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r/GeForceNOW•
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RTX3080 60FPS CAP in select games on 120fps stream (unlimited FPS, VSYNC off) + additional info

Discussion

Before I go into detail let's establish something. Firstly, RTX3080 GFN is amazing and the best you can have in cloud for the money. Secondly, Nvidia has given GFN users some great windows client built-in features and tools. One of it monitor network and stream performance, and most people here I would assume are aware of CTRL+ALT+F6 overlay on PC app. However, I am going to refer to another built-in metrics overlay CTRL+ALT+F7 for which I never found a FAQ to be honest.

As an example, to test the validity of information given in CTRL+ALT+F7 I am using Cyberpunk 2077 (video below), but it could have been any other game that is able to stream at 120FPS and allows user control over max FPS. For screenshots here I'm using Splitgate as another game that works really well and streams at 120fps. This can try anyone even on priority or free tier (though the graph will look a bit different, more on that later).

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Splitgate 120fps streaming at 120fps in game - works as intended - 8.3ms frame time

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Splitgate 60fps in-game cap over 120fps stream - 16.6ms frame time

Doesn't it remind you anything by this point?

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Splitgate 30fps cap over 120fps stream - 33ms frame time

Or if you wondered how 60FPS stream looks like with 60FPS cap in comparison

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Splitgate 60fps in-game on 60fps stream - 16ms frame time

Tl;dr the length of the white horizontal row (X-axis) represents frame times, where each segment (vertical division by black bars) is 16ms. Each white row vertically (Y-axis), or lack thereof, represents frame delivery/rendering/whatever. e.g if you're not getting solid 60fps and have stutters in a game it will have a lot of gaps on Y-axis and spikes in length on X-axis.

This is something that I used to see that, yes indeed, CP2077 was capped at 45fps (or rather eyeball that its around 45fps) even with GoG version of the game that does not have FPS overlay, by the same logic the white row was taking up 1.5 segments on X-axis and there were gaps vertically (much more so with frequent stutters on founders tier).

Below is the GFN built-in capture at 120FPS on a game that is not capped on RTX3080, the game and stream work as intended. To see 120fps you'd have to download it, have a high refresh monitor and use something like VLC to open the video. I'm sorry that youtube doesn't support 120fps, I really am. Or you can already trust the validity of GFN built-in tool and my interpretation based on the above, up to you. All video captures are done with GFN's built-in "ctrl+9" that, to my surprise, supports 120fps. One disadvantage of that is that it will not capture overlays such as ctrl+alt+f6 or ctrl+n. Ctrl+alt+f7 is captured just all right as you'd see later.

CP2077 at 120fps + showing CTRL+ALT+F7 in action.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cfUV7FyMNtWva8ZXK1t7AfzggRSDn3zl/view?usp=sharing

and Apex Legends working as it should at 120fps

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KaBR_Q6DRMWSgWTEW05HHPfe-dBzmWcq/view?usp=sharing

​

Now we can finally move to the post headline - some games, despite running on 120fps GFN stream setting on high refresh monitor, despite showing 120FPS (or even more) in Steam FPS overlay, in reality, would stream only at 60 frames. This results in confusion and argument even within our ranks - GFN users, hence I am very worried that my and other people reports within GFN app might be ignored by GFN staff, written off as a user's fault (internet, settings, vsync on/off, gfn app vsync on/off, in game fullscreen with borderless, in-game fps set to 60 etc)

I've posted links to 120FPS videos above so it would be clear that my local setup, internet, monitor are working as GFN intended, and to avoid any possible suggestions to turn on/off vsync in game/client or to get better internet. Also GFN settings https://imgur.com/a/3oLb3FH

One of previously mentioned by other user Yooka game ss of ctrl+alt+f6 and ctrl+n - https://imgur.com/a/Pd6wI8d

Video capture (120fps in GFN settings) that happens to be limited to 60fps

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IDkGCf1sjvJ3X-60nTykTEEvyBryrZy7/view?usp=sharing

Another example and the same case of 60fps cap - No Man's Sky https://imgur.com/a/I0lsyQ2

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aBznIhGxCJJDS1YgNEVfeBNVQUsPFc8b/view?usp=sharing

Next one is Elyon (which i didnt even want to post at this point but here you go) - https://imgur.com/a/g6EGvGh

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18z711wWb5d7IFL3QvGFsQJUURdgtgF_2/view?usp=sharing

Those games have the most confusing combination. User has access to vsync option and fps option in game, sees possibly over 120fps in Steam overlay, sees that 120FPS either in ctrl+alt+f6 or ctrl+N but gets what he gets. And bear in mind I've only tested a handful of games, so how many more could have the same issue?

