Frame buffering and Vsync.

[Oats]

Wandering if with Vsync off, you can buffer frames. The question arises from a discussion on double and triple buffering; whih one to use, which is better, etc... So does it makes sense to talk about double and triple buffering when Vsync is off?

I am thinking that with Vsync off, once a frame is rendered it's sent to RAMDAC. So you can't buffer frames. Correct?

 

[Humus]

You can still do tripplebuffering if vsync if off, but it will just waste memory.

 

[Xmas]

You can still do tripplebuffering if vsync if off, but it will just waste memory.

Well, I hope driver developers are clever enough to not waste memory on it

 

[Simon F]

Humus, I'm not sure "waste" is the expression you were looking for. Perhaps just "use extra" is a little less emotional ;-)

Xmas, I didn't understand what you were implying. Do you mean driver should not allow triple buffering or that the developers find a magically way of storing a frame buffer's worth of data in zero RAM?

 

[Oats]

thx

 

[Xmas]

Xmas, I didn't understand what you were implying. Do you mean driver should not allow triple buffering or that the developers find a magically way of storing a frame buffer's worth of data in zero RAM?

What I wanted to say is that the driver should not allocate a third buffer when VSync is disabled, simply because this buffer will never be of any use. Maybe I'm thinking too much the OpenGL way now as I remember with D3D swap chains there might be other uses for multiple buffered frames.