Overview
Rate up! 🤷 help others! 😉03/26/2021: Added 120 FPS 60Hz configuration.03/27/2021: Updated Sync settings for 120 FPS 60Hz configurations.03/31/2021: Added a note for 8 GB RAM users in Windows version section + Geforce Experience Settings.05/16/2021: Updated Finding FPS Cap section05/26/2021: Removed Audio Section since it does not make things right with everyone depending on many variables + honestly it barely makes any differenceIf you have a modern high end machine that you know it can deliver max frame rates at maximum settings currently then you already have a stable low latency. just read “TCP Optimization section” “Geforce Experience Settings” and final section “Sync Settings” immediately and skip all others…This game may gain a lot of performance from memory overclocking on old and lower end CPUs:1- Memory OC can be done on low end motherboards and locked CPUs2- It does not use more power >> no higher temperatures >> no extra cooling needed (free overclock)3- Memory OC can take very long time to verify stability>> it could be long term project over a week and could be fast to be done in hours >> could be fun for some people and boring for others4- It can make the game massively better!5- You can shrink your memory timings even if you can’t change Memory clock speeds on lower end Intel motherboards. also overclocking your Intel CPU totally worth it if your gaming rig supports overclocking.Head over here for more details about memory OC:https://github.com/integralfx/MemTestHelper/blob/master/DDR4%20OC%20Guide.md#overclockingMost experienced guy have written this guide.You may use Inspectre.exe found in the link bellow to disable meltdown and spectre security if you are on an old Intel CPU. The program itself is able to tell you that if the security batch is taking over performance or not so that you can decide at your own risk whether you should disable it or not (DO IT AT YOUR OWN RISK, I DON’T TAKE RESPONSIBILITY IF HACKERS RIPPED OFF YOUR PC):https://www.grc.com/files/InSpectre.exe”DON’T DO IT FOR AMD”The guide is suitable for every user from the low end to the high end.You can skip paragraphs to tips immediately as you are not going to read the whole guide anyway because it gives tips for different systems and you are going to pick yours only.The guide is a subject to change over time. I will keep updating it whenever better or more tips found. I will inform about major updates by changing date so make sure to check the guide every once in a while.For notebook users I didn’t address thermal issues that you may have causing your frame rates to drop.You can also use MSI Afterburner as a reliable OC tool to your GPU.Don’t get yourself into using autoexec files and Nvidia Inspector or any other texture remaking tool. these are all considered cheats. developers managed to disable almost all of them. if anyone is showing an autoexec file in his guide then he is probably don’t know what he is doing and never knew that none of these commands do anything.Don’t get yourself into disabling overlay of steam thinking that it is going to help make the game run with higher frame rates. it is important to understand that your CPU is not like a peace of can whenever you fill it with something it gets overloaded. the story is more complicated than that so disabling your useful software may not enhance your frame rates by a fraction of a frame.Don’t use commands to uncap frame rates (those who does don’t know what they are doing and they are unable to tell how the good experience could be). other command lines like -high or -forcenovsync and others are useless and they are more likely to cause issues. At least in 2 situations on different systems we found -high command causing issues in game frame times.Don’t disable full screen optimization: the input lag difference that they claim to reduce is next to none. for general users this can only make your game performance worse (It has been reported to me by 2 people having worse frame timings with that disabled and I experienced that on a certain system once). FSO is meant to give you snappier control over your system while gaming without any performance fine. The same story for Windows 10 Game Mode… you should not disable any useful stuff in your windows made to give you good experience thinking that it is a problem because someone did a fancy Youtube video about it.There are also a lot of misleading tips that makes your game much worse around the web like those who recommend setting your frame rate cap in Nvidia control panel instead of ingame engine limiter thinking that it is going to give lower latency while the fact is that any 3rd party frame rate cap other than any game engine limiter itself can only give the same or worse latency. there is no case that 3rd party limiters could be better than in game engine frame rate limit. much much more of misleading tips that we don’t have anymore time to mention….Is it possible to reach Master or Predator on low frame rate count as 60 FPS? answer is Yes!. it is possible as long as you are serious and want to follow my guide. I know a predator playing on a PS4 60 FPS against PC players with almost 93 ms ping and he is a predator not even a master (Edit: he was a predator before, now he is a master 😛). as you can see these latency and Frame rates are not perfect. Although idk about latency of PS4 at 60 FPS (never measured that), but theoretically it can’t be much different than 60 FPS on PC so you got the idea.Sincerely Good Luck! ranking up in the game with current ridiculous server issues 😜.
