PC Tech NVIDIA Officially Supporting VESA Adaptive Sync Through G-Sync Compatible Monitors Program – 12 Freesync Monitors Passed, Drivers Launching 15th January

[AbsolutSurgen]

NVIDIA has confirmed that they will be supporting the VESA Adaptive Sync standard through their G-Sync compatible / certification programme. The initiative is to allow Adaptive Sync support with GeForce GTX/RTX graphics cards on monitors which aren’t certified under the G-Sync label and are sold as AMD’s Freesync compatible displays.

NVIDIA To Support VESA Adaptive Sync / AMD Freesync Compatible Monitors Through G-Sync Compatible Program

For a long time, NVIDIA has been developing their G-Sync monitor technology to offer a seamless, tear-free, flicker-free and smooth gaming experience on displays that utilize their G-Sync module. The proprietary technology and the underlying hardware meant that the monitor cost would go up drastically but in return, you’d get a quality gaming experience. Soon after G-Sync was announced, AMD came up with their own display technology dubbed Freesync. AMD utilized the VESA standard and their Adaptive Sync technology over DisplayPort to offer similar tear-free gaming experience.

 

Since then, there has been a competition between NVIDIA’s G-Sync and AMD’s Freesync displays. To this day, hundreds of gaming displays are available under either G-Sync or Freesync branding and while AMD followed an open standard, NVIDIA used their proprietary solution until they got G-Sync out for gaming laptops too. Here, instead of using the expensive G-Sync module, NVIDIA opt for an implementation similar to A-Sync while branding it as G-Sync. This shows that NVIDIA has supported VESA but never been too vocal about it.

Quote

 

There are hundreds of monitor models available capable of variable refresh rates (VRR) using the VESA DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync protocol. However, the VRR gaming experience can vary widely.

To improve the experience for gamers, NVIDIA will test monitors. Those that pass our validation tests will be G-SYNC Compatible and enabled by default in the GeForce driver.

G-SYNC Compatible tests will identify monitors that deliver a baseline VRR experience on GeForce RTX 20-series and GeForce GTX 10-series graphics cards, and activate their VRR features automatically.

Support for G-SYNC Compatible monitors will begin Jan. 15 with the launch of our first 2019 Game Ready driver. Already, 12 monitors have been validated as G-SYNC Compatible (from the 400 we have tested so far). We’ll continue to test monitors and update our support list. For gamers who have monitors that we have not yet tested, or that have failed validation, we’ll give you an option to manually enable VRR, too.

For VRR monitors yet to be validated as G-SYNC Compatible, a new NVIDIA Control Panel option will enable owners to try and switch the tech on – it may work, it may work partly, or it may not work at all.

via NVIDIA

 

But NVIDIA at CES 2019 acknowledged that A-Sync monitors are also built for gaming and that they are very popular. As such, they are officially enabling support for A-sync / Freesync monitors with their upcoming GeForce drivers on 15th January 2019. This is huge news for gamers who want to get hands-on great gaming displays that are cheaper than the G-Sync models while still retaining variable refresh rate and tear-free gaming.

[legend]

Now please add support for the HDMI 2.1 VRR. (You don't need 2.1 hardware to support the spec, so this should be doable.)

[Nokt]

MG279Q vs the 278Q is just IPS/TN. Whyyyyyyy

Hopefully the new Razer monitor gets certified so I can just buy that.

[TwinIon]

Just support all the VRR stuff. I feel like the battle is over. Requiring expensive hardware in the monitor will not be the norm, but VRR will be.

[TwinIon]

This clears up nVidia's VRR plans a bit: They're rebranding 'G-Sync HDR' as 'G-Sync Ultimate.'

 

 

Hopefully this makes my next monitor purchase easier.

 

I'm very interested in this new wave of giant monitors. I won't shell out $5k for the new 65" HP , but I'm very interested in finding out more about the new 43" ASUS. I currently have a ~40" monitor and I think it's a great size for 4K. I think a ~40" 16:9 monitor is so much better for everything than the ultrawides that are becoming more and more popular. The extra height is so much more useful. The problem I have with my current monitor it is that it's just not a great panel at all. It was cheap, so I can't complain, but almost no one makes something that size. Now we're finally seeing new products that are my ideal size and have all the bells and whistles.

[AbsolutSurgen]

@TwinIon -- it is G-Sync HDR that is getting the re-brand.  Plain-Jane G-Sync is still just G-Sync.

[Massdriver]

I bet it ends up working with a lot of monitors that aren't certified just fine.

[AbsolutSurgen]

 

[legend]

13 hours ago, mikechorney said:

 

 

Fascinating. They claim Nvidia says these problems persist even when using an AMD card with freesync on those "bad" uncertified monitors. I'd like to see some confirmation of that from a third party source. If so, it means there are a lot of shit "freesync" monitors out there and I can see why they would have a difference between certified and not.

