Before I answer What is VRR? Let me start by answering what Variable Refresh Rate is not. It won’t give you more FPS or better graphics settings. It will give you lower input lag at 120hz which is what the Xbox One S|X and Xbox Series X|S are compatible with thru HDMI 2.1 that allows your tv to enable the 120hz mode in tv and display settings of the Xbox console.
What is VRR? It makes it so the tv and Xbox or monitor and Xbox talk to each other in a way that they both know when a drop frame or lack of a frame will occur. In lameness terms that’s it. Your tv will talk to the Xbox and the Xbox will talk to the tv in order to avoid having a dropped frame or piece of your video feed which makes it look smooth and avoids screen tearing.
VRR or Variable Refresh Rate won’t be able to make a crappy performance great meaning if your game targets 60 FPS and it drops to below 45 FPS than VRR won’t be able to smooth it out.
It is designed to smooth out drops around 10 or so FPS below the target FPS. It will help with games like Conan Exiles or Ark Survival Evolved that drop below 45 FPS, but only smoothing out the times that the video game falls anywhere between 60 and 45 FPS.
What is VRR? It is a free piece of software build into HDMI 2.1 and the Xbox consoles and it does pretty much the same thing as FreeSync. If your tv or monitor has FreeSync then worry not it will work with your Xbox One or Xbox Series console.
The reason why VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) and FreeSync are needed is because video is frames like images that move really fast 60 or 120 frames per second and when a frame fails to render or be produced by your Xbox’s gpu the tv usually doesn’t know and it will go ahead and refresh the pixels at the usual frame timing.
When a frame fails to render and the refresh occurs then we end up with a missing frame and that can be the difference between making that jump in Crash Bandicoot or hitting your target in Fortnite before they build. These drops feel really bad at 60 FPS, but not so much when they drop below 120 FPS.
What is VRR? Is a great free piece of software/hardware that Microsoft implemented into the origins of the Xbox One S and Xbox One X to help out with dropping frames specially with the weak cpu of the older Xbox devices.
The technology was sort of being tested on the older Xbox One consoles, but with the advent of the Xbox Series S|X we are now being able to truly utilize that technology to its fullest. Heck the PS5 or PlayStation 5 is promising to bring it in a future update, but it is taking a little too long if you ask me. (update: It has been released and it works some of the time).
What is VRR?
It will give you lower input lag at 120hz which is what the Xbox One S|X and Xbox Series X|S are compatible with thru HDMI 2.1 that allows your tv to enable the 120hz mode in tv and display settings of the Xbox console.
What is VRR? It makes it so the tv and Xbox or monitor and Xbox talk to each other in a way that they both know when a drop frame or lack of a frame will occur.
In lameness terms that’s it. Your tv will talk to the Xbox and the Xbox will talk to the tv in order to avoid having a dropped frame or piece of your video feed which makes it look smooth and avoids screen tearing.