Introduction
Apex Legends is one of the games that are built on an outdated source engine a reason why the game have a lot of frame rate variation across the game so you may have high frame rates in the game but at the same time experience is not smooth because of frame to frame time variation. having a lot of frame rate variation is going to effect your learning ability to adapt with different situations making it harder for you to aim properly and track your targets. this brought us here with this guide trying to achieve the best experience from low latency to stable frame times and finally smoother and no tearing experience.
Nvidia Reflex feature is meant to lower and reduce latency variation, but unfortunately even that feature alone is not enough because of the massive frame rate variations.
Basically in this guide we have gone through everything that we found useful and ignored everything from other guides that appeared to be useless at least in our experiments.
Windows 10 Version and Settings
First of all we want to make sure we are on Windows 10 2004 or later OS version. this is not going to help Apex Legends only but generally every other game with the newer Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling and other bug fixes to improve your windows experience.
Back in 2017 and 2018 Windows 10 had a lot of problems caused by new added and updated features that not all of us are Interested in using them causing less frame time stability in certain games, but this story is not on Windows only. basically any game or software update brings it’s down side and sometimes the downside is so bad making the older versions even better.
Generally speaking updates to your software or your game is meant to be an improvement and any issue that could be brought with it would be fixed in later updates so we can’t say that: don’t update your Windows 10 or use unofficial lite version that lakes the ability to get enhancements and bug fixes of future updates.
If you have 8 GB or less Memory then you definitely have to check out this guide from Tech Yes City about how to customize your own official Windows 10 as that will help Apex Legends a lot:
[link]To check your Windows version and enable Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling:
1- Go to Windows Settings >> System >> About >> Windows Specifications >> Version
It should be 20H2. if it is something else then go head and update your Operating system before you proceed to the rest of the guide
2- Go to: Windows Settings >> System >> Display >> Graphics settings
Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling and restart your system
Clean Up System Background Services
Now we want to clean system background services and start up applications that “may” effect our game frame rates.
As we said earlier it is important to understand that your CPU is not like a peace of can whenever you fill it with something it gets overloaded. the story is more complicated than that and there is a different room for everything a reason why disabling your useful software may not enhance your frame rates by a fraction of a frame. you should not just disable anything you need, you are not going to disable your steam overlay. also you can’t close your streaming or recording software even if they effect your game performance.
1- To do that: Press Win + R >> type: msconfig and click OK >> Go to Services tap >> Check Hide all Microsoft services box and disable every service you don’t need or you don’t know about
2- Go to: Startup tap >> Open task manager and disable every startup software that you don’t use every time you start your PC
TCP Optimizer (we are not using it mainly for TCP protocol optimization…)
This could be a critical part of the guide depending on your type of internet connection and your ISP settings. it may not do a thing for some people as it may eliminate many people frustrations with online games. this section used to be hard because in the past users had to edit system manually using command lines and Registry Editor. luckily that is not the case anymore when TCP optimizer tool has been released.
1- Head to this link to download the tool:
[link]
2- Run the tool as Administrator and set your connection “download” speed in the slider up then set choose settings in the bottom to Custom and finally set all settings as shown exactly in the image bellow (don’t change MTU to 0)
3- Now go to Advanced settings tap and change only these settings inside the red border exactly as shown
4- Now go to MTU/Latency tap and check your largest MTU then copy the MTU value and paste it in General Settings then click on apply
5- The tool will ask you to make a registry backup so you may back it up or not doesn’t matter then restart your system.
