Upcoming PS5 Update Adds Variable Refresh Rate

It was only a month ago that we first heard support for Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) would be added in an update for the PlayStation 5. However, some may have forgotten with the announced PlayStation Plus changes coming a week later. It has been a feature that many have been looking forward to, as both PC players and those with an Xbox Series X|S console have been able to enjoy it.

At the time it was only said that it would be added in the vague timeframe of the coming months, but it seems players will be getting it sooner than expected. A new PlayStation blog post has announced that the global update will be rolling out this week.

For those that don’t understand what the appeal is, VRR is a great way to improve performance. A consistent framerate helps to keep a gameplay experience smooth, but it can be at odds with itself when a game is trying to meet a monitor’s fixed refresh rate for frames. When they don’t match up we end up with what’s known as screen tearing with part of a new frame and part of an old one. A common workaround for this is a V-sync option, but that comes with the caveat that it may cause some hitches as the display shows the same frame until the display and the graphics card/console can match.

VRR circumvents this by having the display’s refresh rate sync to whatever the PC or console is currently outputting. Even if your framerate in a game has moments where it dips and rises, it will feel a whole lot smoother. The PlayStation 5 will support this through TVs and monitors which are VRR-compatible and feature HDMI 2.1. The blog post additionally lists the following games as those which will initially receive VRR support:

Astro’s Playroom
Call of Duty: Vanguard
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
Deathloop
Destiny 2
Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition
DIRT 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gJgj2ngCyA

Godfall
Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
Resident Evil Village
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege
Tribes of Midgard

Deathloop in particular is already prepared for VRR on the PlayStation 5. An update on the blog post as well as a tweet from the game’s Twitter account implies that players will be able to take advantage as soon as the console’s update rolls out. The rest of the titles in the provided list are expected to update over the next few weeks.

All VRR-supported titles will have the feature automatically enabled, although players can turn it off themselves by going to their system settings and then to “Screen and Video.” Even games that are currently not supported by VRR can make use of the feature. It is warned that this could improve the visual quality or cause visual issues though, so players will have to see for themselves whether it will work for their favorite games on their personal setups.