Computer Died, Thinking of Laptop Replacement

Yes, exactly, vsync caps framerate to display rate, and for simpler Unity games that have no internal cap it can be necessary, because the uncapped framerate can be very high. Simpler games can use so little CPU resources (more complex games are also CPU limited at some point and can’t process, say 400 fps) that the internal FPS can shoot up and overheat your computer. The engine does render more frames that can be displayed if allowed to…

However the Steam counter will show only actually displayed frames. So you can be shown, say 60fps, but the engine can be running at 400.

It is counterintuitive, but this behavior can come from poor optimization as said, but also from pretty good optimization, that generates too high internal frame rates and taxing every component (while if you have a bottleneck you can have an overloaded GPU or CPU but not both).

Not saying this is your issue (it could be many other things), but it’s definitely the most common cause for this behavior. It’s most easily seen in games that when under “full load” (playing) do not overheat the computer but do when showing very simple menus (internal FPS can go over 1k).

I knew I should have clarified - I was saying it won’t really reduce the burden of the GPU being used “based on what Kolbex is saying” because it didn’t sound like he was hitting his monitors frame cap to begin with. That’s why I said “directly” but I knew that wasn’t clear enough, I was too busy to properly write what I meant. That said, I still don’t think v-sync is a good solution for this - capping framerates is a much better solution.

Oh, well, sure. If he’s overheating at 40fps vsync won’t help, capping at 30 would.

Wacky. Well, I’ll try it.

Yeah, definitely have v-sync on - I mean really there isn’t any reason not to keep it one - and it’s usually on by default (though on my first/previous g-sync display I had better to keep v-sync off or it would get strangely teary/flickery on some games). But if you are getting like 30-50fps or whatever, cap at 30 as there is probably no reason to try and get higher than that, and that will keep your laptop from running as hard as possible.