Nvidia Control Panel Settings
In this section we are going to set proper settings to insure better gaming performance by disabling certain settings on the driver level so that we can make sure they don’t appear in the game when we disable them later from game settings:
1- Right click on your desktop and open Nvidia Control Panel >> Go to Adjust image settings with preview >> click on Use the advanced 3D image settings >> click apply >> click on take me there
2- We want to enable GPU scaling globally.
GPU scaling is stretching rendered frame on the GPU to match your monitor native resolution before pushing it out to the monitor. it can be useful if your monitor have a bad built in scaling making the stretched image blooming and lose a lot of details when you change your resolution bellow your native resolution. this option is also used with Image sharpening that’s why they are together in settings. note that these considered as post processing effects so they don’t effect latency like some fools claim, however they can effect your maximum frame rates in games which means they effect your minimum latency not your average or maximum latency which we care about. in other words GPU scaling can only be useful so we are setting it to ON
3- Now go to Program Settings tap and choose Apex Legends then set these settings exactly as shown
If you are on AMD GPU then disable Enhanced Sync, Radeon Anti-Lag and Radeon Boost. Also if you are on older than GTX 900 series from Nvidia then set Low Latency mode to On (don’t set it to Ultra)
Nvidia Ultra Low Latency (NULL) and AMD Radeon Anti-Lag are the same thing. these 2 tweaks aims to resolve the problem of higher latency when the graphic card is maxed out (98-100% GPU usage). When your CPU works ahead of your GPU pushing frames fast to render queue the GPU will start buffering increasing the input lag significantly so these 2 tweaks from both Nvidia and AMD reduce that delay by removing the render queue completely so every frame the CPU prepare would be pushed out to the GPU immediately. this scenario create a CPU extra load in order to lower the input latency. this of course comes with it’s own downsides. First this can lead to more frame rate variation which is something we don’t like to happen. The second problem is when you get into CPU or memory bottleneck while your GPU is not maxed out (less than 98% usage) increasing the input lag further rather than reducing it.
The reason why we set it to Ultra here is that we have Nvidia Reflex technology on Nvidia cards that are from GTX 900 series or newer. Nvidia Reflex is AMAZING feature overriding all input lag variation issues and it does that by even lowering the input lag.
Nvidia Ultra Low Latency have something to do with Variable Refresh Rate technologies (G-sync and FreeSync) lowering the additional input lag they introduce so if you happen to have a monitor that supports VRR then you may get lucky getting it to work correctly with Apex Legends on the frame rate cap that we will find out later without having to enable V-sync which does not play nice with apex legends increasing latency.
The thing is that most steam users are using the GTX 1060 and more than 42%! of users are on 4 cores/threads and these general specs create a dual bottleneck scenario in Apex legends so most of the time the game would be CPU bottlenecked and other times it would be in GPU bottleneck situation so if we have low latency modes enabled then you can guess how bad the experience would be from the more varied frame rates to more varied input lags and weird none smooth experience.
Geforce Experience Settings
If you use Nvidia Geforce Experience to record your gameplay then you may have something that considerably effect your input lag while recording or streaming which is the ability to capture the desktop being enabled.
With that option disabled, shadowplay will use frame buffer capture which does not (in theory) add input lag, since the game doesn’t need to wait for Shadowplay to capture the frame.
If you want to research this yourself, the two modes are “Inband Frame Readback” (NVIFR) for desktop capture (has overhead), and “Frame Buffer Capture” (NVFBC) for exclusive fullscreen capture (no overhead.)
