Set up the VRR sync stack

The goal

Get tear-free and low-latency at the same time on a VRR monitor — the single most-felt smoothness upgrade there is.

Steps

1. Turn on VRR in two places that must agree: your monitor's own menu (look for G-Sync, FreeSync, or Adaptive Sync) and your graphics driver's display settings.
2. In the graphics driver, set V-Sync to On. This sounds wrong, but here it only acts as a safety net for the rare frame that overshoots.
3. Cap your frame rate about 3 below your refresh rate — 141 on a 144 Hz panel, 237 on a 240 Hz panel. This keeps you inside the VRR range so V-Sync never adds its lag.
4. Turn on NVIDIA Reflex (or in-game Anti-Lag 2 on AMD) in any game that offers it, for the lowest input latency.
5. Play, and watch for tearing or stutter — done right, you should see neither.

To undo

Set V-Sync back to your old value, remove the FPS cap, and turn VRR off in the driver if you want the original behavior. Nothing here is permanent.