Personally, I think this could be an easy fix for GFN engineers if only they had these reports and it wouldn't be dismissed by the user base.

An honorable mention goes to games that do not have in game vsync or fps toggles and rely on monitor HZ rate. So, Black Desert Online is limited to 60fps as well, as it probably relies on GFN's virtual display which is set at 60hz. Something weird is again with PoE that would be limited to 60fps in the same fashion as Yooka, Elyon, NMS but would stream 120fps once you switch to DX11. Dead by daylight on EGS was 60fps as well.

Simply put, you cannot rely on CTRL+N 120FPS badge in 100%. But I also get why people might not be noticing it, the benefit of LOCAL input lag is still there and it's a drastic difference compared to premium/free tier.

This post was made in hopes it will be acknowledged by Nvidia and fixed. All tests done on EU Central RTX Ready server if that matters.

If any links are broken or anything, let me know so I can fix it.

If you are noticing the same issue in a game I have not mentioned/tested or by any chance found a way to fix it on user's end, let me know below.

Thanks.

Posted Dec 8, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

14233
IAskGameQuestions•

im upvoting because it looks like this was a lot of work

totally not reading all that though champ lol

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mmmiloRTX 3080 •

This is great, thanks for the post.

Hoping for a lot of visibility so it gets attention.

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step_back_OPRTX 3080 •

For those who cared enough to read or even download the captures - VLC has an option to go frame by frame with "E" key. Apex capture would move every frame, NMS and other every second. Meaning? Yes...

Similar is used to see 30fps on 60fps Youtube video, you'd go ">" to move forward by 1 frame. But obviously Youtube is not an option for 120fps video showcase.

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GoldenSun3DS•

Thanks for putting some more coverage on this.

DaVinci Resolve video editor can be used to convert 120FPS video to half speed 60FPS. This results in 120FPS video playback in YouTube when selecting 2X speed. People with 60hz screens can just watch at normal speed.

You just import the video file into DaVinci, edit it to half speed and the resulting video will be 60FPS half speed. It can't output 120FPS video as far as I can tell, but it'll accept 120FPS source videos without converting to 60FPS and then resulting in 30FPS half speed like some other editors.

Do you want me to do it and send you the finished file to upload to YouTube? It'll be slower because my CPU overclock is set to 4.5GHz 8 Cores with SMT disabled (instead of 16 Cores 4.1GHz SMT enabled) and I can't access the BIOS right now.

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step_back_OPRTX 3080 •

Do you want me to do it and send you the finished file to upload to YouTube?

Do you think that would be necessary? I can update this post and add the link to your previous reddit post and YouTube link you have shared there. I think it should be enough at this point. This bug reporting was already made harder than it should have been.

This results in 120FPS video playback in YouTube when selecting 2X speed

It's a different approach and it worked for me last time I checked your video. It might be the only way to show people with 60hz screen what's happening, plus it's more accessible than locally downloading raw files from drive.

Thanks for your inputs by the way, I'm hoping GFN will address it.

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jharleRTX 3080 •

VLC

So what you're saying here, is that the rate of frames being sent to the streaming engine is not really 120, so the streaming engine must be duplicating each frame that is sent. So when checking the video frame-by-frame in VLC - each frame will change what is displayed with only "every other" frame, rather than each frame. Do I have that right?

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jharleRTX 3080 •

I think I can answer my own question here...it is not an even "frame-by-frame" duplication; the solid white graph lines are each "real" frame, and each grey gap is a dup...and those don't occur uniformly - sometimes there can be a couple of "real frames" in a row, and likewise a couple of "duped frames" in a row.

You've given us something we can sink our teeth into, and I appreciate that.

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intransient•

Excellent work. I worry that GFN will simply say “we promised a 120fps stream, not 120fps in-game”. And in fairness, (as you said) 120fps stream is great for latency, no matter what the game is framing at. Could be better though.

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jrwagh333Founder•

I agree with this post. I'm a big fan of Stadia, but this is how Stadia got out of it "60 FPS stream"

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step_back_OPRTX 3080 •

It's not even like that, cause these games should be maxing out on 120fps stream as other do just fine. Steam overlay shows 120fps to 450fps, so performance is not an issue. It has to be a bug that somehow prevents encoding and sending all 120frames. And since noone believed me it is there, I had to make a post with uploaded videos to show.

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GemBearGamingRTX 3080 •

Wow what an amazing find with the CTRL+ALT+F7, I love it

Thanks for your research and findings, super useful!