To disable that:
1- Open GE overlay with: ALT + Z and go to settings
Preparing Custom Resolution
From what we have seen previously about input lag and different scenarios that causes input lag to increase or change regardless frame rate count you probably noticed that frame rates is not the only determining factor that effect your input lag and game smoothness. there are also other important factors that we need consider to get the good experience we aim for. so you need a decent frame rate count yes, but focusing on frame rate count only can miss lead you to worse experience sometimes
it is important to note that your input lag does not negatively scale linearly with higher frame rates so for example if you have a 90 FPS instead of 100 FPS it does not mean your input lag is 11% higher. that’s completely fake. higher FPS means less input latency always, but that does not tell anything by how much less and why. the higher FPS you get the less input lag advantage you would achieve.
For example: going from 50 FPS to 60 FPS (20% more FPS) in a certain game may lower your input lag by 15% but by going from 100 FPS to 120 FPS (another 20% more FPS) in the same game may lower your input lag by 5% (on the same monitor).
In this guide we are going to create a scenario where both the (CPU + Memory speed) and the GPU barely hit max usage without reaching it using a frame rate limit. this will insure having no latency issues beside highest stable frame rate count possible and so lowest stable latency while squeezing out every bit of your system performance.
to achieve that scenario we have to find out the frame rate count that the CPU can maintain so for that we need to eliminate other variable which is the GPU and to do that we have to create a very low custom resolution that can insure the situation as (CPU + Memory) bottleneck 100% of the time.
1- Go to Nvidia Control Panel again >> Change resolution >> Customize >> Create Custom Resolution
- For notebook users, your Integrated Intel or AMD GPU controls built in monitor resolutions so you need to set the custom rrsolution there (it won’t be visible in Nvidia control panel). However your system may not support custom resolution so skip this tip as you are going to set 1024 x 768 4:3 later in game instead to test on it.
2- To find out your custom resolution take 66 as a custom multiplier and multiply it by your monitor ratio. the outcome should be lower than 700,000 pixel so for example if you have a 16:9 monitor then multiply the 66 with 16 outcomes 1056 and the 66 with 9 outcomes 594 and if you have a 16:10 monitor ratio then do the same thing: 66 by 10 outcomes 660 and 66 by 16 outcomes 1056
66 x 16 = 1056
66 x 09 = 594
Resolution is: 1056 x 594
1056 x 594 = 627,264 pixel
66 x 16 = 1056
66 x 10 = 660
Resolution is 1056 x 660
1056 x 660 = 696,960 Pixel
Whatever your monitor ratio find the resolution that does not exceed 700,000 pixel using couple numbers only
3- Test the resolution and if it is applicable save it, apply and close the control panel.
In Game Settings
Before we open the game and config settings we are going to delete settings files and make the game regenerate them. this trick may fix some of those weird issues that you may have reinstalled the game and changed your platform from Steam to Origin or from Origin to steam to solve them without success.
1- Go to: (C:Users[Username]Saved Games) and delete Respawn folder
2- Open the Game and go to settings >> Video: set texture streaming budget to match your GPU vRAM
3- Make sure Nvidia Reflex is set to Enabled (don’t set it to + Boost)
4- Set every other setting to Low, OFF or Disabled
5- You may increase your field of view from 90 to 100 or 110 (regardless the performance this could be important to your gameplay. mine is set to 110 and I am not playing on 1080p either!)
- If you are on a system with unsupported custom resolutions then set Ratio to 4:3 and Resolution to 1024 x 768
6- Close the Game
We didn’t set Nvidia Reflex to + Boost because that will stress your graphic card for no gains razing thermals and may reduce your GPU lifespan for nothing. we don’t want any of this to happen,. there is absolutely no gains from + Boost (less than 1 ms)
Setting Custom Resolution (for testing only)
3- Now in the same folder Open Videoconfig.txt file and set the custom resolution as shown (skip this if your system does not support custom resolution)
I have to note here that changing your lod or CSM ragdols or whatever to lower values is not going to enhance your frame rates by any means and can only degrade your view without any benefit.
