Weird FPS Bug?

I was just messing around with some of my graphic and display settings because I like doing that every once in a while, and I came across some weird frame limiter behavior.

Normally I have my framerate locked to 120 but turning off the limiter my framerate drops to around 90, turning it back on it goes back up to 120. I've only tested this on the Vulkin renderer so far, so I'm not sure this is some API weirdness, so I'll do some more testing with the standard renderer to see what's what.

I'm running a 7900XTX and a Ryzen 7950X with 64 GB RAM if anyone wants to look into it too.

Edit: I also have v-sync off, so that shouldn't be affecting anything with frame pacing and timings.

 

Simple explanation, without a limit it puts more stress on your hardware. With a limit it helps balance out your hardware a little better. A frame limiter is basically a form of optimization. correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's why a lot of last gen console games were capped at 30 FPS.

 

I've never seen a fps cap do that in any other game. Usually fps limits keep fps from going higher than the specific value, not make it more stable, so enabling it should not increase fps. I can see that argument being made with v-sync since that paces frames to sync with the monitor, but a fps cap doesn't pace frames. Also console games are capped to avoid fluctuating fps throughout gameplay to provide a smoother overall experience.
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I found out that it does also increase my framerate with the limiter on in the standard renderer as well. I'm not sure what is causing that to happen.

 

It's another day and the standard renderer frame limiter is acting as normal now.... I'm so confused.