The PS5 Variable Refresh Rate in the test: a revelation on some games, a disappointment on others

Tuesday April 26, 2022 marked the end of a year and a half of waiting for the lucky owners of both a PlayStation 5 and a state-of-the-art HDMI 2.1 display. That day, Sony’s next-gen console finally received an update that gives it support for Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) screens, which the manufacturer promised before launch. of the machine in November 2020.

As a reminder, VRR designates the possibility for the display to synchronize its refresh rate in real time with the frame rate produced by the graphics processor of the gaming machine – within the limit of a certain range. Advantage of the process: to be able to leave the frame rate of the game fluctuate freely within said range, without this ever resulting in jerks (display without VRR with vertical synchronization) or tearing of the image (without vertical synchronization). In the endthis therefore makes it possible to smooth out the slowdowns of a game that would not be able to hold its sound perfectly. frame rate target, or simply unlock the frame rate to let the console output as many frames per second as it can at all times, resulting in on-screen animation that is as smooth as physically possible.

To do this, the PS5 uses the HDMI VRR standard which is part of the HDMI 2.1 specification. To take advantage of this, it is therefore obviously necessary to connect the console to a television that also expressly supports HDMI VRR. This is the case for most screens claiming to be HDMI 2.1 compatible, but not all; the greatest caution is therefore required if you wish to equip yourself. TV reviews from Digital are of course at your service to inform you about the presence or not of this support on the model that interests you.

The standard bearers Spiderman and Ratchet & Clank at 90 fps

The PS5 is not the first game console compatible with VRR: its great rivals, the Xbox Series X and S, have been since their first day of availability… and to be honest, even the Xbox One X and S had been made compatible in 2018. Now that the two adversaries can finally be put face to face, there is a fundamental difference in philosophy. On the Xbox side, the VRR is implemented as a system functionality injected into the graphics drivers of the machine, and is therefore activated in a totally transparent way for the games (therefore, for all titles without any exception). Conversely, the PS5 invites developers to integrate native support for VRR into their games. This approach has its advantage, because it allows developers who wish to make this effort to design new operating modes and new optimizations specifically exploiting the possibilities offered by the VRR.

Among the first wave of “officially” compatible games, a magnificent demonstration of the said possibilities is offered by the always pioneering studio Insomniac Games. Of all three games already released by the studio on PS5 (Spider-Man Remastered, Spider-Man Miles Morales and Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart), as soon as the console is connected to a 120 Hz VRR screen, the frame rate is unlocked to result in a truly transfigured experience compared to what you get on a fixed refresh 60Hz display.

The “fidelity” display modes, in almost native 4K with reflections in raytracing, are released from their lock at 30 fps and now gravitate around 45.50 fps – with even a few spikes teasing 60 fps. As for the “Performance” modes, they go from 60 fps to an average approaching 90 fps. The result on the screen is truly prodigious in Ratchet & Clank in particular: the game is still today one of the most beautiful graphic demos of the PS5, and it is now also one of the best ambassadors of the comfort offered by very high frame rates.

However, the fact is that at present, the Insomniac case is an exception; the other available implementations are very conventional. They are no less appreciable for all that. Especially in 120 fps modes of games like call of duty vanguard Where Devil May Cry 5 Special Editionactivating the VRR makes the relatively frequent drops to 100 or even 90 fps almost imperceptible in the heat of the moment.

“Incompatible” games are still compatible, but…

What about games without formal VRR support? It is unfortunately here that the small frustrations begin to emerge. Admittedly, the PS5 has the decency to allow the user to force the activation of the VRR on these games, but the effect, although undeniably beneficial, does not quite reach the level hoped for.

First, the VRR range of the PS5 is content with a lower limit at 48 Hz (compared to 40 Hz on Xbox), which means that on games whose frame rate is unlocked, but does not consistently stay above 48 fps, the VRR experiences dropouts. The solution to this could have been the LFC (Low Framerate Compensation) technique, but unfortunately the console does not apply this technique at the system level. And if the Insomniac games manage to correctly display frame rates in VRR below this limit, it is because the studio’s engineers, decidedly zealous, have taken the trouble to develop their “in-house” recipe for LFC. A task that not all developers can afford to accomplish, far from it.

Added to this is still a recurring problem on non-patched games of poor synchronization between the simulation of the game world and the instants of rendering of the images by the GPU, which means that there is always a small irregularity in the animation during the falls of frame rate, and therefore small jerks – certainly much less violent than what we would see without VRR, but still present. This is what makes that on a title like the essential Elden Ringwhose significant performance concerns we know, the VRR with PS5 sauce is not enough to completely clean up the gaming experience. And it is therefore the Xbox Series X version of the game on VRR screen which remains to this day our favorite way to practice console gaming new gen.