Performance on different values in these settings does not scale linearly so 0.6 lod is the low settings and 1.0 is the high settings.
when you set in game Model details to low you will get higher frame rates for sure so from 1.0 to 0.6 there is a performance gain to mention, but going lower than that is not gonna do a thing so don’t think that you are doing it correctly by lowering that to 0.35 as some people suggests because that is not gonna bring 1% improvement to your frame rates and if you got above 1% then you probably playing on bellow 50 FPS on average and this is so bad because you are using much higher resolution than what your GPU can handle. this won’t happen if you follow my guide so don’t do it. keep that ♥♥♥♥ at 0.6
here is an explaining small graph 📉 to show the relation between performance and Model Detail settings (other options follow the same shape) so relation will look like this
developers have set 0.6 as low and they know what they are doing. there is always a trade off between performance and details so it seems that optimal values are between 0.6 and 1.0
I hope that this clear things.
Finding Perfect FPS Cap
Now the journey for finding perfect frame rate cap starts here:
1- Install MSI Afterburner: [link]
2- Run MSI Afterburner and go to settings >> Benchmark tap. set your benchmark key bindings here as you can also view your benchmark results in txt file if you click on view, click on OK
3- Open RTSS from tray icon on the taskbar then set Show On-Screen Display to ON, set Detection Level to Low and finally set Show own statistics to ON
4- Go to game launch options and set:
+fps_max [Max Mointor Refresh Rate]
We don’t want the final FPS cap to be higher than monitor refresh rate so if you have a 75Hz monitor then set max fps to 75 and if you have a 120Hz monitor set it to 120…..etc
- Special note for 60 Hz Display users: set “+fps_max 120“
5- Startup the game, go solo (don’t fill teammates) then drop away from hot zones at any edge in the map. once you land on the ground hit benchmarking key after that a line of data will appear above contains a time record and frame rate stats. (if you are a streamer or you usually record your gameplay then you should benchmark while recording or streaming always and do not lower your recording resolution or your preferred settings)
6-Now you have to move to every area you can move to it during that match (you may write down areas you passed). try to survive and cross areas as much as you can and make sure to keep monitoring your minimum FPS to find out the area that you have the lowest FPS in it (it could be different for everybody). once you lose or win the match, take a note of your min FPS before leaving the match.
7- Open Game Launch options and add the line: +fps_max [Minimum FPS]
Set your previous minimum FPS here
- For 60Hz Display users only: if you got any lower than 119 Min FPS then set: “+fps_max 60”
8- Run the game again and do the same thing to cross areas you didn’t test in it. after landing start benchmarking and once you done take another note of your new minimum frame rate (it must be same or lower)
9- Repeat the same thing until you cross and view every area across the map while noting your minimum FPS. add this minimum FPS as a frame rate cap in game launch options then run the game and do the same thing over and over again for other maps
10- Once you find your minimum frame rate + the map and area where you have lowest FPS in it then you have reached your specific frame rate cap (it should not be lower than 60 FPS or you can’t play Apex Legends and it should not be higher than your monitor refresh rate except 60 Hz displays that we can set FPS limit equally or double the refresh rate) This FPS limit is what your system can do 99% of the time. if your minimum FPS was lower than 60 after all then sorry mate you are out of luck to be able to compete in the game. you can still play casual at 60 FPS limit and avoid areas where your FPS goes lower than 60 FPS
11- It is time to change your resolution back again to native babe from ingame settings (no more ♥♥♥♥ resolution)
12- Drop again in the most demanding area for your PC that you found earlier and start benchmarking
13- Here there are different possible situation so follow what suit yours in the upcoming sections.
