Drivers & Software

[bluesadam]

Hi everyone!

Today as I was playing Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, I decided to try Radeon Chill feature to limit fps to 60 as I can comfortably hit that value. So I enable Chill in the game profile, set both min and max values to 60 and then opened the game. As I was playing I realized the game did not really feel smooth with stutters and I could clearly see constant screen tearing even with slow mouse movements so I decided to check if Freesync is working. I have Variable Refresh Rate set to On in Windows 11 Game settings, I have it enabled on monitor settings, Adrenalin Display setting and Adrenalin game profile so couldn't see any problems there. Then I decided to turn on the monitor refresh rate counter OSD and the refresh rate value was all over the place. Despite Chill set to 60 fps, refresh rate would constantly jump from 40 to 160 in no sensible manner.

When I turn off Chill and let the game run as fast as it can, OSD shows much more sensible values near the in-game fps value I get. So I recorded a video of both Chill on and off showing the in-game fps and monitor refresh rate values.

Here is with Chill Off:

https://youtu.be/rWSwudFiBoM (I tried to embed but for some reason I get an error saying the video is set to Private, but it is not. So I had to put a direct link here)

With Chill On:

https://youtu.be/lCJedziVD5A

My question is, is this really a bug or am I being paranoid? The game really has frame pacing and screen tearing issues when Chill is on but is completely smooth with it off. Chill also tends to not cap the frames properly, as it fluctuates between 55 to 65 when both min and max values are set to 60. In the same scenes, with Chill turned off I can get upwards of 75 fps so I should be able to hit a consistent 60fps limit, it is not a GPU or CPU bottleneck issue.

Am I using Chill wrong? Does Chill simply not work with Freesync? Any help here is much appreciated. For troubleshooting purposes, here are my system specs:

GPU: RX 7600 8gb

CPU: Ryzen R5 2600

Ram: 2x8gb 3000mhz

1tb nvme ssd

750 watt Cougar CMX PSU

Windows 11

Monitor: Acer KG241Q (FreeSync Range - 48 to 144 Hz reported by display)

The only software running in the background is Steam. Nothing else is running. It is a fairly fresh OS installation, roughly a month old. Bios version is up to date, as well as chipset and GPU drivers. I am not running any type of overclock or undervolt, everything is at default value. If you need any other information, please let me know.

[bluesadam · Accepted solution]

Edit: I tried FRTC to see how that would work and FRTC does not work at all. FPS is completely uncapped. I will try other games and see how they fare.

EDIT2: Just tried Apex Legends and it works perfectly fine. The game is capped at a stable 60 fps and freesync works correctly with zero tearing and frame pacing issues. Checked online and it seems Chill does not work out of the box for every game out there. There is a supported games list posted by AMD back from 2018 but couldn't find a newer list of supported games.

Here's another recording from Apex Legends capped at 60 fps using Radeon Chill. You can see the monitor OSD is tightly reporting 60 fps compared to Metro Exodus.