Almost by accident I discovered that using the framerate limiter in MSI Afterburner gives me a much smoother rendering experience in some TW games, even with lower framerates. For example scrolling the map in Napoleon TW always had some strange stutters even though the framerate was between 50-70fps. After limiting the framerate to 30fps, map scrolling is very smooth without stutters. Besides smoother rendering, limiting the framerate has many other advantages for the GPU, like less utilization, lower power usage, less heat, quieter operation, more OC headroom.
I use it with my 7970. I think Nvidia added a framerate limiter to their driver settings recently, therefore Nvidia users don't need Afterburner for that.
Here are the instructions:
1) Enable OSD in Afterburner
2) Restart afterburner
3) Running OSD will put an app called "riva tuner" in your system tray, its the afterburner icon but has a purple 60 on it
4) Open riva tuner
5) Add the Napoleon.exe to the application list and select it
6) Go in options (click on the wrench on the top right), set frame rate limiter to 25-60fps (0 is unlimited)
7) you can also combine fps limiter with in game vsync if you want
Result:
- No microstutters (e.g. much smoother map scrolling in Napoleon TW for me)
- (Much) lower GPU utilization -> less power -> less heat -> quieter -> more OC headroom
Obviously I can't say how well it will work for others but I think it's well worth experimenting with it. It's also nice to limit older games which run unnecessarily fast (like > 100fps) otherwise. It should also help to reduce coil whine when you are affected by limiting too high FPS in game menus.