Take the 2-minute tour ×

I read everything written in a previous question. From what I understand in double buffering the program must wait until the finished drawing is copied or swapped before starting the next drawing. In triple buffering the program has two back buffers and can immediately start drawing in the one that is not involved in such copying.

But with triple buffering if you're in a situation where you can take advantage of the third buffer doesn't that suggest that you are drawing frames faster than the monitor can refresh. So then you don't actually get a higher frame rate. So what is the benefit of triple buffering then?

share|improve this question

1 Answer 1

up vote 8 down vote accepted

Both Double and Triple buffering solve the problem of black redraws on the screen. Triple buffering, however, solves a problem of concurrency when the current draw buffer is being memcpy-ed to the screen, and your game scene can start drawing already.

This article is the best way to explain the benefits of triple buffering ... http://remis-thoughts.blogspot.in/2012/01/triple-buffering-as-concurrency.html

share|improve this answer
To reply to your question, if your render time per frame isn't high at all, you aren't really gaining any different frames, than the monitor is able to push. That's one reason most people are locked to their video adapter/monitor's redraw rates, with sync. These days, Most TVs these days do provide 120Hz refresh rates, and to do 3D games, you'd have to tap into drawing as many frames (L-R interleaved) per second. It all depends on your game and intended audience, for short. –  Karthik Kumar Viswanathan Jun 10 '12 at 9:07

Your Answer


