Digital Foundry, the technical arm of the gaming website Eurogamer, has released a report confirming the stuttering issue when using the variable refresh rate (VRR) feature on the PS5 and PS5 Pro, but this issue does not occur on the competing Xbox consoles.
According to Digital Foundry, they have been notified of this issue by gamers for several months, and after testing, they were able to confirm that the problem is real and occurs on every VRR-compatible screen. VRR is a feature that allows the gaming device to instruct the screen to adjust its refresh rate according to the scene being displayed. For example, in a slow-paced scene, the screen does not need to refresh frequently because it’s displaying static frames, but in fast-paced action scenes, it needs to refresh more often to keep up with rapidly changing image frames. With VRR, games no longer need to be locked at 30 or 60 fps like in the past.
Digital Foundry confirmed that some games on the PS5/PS5 Pro such as The Last of Us Part 1 & 2, Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, Metaphor Refantazio, Diablo 4, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 exhibit this issue. The symptoms include these games running smoothly for about 20 minutes but then stuttering every 8 seconds, clearly visible to the player.
A straightforward way to observe this is by displaying the frame rate (fps) on the screen, which normally hovers around 60-70 fps but spikes to 120 fps during stuttering episodes.
Digital Foundry stated that this issue occurs on various brands of screens and is caused by the console inadvertently turning off VRR at certain times, causing the frame rate to spike to 120 fps. This problem does not occur with the same games on Xbox consoles.
Digital Foundry has reported this information to Sony’s team but has not yet received a response.
Source: Eurogamer
TLDR: Digital Foundry confirms the stuttering issue with VRR on PS5 and PS5 Pro, affecting certain games after prolonged play, while Xbox consoles do not experience the same problem.
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