You Got Same Avg FPS from Custom To Native Resolution
This means there is some headroom in your GPU performance that we can still make use off:
- Note that!: If your avg frame rates dropped 1 frame bellow your frame rate limit, this means you became GPU limited which means your latency will be massively increased and game will become less smooth on AMD and for Nvidia Reflex supported GPUs your game will become less smooth very obviously with slight increase in latency. So it is important not to hit your GPU maximum usage while playing the game. However a couple of frame drops is not a problem as you may prioritize resolution over a couple of frame rates, you can simply set that as a new less frame rate limit unless you are on “120 FPS and 60 Hz display” then you need to get at least 119 avg FPS or drop your limit back to 60
1- Go to game video settings again and start by raising Model Details to High then benchmark again to see if that drops your Frame rate and if it does then set it to medium and if it still does set it to low again “even 1 frame drop does not worth it” keep it like that and proceed to the Sync Settings section immediately from the guide
2- Now let’s say you was on medium or high model details and you still have the same Avg FPS as before. this means it is time to go to the second important options that matter which is Texture Filtering that controls the crisp of surfaces details and further improve graphics very well
Start by Anisotropic X8 or even X16 and see if that is going to effect your frame rates yet and if it does then lower it to X4 or even X2 (find what does not drop your frame rates any lower than before)
3- Ok now moving to the 3rd option which is Effects Details as that would enhance the game graphics very well
4- The final option that you can edit is the Volumetric Lightening then Ambient Occlusion.
“Do not change any other options” keep them low and disabled because they may not effect your avg frame rate in autumn estate area, but they will drop your minimum frame rates in unspecified cases depending on what is going on.
However if you have a very powerful modern high end system and your FPS are locked to maximum possible all the time then you may enable these settings and max out the game then test one more time to verify
You Got Dropped Avg FPS from Custom To Native Resolution
This means you need to lower your resolution bellow native and enable Nvidia or AMD Image sharpening at the optimal values.
1- Drop your resolution by 1 level from ingame settings and see if that still drop your previous average FPS and if it still does then drop another level and another until you reach the same average frame rate you got before.
- Note that!: If your avg frame rates dropped 1 frame bellow your frame rate limit, this means you became GPU limited which means your latency will be massively increased and game will become less smooth on AMD and for Nvidia Reflex supported GPUs your game will become less smooth very obviously with slight increase in latency. So it is important not to hit your GPU maximum usage while playing the game. However a couple of frame drops is not a problem as you may prioritize resolution over a couple of frame rates, you can simply set that as a new less frame rate limit unless you are on “120 FPS and 60 Hz display” then you need to get at least 119 avg FPS or drop your limit back to 60
2- Open your Nvidia Control panel again >> Manage 3D settings >> Program settings >> select Apex Legends and enable Image sharpening (do not change default values) and click on apply
3- Now you are ready and you can proceed immediately to final section in this guide
You Still Have Dropped Avg FPS from Custom To 720p
This means you are on a very weak Graphic card while your CPU is much stronger.
we can see this case generally on an AMD APU with high refresh rate monitor because they are very fast in processing, but have weak built in Vega rendering processor as there is not enough shared memory bandwidth.
What you are going to do here is to find a custom resolution that suit your CPU performance as we have shown before in previous sections.
- Start by using a custom number like 72 and multiply it by your monitor ratio so 72 x 16 = 1152 and 72 x 9 = 648 so 1152 x 648. set this in your control panel and game videoconfig.txt file then test again and if you still have dropped Avg FPS then try lower custom number for example 68 and if you had the same avg FPS then try higher again until you find the maximum resolution that does not drop your avg FPS
- Note that!: If your avg frame rates droped more than 1 frame bellow your frame rate limit, this means you became GPU limited which means your latency will be massively increased and game will become less smooth on AMD and for Nvidia Reflex supported GPUs your game will become less smooth very obviously with slight increase in latency. So it is important not to hit your GPU maximum usage while playing the game.
- You are most likely to run into a situation that anything higher than previous low custom resolution is dropping your frame rates! this means stop here you are not going lower than 1056 x 594! this is already very low. you may play at that with sharpening enabled, but you can’t go lower. In this specific case only you have to enable RIS (Radeon Image Sharpening Filter) at 80% as default because we are still in a GPU bottleneck situation all the time.
