync in games, short for “Vertical Synchronization”, a technology that effectively matches your framerate with the monitors’ refresh rate , reducing screen tearing, audio and video lag as a result. AMD Enhanced Sync is an advanced alternative to V-sync and focuses primarily on reducing lag and screen tearing in games.
Here’s The Catch
The catch is that, although Enhanced Sync is an incredible technology, it only effectively works on monitors with high refresh rates, and your framerate should be consistently higher than your refresh in order for enhanced sync to work, otherwise it’ll just make things worse.
So, Should You Keep Enhanced Sync On or Off?
Here’s Why You Should Keep Enhanced Sync Turned On:
Vsync is good, yes but it doesn’t perform up to the mark sometimes and still doesn’t completely eliminate the micro stutters and screen tearing, here’s where enhanced sync works it’s charm, it eliminates the last of the remaining stutters and makes your gameplay even smoother.
If we carefully look at the graph above, it shows us that Enhanced Sync effectively eliminates the gaps and micro stutters that V-sync fails to eliminate, resulting in a smooth transition with little to no screen tearing and optimized for maximum responsiveness.
Here’s Why You Should Keep Enhanced Sync Turned Off:
Enhanced sync only works properly on high end monitors and gaming setups, turning it on low performing PCs will defeat it’s purpose and give you a very unpleasant experience, resulting in an even choppier display and more stutters.
Although AMD has said that “enhanced sync will work at virtually any framerate“, it will, but in order to enjoy enhanced sync properly, you need to be getting a high framerate ~70-80 and keep it above your monitors refresh rate.
Otherwise it just won’t work.
So What Should You Do?
If you’ve got a high end computer and a high end monitor then you should use Enhanced Sync and not worry about anything, however, if you have a low end computer then listen carefully:
Do You Know What AMD FreeSync Is?
AMD FreeSync is a technology introduced by AMD to control screen tearing and stuttering, just like Vsync, but it’s 100x better than Vsync but not better than Enhanced Sync, kinda in between both of them, so if you’re a budget PC gamer with a Freesync compatible display then the best setting would be to use AMD FreeSync along with Vsync and you’ll get a killer combo that will eliminate screen tearing.
Wrap Up
In simple words, if you’ve got a high end monitor and PC with consistently higher FPS than the monitors’ refresh rate, then you can use Enhanced Sync, otherwise, you should use FreeSync paired with Vsync.