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Night247RTX 3080 •

good post, although I would say maybe you should have used something like free OBS for capturing instead of GFN's capture

https://youtu.be/EjyC12aKrPU

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step_back_OPRTX 3080 •

Thanks for the suggestion. I've never used it so once I had info GFN captures does support 120fps I tested it out and went with it. There would be a higher chance for making a mistake with using the OBS for the first time. Maybe next time, but I hope not at this point, you know...

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jharleRTX 3080 •

I'm not sure on the "when," but it looks like this has been fixed. I tested Yooka Laylee and No Man's Sky ... seeing the correct output on the "frame analyzer" overlay now!

EDIT: It appears the "virtual display" is detected as 120Hz now, so games are seeing that...

2
step_back_OPRTX 3080 •

Nice. Gonna check it today. Though I haven't touched my 3080sub and games in months now :)

Edit: indeed, 120hz virtual display 👍

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MangoMannerisms•

I guess not even the 3080 tier can escape fps caps. Welp.

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Night247RTX 3080 •

I don't think this was intended, might just be some bug, but it is possible that GFN just did not tell us something again

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/12/22778693/nvidia-geforce-now-cloud-gaming-framerate-cap-fps-cyberpunk

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step_back_OPRTX 3080 •

Well, they obviously have control over that and in priority when the game barely get 45fps and should it target higher framerate that makes it stutters even more it would make sense. In case of the games above I can only speculate that it's a bug or an error they are not aware of or just previously dismissed all the reports.

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Z3M0GFree Tier // US East 2•

Is it possible Cyberpunk and those games were causing heating issues that needed to be mitigated?

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jharleRTX 3080 •

I wanted to make another comment here to set some expectations; while our Nvidia contacts have told us they'd look into this, we don't have an ETA from them on an expected resolution. These things can take time to get to the right group...I lobbied for sending it to the team responsible for the CTRL+ALT+F7 overlay, because obviously that must be there for a reason.

Also, and this is just my opinion, I believe that characterizing this as a "60FPS CAP" is a misnomer. To me, a CAP is an intentional limiter, and in this sense...an FPS cap would be limiting the rendering rate of the GPU (via game or system vsync), hence limiting performance. That is not what is happening here...the GPU is rendering frames at an acceptable rate, but for whatever reason, 120 of those frames are not being passed to the streamer (I think of this as the "root problem"). The streamer is definitely sending 120FPS to the GFN client (the CTRL+N overlay is accurate), but the problem is that [about half] of those frames are duplicates, because of the root problem. A 120FPS stream with only 60 new frames per second, doesn't add value over 60FPS (except for possibly helping input lag).

Additionally, I don't believe the situation with these affected games is intentional (otherwise, the GPU rendering rate really would be capped). I think there is something amiss somewhere between the game engine itself and the GFN streamer, and Nvidia is/was not aware of this issue. I think referring to the problem as a "bug" is the most accurate.

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step_back_OPRTX 3080 •

I lobbied for sending it to the team responsible for the CTRL+ALT+F7 overlay, because obviously that must be there for a reason

I didn't really want to fixate on ctrl+alt+f7 and it to be something that should be primarily relied on. After all, it is there in the open left for interpretation as Nvidia doesn't really have an FAQ on that. But I was, and still am, confident enough to say that it doesn't show just random stuff and there is a correlation between the graph and the fps seen on the user's end. So I thought I'd share my observations with everyone as it was relevant to the issue in question. Anyway, it wasn't my goal to convince people that ctrl+alt+f7 is legit as there a video captures that should be enough, and this was just a bonus content

​

Also, and this is just my opinion, I believe that characterizing this as a "60FPS CAP" is a misnomer.

I have to agree with you on this one. I went this the most generic headline as GFN's 120fps became really hard to explain with all the repeating "FPS" if you try to put it in one sentence and explain what it really means or what could potentially happen. As in-game fps, streamer settings fps, received factual fps - where do you even start... It took you a paragraph and it's not easy to put it into "explain me like i'm 5".

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Additionally, I don't believe the situation with these affected games is intentional

I don't think I ever implied that it was intentional, there's just no reason to do so for them. Especially in those select games I mentioned NMS, Elyon, Yooka that on the surface behave as those that work properly - in game conrol over fps, vsync, uncapped fps shown by Steam fps overlay. Black Desert and the likes that rely on virtual display hz rate is a slightly different story and I have little hope of those ever getting 120fps.

The most frustrating thing about this was trying to convince others. I had arguments with people on discord that it's not possible, it is not the case when they play the game and that's even after I started this thread with seemingly undisputable evidence that it is happening for me (and I am not referring to ctrl+alt+f7 but rather videos). I don't even know to this day whether anyone really cared enough to download one of the captures, open it and try at least watch it let alone going frame by frame in some media player.

