pre rendered frames 4 and adaptive sync = WOW

I have had my PC now for some time and was going to get a new TV. I have been trying everything to get rid of screen tearing and slow downs when vsync is on or off. Today for some reason I only changed the Max pre rendered frames to maximum of 4 and the smoothness and screen tearing has gone and get constant frames with no slow down or screen tearing. I tried it with wolfenstein on medium settings as I did be for with Vsync off as you do with adaptive vsync on the card and the improvement was 100% in game. Is pre rendered frames like triple vsync or is it something else and does it make your card use more power or heat up more?. Thanks.

It's the number of frames the CPU prepares before being passed to the GPU.

It works well depending on the case, higher values mean the gameplay is smoother but the input control latency increases, this is bad for fast paced games like FPS or competitive games where you need to react quickly.

IMO it helps making 30fps capped games feel smooth, especially if you're using a controller.

IIRC it also reduces framerate as you decrease the value

I usually just leave pre-rendered frames on 1. I never have screen tearing if i turn vsync on in fullscreen. I don't remember having any bad screen tearing in Wolfenstein, but i did notice it used opengl so i had trouble getting antialiasing working unless i forced it in the console, which didn't really improve much so i didn't bother... also since it used opengl i couldn't use a graphic injector so i couldn't use smaa to antialias the game either.

Only times really i get screen tearing is if i'm playing a game in windowed mode and i have desktop windows manager disabled aka Aero... for some reason having DWM disabled i'll get screen tearing on virtually every game if its played in windowed. So if your getting screen tearing in windowed games, try enabling aero and it'll probably fix it.

I'm surprised adaptive vsync worked, i found i get screen tearing with it on or stuttering.. i perfer just to set it at application selection then use the ingame vsync.

That's a massive amount of input lag added. Also a lot of games ignore that setting.

This. If what you're seeing is 4 frames behind what's being rendered that's noticeable input lag.