Sync Settings
We will use Scanline sync from RTSS that comes already with MSI Afterburner.
G-sync could be decent, but most monitors these days lose the faster response time advantage while it is enabled. however you can’t get G-Sync to work correctly without Double buffered V-Sync enabled “increasing latency” and because we also achieved a stable frame rate count to stabilize latency then no need for refresh rates to be variable anymore, that’s why we prefer Scanline sync.
VRR technologies is not meant for competitive games because competitive players relay on fast pre-calculated mouse movements and that requires a stable latency while VRR does not offer that, it can only offer smooth experience so when your framrates fluctuate while tracking your target your latency will vary and you will miss out shoots that may should have downed your enemy!.
I have to note that both G-sync and scanline sync will result in slightly higher input lag, but that would be the cost of smoothness. I won’t say it won’t effect your gameplay so if you are on predators list with FPS maxed out trying to climb up to the top of the list then you may feel the difference and prefer lower input lag over smoother experience or you may not. I can’t tell you which best for u.
First you need to set a new custom Resolution or edit your previous one as shown earlier.
1-Go to your graphics control panel >> set your “game current resolution” and “final FPS cap” as a custom resolution then apply changes.
2- Add a new custom resolution: Your “current desktop resolution” + “Final FPS limit” as custom refresh rate
In my case it was 1600 x 900 86Hz for game
Also 1920 x 1080 86Hz for Desktop.
3- Switch your desktop refresh rate to custom one before you run the game: Right click on your desktop >> Display Settings >> change your refresh rate to match the game FPS limit we found earlier. You can revert it back to highest after you close the game.
These custom numbers could be native and previously supported Hz by the display so you don’t have to set a custom resolution in that case.
- 60Hz notebook users are tied to 60 FPS or 120 FPS configurations except some high end notebooks that have high refresh rate built in display and support custom resolutions
4- Fire up the game, pick your lovely legend and go to firing range
5- Minimize the game and open RTSS (if you don’t want to run MSI Afterburner in the background)
6- Get back to your game and go to the tunnel, look at the wall then keep moving right and left until you spot the tearing lines.
7- Once you spot the tearing lines minimize the game and in RTSS start setting negative values in scanline sync (start by -10)
In case you are on 120 FPS at 60 Hz display then click on scanline sync to switch it to x2 (only 60 Hz 120 FPS case!)
8- Get back to your game and look what happened to tearing lines. if they are in the same place then set more aggressive values like -50 then get back to game and look what happened to tearing lines
you should be able to see tearing lines moving up and down across the monitor and once you reach a point where your tearing lines are almost at the top and the bottom and they disappear then great you already got rid off tearing issue.
- For 120 FPS 60Hz display scanline sync x2 situation: you should see 2 tearing lines (one in the middle and the other is up).
Get rid off the upper one using scanline sync x2 proper negative value then close the game.
Get rid of the middle one using Nvidia Fast Sync or AMD Enhanced Sync.Go to Nvidia Control panel >> Manage 3D Settings >> Program Settings >> Apex Legends >> scroll down and enable Fast Sync (For AMD users enable Enhanced Sync).
Scanline sync x2 + Nvidia Fast Sync combo would achieve smooth experience without stutters + lower latency than 60 FPS 60 Hz
9- Now click on Add in RTSS and browse for Apex Legends then set scanline sync proper value there. Don’t set that globally because that value is specific to Apex legends only and make sure to run the game while RTSS is running to make use off scanline sync. you also have to switch your Desktop resolution to your custom refresh rate before you run the game. Unfortunately the game takes the refresh rate of your desktop and ignore any kind of command line that modify the refresh rate a reason why you have to set your refresh rate to custom before you run the game.
10- Go to your game launch options and remove the FPS limit 😀
Additions
The Video is now outdated, but I will keep it here as an addition only! It is still usefull to watch how I found my frame rate cap
I will release a new video soon with the updated info.