​

I wanted to make another comment here to set some expectations; while our Nvidia contacts have told us they'd look into this, we don't have an ETA from them on an expected resolution.

Thanks you

1
jharleRTX 3080 •

Yes, understood...I wasn't trying to single you out, or imply that you thought Nvidia was being nefarious with this issue...more for other people happening upon this post. There are members in the GFN community who are distrustful of Nvidia, and never give them the benefit of the doubt. The initial non-disclosure of the actual frame caps used for some heavy games on the Priority tier didn't help.

I do wish that there was information from Nvidia on the CTRL+ALT+F7 tool (it also needs a name), but I do think it backs up the observations in a meaningful way. Without that tool as "backup," that leaves room for further speculation on what is really happening...leaving more fuel for the skeptics (myself included). In other words, "other reasons" the captured video isn't properly alternating through 120 unique frames.

There are questions regarding the way that tool works with certain games...as an example, if you invoke it while playing Tomb Raider (2013) it will interfere with the streaming itself. Other games like Division 2 and TT IoM will show the graph like a "comb" - no duplicated frames, but alternating variations in the duration. And in other games like Death Stranding, the graph looks like we'd expect.

The variations in the behavior leave room for some doubt on what the tool is doing or how it's implemented, but I think the "smoking gun" of the grey gaps is the most meaningful for me. I did download your videos to step through them initially, but now I feel confident that if I see the gaps in the graph, that's enough proof for me on what's happening.

1
step_back_OPRTX 3080 •

There are questions regarding the way that tool works with certain games...as an example, if you invoke it while playing Tomb Raider (2013) it will interfere with the streaming itself. Other games like Division 2 and TT IoM will show the graph like a "comb" - no duplicated frames, but alternating variations in the duration. And in other games like Death Stranding, the graph looks like we'd expect.

Yup, it certainly isn't 100% reliable in some games/in game settings. Say, Splitgate that is set to 360fps (uncapped) wouldn't get proper readings and would interfere with the stream. Cap the fps to 120 in game and it doesn't interfere with the stream and you're getting proper readings.

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arkanosiRTX 3080 •

Has there been any follow-up on this ? From Nvidia's side, easiest solution would to just virtualize 120hz monitors attached to the vm's.

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step_back_OPRTX 3080 •

Not a single word but yes, that would be an option how to solve this. In fact, what I'm saying here is mostly denied by GFN content creators, other users, GFN mods. They see 120fps in Ctrl+N and call it a day. That what pissed me the most. But the post was supposedly flagged to be checked by Nvidia reps.

I'm not expecting Nvidia to unlock the 60fps caps in the games where it is limited by the game's code, but in situation where game relies on virtual display Hz rate (Black Desert), and in completely bugged cases like NMS.

Everyone pat me on the back for a long post, but not many have followed to confirm this themselves or the very least check the videos attached. And since this has not gained traction I don't think this will be a priority in any way - majority of games aren't affected.

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arkanosiRTX 3080 •

I've seen the issue some time ago with ac odissey and spellforce 3, both limited, dota 2 for example has an in-game slider that changes max fps, sadly limitations through internal monitor frequencies are hard to work around :(. Mostly since we've been mostly locked out of files in nvidia vm's.

0
step_back_OPRTX 3080 •

I've tried Odyssey via ubisoft connect, abd with vsync set to off, fullscreen mode, and fps slider to the max it was giving me more than 60fps. Not just reported by ubi fps counter, or just reported by stream but for real. Though i imagine issues can happen with one launcher and not be present in other.

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arkanosiRTX 3080 •

https://imgur.com/OMl164G

I'll just leave this here, as i was arguing with someone on another post, it's funny how even though i might get 1000 fps, game will still render only 60 because of the virtualised monitor refresh rate being 60hz.

1
krmprince•

well they never said full 120hz support they said up to. in these types of technologies u do not expect full frames rendering and sent successfully to receivers .Nvidia is sure doing tricks to keep performance at certain standard and thats keeping GFN the best cloud gaming from quality prospective only

-2
step_back_OPRTX 3080 •

I'm just saying, there's no reason that these games (and possibly some other games) shouldn't stream real 120fps. 120fps streaming works perfectly fine in other games, even those AAA that aren't capable of doing 120fps in game due to game engine, game requirements, say AC Valhalla (~90fps). So what I'm reporting is a bug.

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krmprince•

I think its hard for me and most gamers here to confirm your research , respect to the hard work. Why do not you submit this research to Nvidia themselves if u believe there is a bug in the system and not intended performance caps

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jharleRTX 3080 •

This thread has been flagged to Nvidia for investigation.

7