Topic: Setting your monitor refresh rate for a smoother experience.

This guide is mostly for windows users with a 60 Hz display, but hopefully others will find it useful as well.

Most video source frame rate is 23.976, but most displays are 60 Hz. How do we get from 23.976 to 60?

SVP will multiply by 2.5 to get 59.94 which is not the best. Ideally we want SVP to be able to multiply by a nice round number.

This is where Custom Resolution Utility comes in.

The first thing to do is find out how high your monitor can be overclocked. Most 60 Hz monitors can be overclocked to around 75 Hz.
Start CRU, at the top make sure the drop-down is set to your monitor, and if you use an Nvidia GPU at the bottom change "default extension block" to "custom extension block."
In the Detailed Resolutions box delete anything that isn't 60 Hz, then click Add.
Change the Timing to LCD reduced, then in Refresh rate enter some starting place, you might want to try 75.
Click OK, and OK again to close CRU. Run the tool that comes with CRU called restart.exe, this will restart your display driver so you can use the new setting without a system restart.
Change your Windows settings to use the new refresh rate.

If your monitor shows an error like "outside of range" or similar, or you see artifacting, or this test reveals ghosting, then your monitor can't handle that refresh rate.
Go back to CRU, edit the detailed resolution you added, change to LCD reduced again, and change the refresh rate up or down. Repeat until you find your maximum refresh rate.

Once you know your max, you want to take the source frame rate of whatever you're watching and multiply it by an integer to find a number below your max. For me in the case of a 23.976 fps video, this is 23.976 x 3 = 71.928.
In CRU create a new detailed resolution for this refresh rate. You'll notice on the right of where you enter the refresh rate it says the actual refresh rate you will get, you might need to target slightly lower with what you enter, if it gets you closer to your desired refresh rate.

That's pretty much it! When you are watching something change your refresh rate to the one that suits your source frame rate. If you're watching something that has variable frame rate or weird encoding that confuses SVP, change your SVP settings to use the multiplier rather than using "to screen."

2 Reply by James D (edited by James D 17-09-2016 11:47:33)

  • Thanks: 97

Re: Setting your monitor refresh rate for a smoother experience.

OK, nice one but I'd like to give some precautions steps to those who decide to try this:
1. Reduced can give you higher refresh rate overclocking but it may produce a bug where GPU doesn't drop clocks always staying at higher p-state. For example my AMD mobile card doesn't drop memory clock only so I can call myself as a lucky guy afterall, some may not be so much lucky as I am.
2. When doing this for the first time or testing limits always create overclocked profile as a secondary one leaving original as default. This way you can set overclocked one through right click>resolution>advanced settings>Monitor and this will revert back in 15 seconds if you see a black screen or else.
3. It is better to actually restart PC instead of launching restart.exe because that may give system instability, at least it did on my system.

4. IMPORTANT! You better read FAQ on the official site of this tool before doing anything. AMD and Nvidia based systems in some situations may have separate ways of treating by this tool.
P.S. And yeah, there is always a risk when you overclock something. As always. I got a vertical line for instance jumping from 60 to 100Hz.

3 Reply by Larwood (edited by Larwood 17-09-2016 12:35:39)

Re: Setting your monitor refresh rate for a smoother experience.

Very good points. For your 3rd point, you can still use restart.exe while you are testing out, it's a pain to do a full restart every time you change the refresh rate by just a few Hz.

Edit: as to the risk, it's really not as much a risk as overclocking other things. I've never heard of anyone overclocking a monitor and breaking it.

Re: Setting your monitor refresh rate for a smoother experience.

I would make a quick edit to say "Most commercial video source frame rate in North America is 23.976", the main difference being that smartphone recordings and video game recordings are much more likely to be 30fps and most European-made videos are 25fps.

5 Reply by James D (edited by James D 18-09-2016 12:03:47)

  • Thanks: 97

Re: Setting your monitor refresh rate for a smoother experience.

Larwood wrote:

as to the risk, it's really not as much a risk as overclocking other things. I've never heard of anyone overclocking a monitor and breaking it.

You just did.
http://www.monitortests.com/forum/Threa … 20#pid5520

  • Thanks: 6

Re: Setting your monitor refresh rate for a smoother experience.

If your monitors can't overclock, instead of going for 72Hz (3 x 24), simply try shooting for 48Hz (2 x 24). It even saves you processing power, as SVP will only have to calculate one frame between each actual frame and not two.

7 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 18-09-2016 19:48:38)

Re: Setting your monitor refresh rate for a smoother experience.

James D wrote:

You just did.
http://www.monitortests.com/forum/Threa … 20#pid5520

How do you know that's actual damage and not just the monitor equivalent of CPU instability when your vcore is too low?

dejavecue wrote:

If your monitors can't overclock, instead of going for 72Hz (3 x 24), simply try shooting for 48Hz (2 x 24). It even saves you processing power, as SVP will only have to calculate one frame between each actual frame and not two.

Indeed, I mentioned that what I mention in my "Concepts for optimal frame rates & refresh rates" thread which I'll be reposting shortly since I've made a good amount of edits since I created it (EDIT: Thread re-posted).

Similarly, on TVs (which don't support custom refresh rates very well), you can also use mpv/reclock to slightly speed up 24fps content to 25fps (with optional pitch correction ) and then set your TV to 50Hz (which is commonly supported even on North American models).

  • Thanks: 97

Re: Setting your monitor refresh rate for a smoother experience.

Nintendo Maniac 64 wrote:

How do you know that's actual damage and not just the monitor equivalent of CPU instability when your vcore is too low?

If you had CPU instability when your vcore is too low would you know that? I guess I would.

9 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 19-09-2016 06:32:41)

Re: Setting your monitor refresh rate for a smoother experience.

James D wrote:

If you had CPU instability when your vcore is too low would you know that? I guess I would.

Considering that CPU instability shows up as BSoDs, yes you would know - especially if you weren't getting BSoDs before and it only started once you undervolted.

Relevant post by myself @ Overclock.net