Evidence of MSI Afterburner 4.3.0 &/or RTSS 6.5.1 breaking Freesync ?

[Michael Z Freeman]

Hi,

I've had a long standing problem with Freesync that I only just narrowed down to what looks to be a bug/conflict between Afterburner and/or RTSS and AMD Freesync (Crimson driver 17.3.2). I put this here as it might help

I was using Afterburner to display FPS and various system info, GPU temp, CPU temp and so forth using the on screen display in game. Freesync is now working after stopping the use of MSI Afterburner. FRAPS does not interfere with Freesync as MSI seems to.

I troubleshooted using the AMD Windmill Freesync Demo and found ...

1. With MSI loaded Freesync WOULD work @ 60fps in the demo but NOT in game @ 60hz.

2. With MSI loaded .@ 75 hz (my screen is rated 47 - 75 for Freesync) the demo would NOT work and in game would also NOT work.

3. Even though the demo showed Freesync partially working (@ 60fps) I could never get Freesync to work in any games. Everything would always be tearing.

Because I just got an R9 380 with vastly improved thermal profile I no longer need to use MSI. I am now using HWINFO to report all info to a laptop and FRAPS for fps counter. All my games now work with Freesync. It was MSI that was the problem.

There's a chance that it was the RTSS frame limiter, or more likely RTSS than Afterburner (just an instinct not proven).

So after dropping MSI/RTSS I started using the AMD Crimson drivers to keep the fps at 75.

So there's definitely something at issue here and it seems to be a conflict between MSI/RTSS and AMD Freesync.

Can anyone confirm this ?

ADDENDUM: Confirmed games working now with my Freesync: Crysis, Homefront: Revolution, Battlefield 2. However Company of Heroes 2 and Just Cause 3 still have tearing in them. Is this an issue with some engines ? If so I don't understand why. I thought Freesync was happening at such a low level that it's supposed to work with anything. I have put in a support request about this to AMD which has been acknowledged but no reply yet.