question on vsync with 2070 Max-Q on alienware m15

There’s nothing about Adaptive V-Sync that requires support from the display. That option just dynamically switches V-Sync on and off based on load. It’s not like G-Sync where the display itself has to support a variable refresh rate to match the frame rate of the game.

I believe the reason that option and several others you’re used to aren’t available is because the Alienware M15 uses an NVIDIA Optimus setup for the built-in display, and possibly some of the built-in display output connectors. That means that the NVIDIA GPU is not physically wired to the display output. Instead, the Intel GPU is wired to the output, and when the NVIDIA GPU’s horsepower is required, it acts as a render-only device that passes completed video frames to the Intel GPU for output to the display. The benefit to this design is primarily battery life, because it allows the NVIDIA GPU to be completely disabled when it’s not needed, whereas if it directly controlled the display output, it would have to be on whenever a display connected to that output was in use, even if nothing graphics-intensive was going on. But the downside to this design is that there are certain technologies that Intel GPUs don’t support passing through and/or that require the NVIDIA GPU to have direct control of the display output. Some such technologies include stereoscopic 3D, VR, G-Sync, and 5K resolution — and apparently maybe Adaptive V-Sync. That probably also explains the color and brightness controls in NVIDIA Control Panel (or lack thereof).

It’s possible that if you connect an external display, those options would become available, although that obviously doesn’t change the picture for the built-in display — and even with external displays you might find that it depends on the output you use. The M15 is rated for VR, so at least one output would have to be directly controlled by the NVIDIA GPU, but that doesn’t mean all of them are. Some Alienware systems only have the HDMI output wired to the NVIDIA GPU specifically for VR support, but even that has become a problem now that the new Oculus Rift S has switched to DisplayPort. The only way to get DisplayPort out of those systems is through their USB-C outputs, but those are wired to the Intel GPU. DisplayPort to HDMI adapters only convert a DisplayPort source to HDMI, not the other way around, unfortunately.

If you don’t see an option for Adaptive V-Sync in NVIDIA Control Panel, I doubt that enabling it in a game would have any effect. And if your only options are V-Sync on or off, then for most games I personally would probably run a 72 Hz refresh rate and turn it on, assuming you can set the built-in display to run at 72 Hz. Trying to maintain a locked 144 FPS to use V-Sync properly at the panel’s native refresh rate would be tough even for a 2070 GTX, at least with modern games unless you wanted to turn the detail way down.

Good information, thank you. I can confirm connecting to another monitor Or tv allows all the nvidia control panel. I guess I’m just trying to figure out the laptops limitations and you filled the gaps. As a side note for anyone frustrated with these limitations, Riva tuners latest release has an “s-sync” option which is very similar to vsync, only it “pushes” the tearing off screen so you don’t see it when frame rates are high. It works very well on the m15 and provided smooth frame rates similar to adaptive vsync or vsync. Disable all vsync in control panel and in game, disable frame limits, and set s sync to -30 (the range in which the tearing occurs, which is off screen.)