Summary
- Both the PS5 and PS5 Pro have an issue where stutters appear in games at eight-second intervals when VRR is turned on.
- PS5 and PS5 Pro users have been reporting the VRR stutter issue for months, and recent testing has confirmed it in popular games like Elden Ring, Resident Evil 4, The Last of Us, etc.
- Sony hasn't acknowledged the stutter issue yet, with affected PS5 and PS5 Pro users advised to disable VRR until a fix arrives.
Some recent testing has confirmed the presence of an unusual, persistent stutter in some PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro games. This odd phenomenon manifests when the consoles' variable refresh rate (VRR) feature is enabled, and has frustrated PS5 players who invested in high-end displays for a smoother gameplay experience.
VRR basically syncs the framerate of a game with the display's refresh rate, which helps eliminate screen tearing and levels out frame fluctuations. For games that tend to run at unstable framerates, VRR can be majorly conducive to smooth gameplay with little to no stuttering. The PS5 received VRR support back in April 2022, which was welcomed by many. However, since the launch of the PS5 Pro late last year, a lot of PS5 players have been reporting a strange stutter occurring every eight seconds when VRR is turned on.
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To validate the legitimacy of the reports, Digital Foundry extensively investigated the VRR stuttering issue and confirmed that it is indeed real and widespread across a variety of PS5 and PS5 Pro games. Affected titles include Elden Ring, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Resident Evil 4, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, and The Last of Us Part 1 and Part 2. The stutter appears consistently at eight-second intervals, making it impossible to ignore once noticed.
PS5 and PS5 Pro Users Facing Stutters Every Eight Seconds When VRR is Enabled
However, games like Dragon's Dogma 2, Immortals of Aveum, God of War Ragnarok, and Gran Turismo 7 were unaffected in Digital Foundry's testing, likely indicating that the VRR stutter issue is game-dependent. Since this problem exists on the PS5 Pro and vanilla PS5, it's not an isolated hardware flaw and is almost certainly a software issue. Despite the mounting complaints, though, Sony has yet to issue an official statement or provide a timeline for a potential fix. Until then, the only solution for affected PS5 and PS5 Pro users is to disable VRR from the system settings, which may come at the cost of less stable gameplay.
One can only hope that Sony is aware of the VRR stutter issue on the PS5 and PS5 Pro, and is actively working to rectify it. Games like Elden Ring, Resident Evil 4, and The Last of Us duo are quite popular on PS5, so the number of affected users is likely substantial. Thankfully, Sony has proved to be cognizant of player feedback in the past, like when it designed the PS5 Pro's heatsink to minimize the risk of liquid metal leakages, a concern that was circulating for the base PS5 a few years ago.
