If you’ve ever toggled VSync on and watched your frame rate seesaw between smooth and stuttery, you’ve met the limitations of double buffering. Triple buffering adds a third buffer to the swapchain so that the GPU can keep rendering even when a frame is queued for presentation, delivering smoother animation and higher average FPS with VSync on.
Double buffering
With double buffering, we use two buffers, one for presenting to the screen and one for rendering off-screen, swapping between them as new frames are produced.
Buffer Role Front Scanned out to the display Back GPU renders into this buffer
VSync ON
Buffer Behavior Front Shown on screen until the next VSync Back Swapped with the front buffer only at VSync
Key Effects:
If rendering finishes early, GPU waits (stall).
If rendering finishes late, Frame is delayed until the next refresh (stutter).
No tearing is observed, but can cause uneven frame pacing.
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