Windows 10 Version 1903 Supports Variable Refresh Rate

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Starting with May 2019 Update, Windows 10 comes with support for the variable refresh rate feature. The appropriate options can be found in Settings.

As you may already know, Microsoft has made Windows 10 version 1903 available to everyone. The feature update includes plenty of new features and minor improvements. See the change log here:

https://winaero.com/blog/whats-new-in-windows-10-version-1903-may-2019-update/

Yet another change in this update is variable refresh rate support (VRR). This feature is utilized by modern Store and UWP games to reduce screen tearing and get a higher frame rate.

The user will be able to force enable variable refresh rates for games that do not support it natively.

The VRR option might be unavailable for devices with NVidia GPUs. It requires 'Pascal' or later NVidia GPU generation.

For those curious why this is necessary, Windows Store games were initially not compatible with adaptive sync, and even had issues with custom V-Sync settings. Microsoft eventually rolled out support for these settings, but the developer needed to explicitly add support for it. Native Win32 games not sold on the Windows Store do not need to have support added.

This feature is essentially an override for Windows Store games that lack adaptive sync support.

At the time of this writing, Windows 10 version 1903 is available to "seekers". This means that you need to open Settings >Update & recovery > Windows Update and explicitly confirm your intention to get May 2019 Update by clicking on the "Download and install" link.

Note: This new ‘Download and install now’ capability is available for devices running Windows 10, version 1803 or version 1809 that also have the May 21st updates (or later) installed.

Windows 10 version 1903 can be downloaded via Windows Update or with the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool.

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Source: Reddit

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

2 thoughts on “Windows 10 Version 1903 Supports Variable Refresh Rate”

  1. The VRR option might be unavailable for devices with NVidia GPUs. It requires ‘Pascal’ or later NVidia GPU generation.
    I’ve the 1060 but am not seeing this

  2. So this option is only applicable to Store and UWP apps?

    No worries, no-one’s going to notice it then.

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