Sony has announced that a new feature is coming to PlayStation 5 this week. The long-awaited Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) addition is coming in the next few days, and a number of games will support the feature in the coming weeks.
In one today’s blog post, Hideaki Nishino, senior vice president of platform experiences for PlayStation, introduced VRR and described the basics of how it works. “On HDMI 2.1 VRR-compatible TVs and PC monitors, VRR automatically synchronizes the display’s refresh rate with the PS5 console’s graphics output. This enhances visual performance for games. play PS5 by minimizing or eliminating visual phenomena, such as frame rate issues and screen tearing,” Nishino wrote. “It makes games look smoother overall and can even reduce input lag.”
As noted in the quote above, you’ll need a display that supports VRR and an HDMI 2.1 port to use it either way. Many gaming monitors and TVs that use AMD’s Freesync technology (their branded term for VRR) will be compatible with this new feature, so make sure yours before enabling Refresh Rate changes on PlayStation 5.
Some PlayStation 5 games will be using VRR soon, and the PlayStation Blog post provided a list of which games we expect to roll out VRR support in the coming weeks.
Variable refresh rates are a big deal, especially for games that can’t maintain a consistent frame rate. It really helps with the stutter and splash you might have in these inconsistent games and even has the effect of making the framerate run higher than it actually is. I am most interested in seeing it used in games where performance suffers from running at too high a resolution or from resources taxed by turning on lights or beams. VRR has been implemented on Xbox Series X and S and makes a big difference there, so I’m happy to see it work with games like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and God come downtwo games where the frame rate suffers in higher fidelity.
Want to see which games get VRR support on PS5? Let us know in the comments below!
