Digital Foundry confirmed: PlayStation 5 and PS5 Pro have prevalent VRR stuttering problems

We’ve received a continuous stream of reports over the last few months suggesting there’s a problem with PlayStation 5: VRR support has an issue where game performance can be interrupted by a continuous, obvious stutter that manifests every eight seconds. Various theories have been shared and discussed online, covering a range of displays and firmwares but after spending some time investigating the problem, we can confirm it is a real problem, impacting both PS5 and Pro consoles – and based on our tests, it will impact any VRR-compatible display.

To fully understand the issue, it’s important to explain how VRR – variable refresh rate – works in general and more specifically on PlayStation consoles. Until VRR arrived, the most stable performance in console games was to see frame-rate locked to 60fps or 30fps. An even delivery of frames is sent to the display, synchronising with the refresh rate of the panel. At 60fps, a new frame is displayed with each new refresh of the screen. At 30fps, a new frame persists for two refreshes. As the name suggests, VRR operates with a variable refresh rate. Instead of the console needing to synchronise with the display update, the console itself is in charge of when the refresh happens – typically whenever a new frame is ready to be presented.

With VRR, a game doesn’t need to run locked to 60fps or 30fps to present to gamers in a consistent manner – as long as frame-rates remain broadly similar, gameplay still looks smooth, even if a game is operating in, for example, a variable 50-60fps or 100-120fps ‘window’. It’s a boon to players and can even be considered a ‘fix’ of sorts to variable frame-rates, reducing stutter considerably and removing screen-tearing completely in titles that exhibit it.

So, what’s the problem with PlayStation? The most obvious example of the stuttering issue presenting itself occurs in titles that support 120Hz VRR with unlocked frame-rates – games like The Last of Us Part 1 and 2, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and Diablo 4, for example. What happens is that gameplay works just fine for around 20 minutes, but at some point soon after that, a noticeable stutter manifests every eight seconds, give or take a few frames. The point of VRR is to bring consistency to variable frame-rates and the ‘magic’ is lost when the game stutters so noticeably in so regular a cadence.

If you have a VRR-compatible panel, you may have access to a refresh rate monitor. Disregarding more complex elements of VRR not relevant to the discussion (low frame-rate compensation, etc), these read-outs tell you how often the console is driving the display to update itself with a new frame. It’s the closest you’ll get to a console equivalent to a PC-style frame-rate meter. Thanks to the inclusion of these meters, we’ve noted that the stuttering causes the refresh rate counter to momentarily spike up to 120Hz in the most obviously affected titles. So, in a game like Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 on PS5 Pro, for example, we can see frame-rates in the 60-70fps range thanks to the onscreen display – and when a stutter kicks in, there’s that telltale, momentary jump to 120Hz.

Since refresh rate monitors are so common across so many different TVs and monitors – with the same 120Hz ‘tell’ occurring on all tested screens, we are able to discount some of the reasons suggested for PS5/Pro VRR stutter. There’s been the suggestion that the problem is limited to LG OLED TVs, or TVs based on LG OLED panels. Others believe the problem only kicked in after a non-specified LG OLED firmware update. However, we’ve tested a Samsung mini-LED display, an LG OLED TV, an LG OLED PC monitor with HDMI 2.1 VRR support and even an Eve Spectrum monitor. All have refresh rate meters, all exhibit stutter and all show momentary spikes to 120Hz when a stutter kicks in. At this point, all evidence indicates that it is not the display that is the source of the problem, but rather PlayStation 5 and PS5 Pro consoles. The spike to 120Hz does suggest that the console is dropping out of VRR ‘in the moment’ and returning to a fixed refresh rate, causing the stutter.

At this point we should stress that this is a Sony-specific issue only. Xbox VRR remains robust and in multi-platform games that exhibit the problem on PlayStation, the Microsoft console works just fine.

Quite why this is happening is unclear. We’ve tested a total of 19 games now, finding that many games have the problem, while others seemingly do not. The evidence suggests that if the output frame-rate of the console does not vary so much, the stutter is less likely to happen. We can see the impact of the problem easily in Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered for example, but it’s far more difficult to see if it’s a problem in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, running on the same engine and likely using the same Sony libraries.

While developers have to actively support VRR, especially to support 120Hz VRR, Sony offers a back-up solution for existing games with no support. This support is at the system level, activated within the PlayStation’s front-end. It is limited to 60Hz and only allows VRR to work within a 48Hz to 60Hz ‘window’. Reports that Elden Ring has a similar 20 minutes of smooth play followed by a stutter every eight seconds are confirmed. So, the evidence points away from this being a problem introduced by game developers and points more towards an issue with how PS5 and PS5 Pro output a VRR signal.

Of the 19 games we tested, this table shows games where we can categorically confirm there is a problem and conversely, titles where VRR works just as it should. Our general test methodology was to load a game, go away and do other things, then return 30 to 60 minutes later to check for stutter. Of course, it may well be the case that titles that are unaffected may simply require more time before the issue kicks in – but the point is that we can confirm there is a problem that Sony needs to fix.

* Unaffected within the scope of our testing – other factors may cause the issue to manifest

Looking at the table, it’s difficult to find any common link between games that exhibit the issue and those that don’t. It’s not a third-party developer problem as Sony games can be impacted. It’s not an engine problem as games running on the same underlying technology can sit in either category – Resident Evil 4 and Dragon’s Dogma 2 both use the RE Engine, for example. However, the inclusion of Elden Ring would suggest that it’s more likely a system-level issue: FromSoftware released that game before VRR was even supported, meaning that the PS5’s system software is handling all aspects of that game’s VRR presentation.

The only other common factors we have are that many games that support completely unlocked – and therefore more variable – frame-rates have the problem when VRR is active. In game modes where there is less variability, the problem is less likely to present. Titles that run consistently well at 120fps, 60fps, 30fps or even 40fps with VRR enabled seem to work fine.

That said, where the issue does obviously manifest, clearly this is a big issue – the whole point of VRR is to ‘smooth out’ games where frame-rate is variable, so in that respect, the stuttering is clearly a problem. First of all, you can simply disable VRR in the system software menu and play with a standard fixed refresh rate. Thankfully, that’s not exactly a major problem on most of the affected games we’ve found. The only other workable solution is to restart the game every so often when the issue emerges. Obviously, this is not ideal. We’ve informed Sony of all of our findings and would hope to see this addressed. We’ll report back on this in due course.