[AbsolutSurgen]

2 hours ago, legend said:

 

Fascinating. They claim Nvidia says these problems persist even when using an AMD card with freesync on those "bad" uncertified monitors. I'd like to see some confirmation of that from a third party source. If so, it means there are a lot of shit "freesync" monitors out there and I can see why they would have a difference between certified and not.

Absolutely.  I am sure that they picked some of the worst performers  to show as examples.  I am pretty confident that there are "uncertified" monitors that are "pretty good" that display artifacts that aren't as pronounced (or even go unnoticed by many gamers).

[Massdriver]

There are probably tons of crappy freesync monitors, but my monitor didn’t make the nvidia list, a Nixeus EDG27. It works great with a Vega. This makes me think that either nvidia has some work to do with their drivers or they are exaggerating. 

[Massdriver]

 

This guy tested my monitor and it looks like it works with with display port on nvidia cards.

[Massdriver]

Quote

 

So of the seven monitors we tested, six worked flawlessly. The one monitor that didn’t was never going to because it required FreeSync over HDMI, which Nvidia doesn’t support. It’s also good to verify that low framerate compensation and HDR work in conjunction with adaptive sync on Nvidia GPUs, just like they do on AMD GPUs.

We expect what we found here will be the case for the vast majority of FreeSync monitors. If the monitor is known to work perfectly with AMD GPUs over DisplayPort – so it doesn’t have inherent flickering issues – it should also work perfectly with Nvidia GPUs when you enable the toggle. If the monitor has issues on an Nvidia GPU, it will also likely have issues on an AMD GPU, and should be returned.

 

Should the monitors we tested to work perfectly be certified as G-Sync compatible? It’s hard to say without knowing Nvidia’s strict testing guidelines. However any monitor that doesn’t support LFC will automatically fail – and there are loads of FreeSync monitors without LFC including two I tested today. But I think it’s important to stress that you don’t need to purchase a G-Sync compatible monitor to get adaptive sync with your Nvidia GPU. Buying a G-Sync compatible monitor will guarantee a working experience and guarantee support for features like LFC, but regular FreeSync monitors will work just fine as well.

 

https://www.techspot.com/article/1779-freesync-and-nvidia-geforce/

[Massdriver]

Here is a list of freesync monitors people have tested with gsync: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YI0RQcymJSY0-LkbjSRGswWpJzVRuK_4zMvphRbh19k/htmlview?usp=sharing&sle=true&fbclid=IwAR1RB8stQlk1B-RE63GhGUTe57J0x-DUboTUtFWxbcoTzicFEerRG6n0GlA#

[AbsolutSurgen]

Interesting writeup by Digital Foundry.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-01-28-best-freesync-monitors-for-nvidia-graphics-cards-7044

I hadn't realized that some Freesync monitors had such narrow VRR ranges.

[Massdriver]

https://www.techspot.com/article/1786-best-freesync-monitors-geforce-gpu/

Here is another article on freesync monitors and geforce.

[Brick]

Isn't G-Sync technically a little better than Freesync, but also more expensive? 

[Spork3245]

On 2/7/2019 at 7:43 PM, Brick said:

Isn't G-Sync technically a little better than Freesync, but also more expensive? 

 

Yes, it’s technically better, yes, it’s more expensive because it requires physical hardware in the monitor. However, you’d need to 1000fps camera to actually capture the difference in input lag vs freesync, meaning, there’s no discernible difference for actual users.

[AbsolutSurgen]

7 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

 

Yes, it’s technically better, yes, it’s more expensive because it requires physical hardware in the monitor. However, you’d need to 1000fps camera to actually capture the difference in input lag vs freesync, meaning, there’s no discernible difference for actual users.

You're right, the better Freesync gaming monitors are virtually equivalent to a G-Sync monitor.  However, a tremendous amount of Freesync monitors are lower quality monitors -- and deliver a worse experience.  (Ghosting, Lack of LFC, etc.)  

[Spork3245]

3 hours ago, mikechorney said:

You're right, the better Freesync gaming monitors are virtually equivalent to a G-Sync monitor.  However, a tremendous amount of Freesync monitors are lower quality monitors -- and deliver a worse experience.  (Ghosting, Lack of LFC, etc.)  

 

I’m talking about freesync vs g-sync as a variable refresh rate technology, not the panel/image quality which has nothing to do with the VRR tech.  

[AbsolutSurgen]

8 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

I’m talking about freesync vs g-sync as a variable refresh rate technology, not the panel/image quality which has nothing to do with the VRR tech.  

One of the problems with Freesync is its (relatively) poor implementation on a large number of panels...  G-Sync generally doesn't have that problem. 

 

Edit:  There have been numerous posts in this forum about monitors that don't offer a good VRR experience, but believe they are as good as most G-Sync monitors, because they have the Freesync label.

[Spork3245]

13 minutes ago, mikechorney said:

One of the problems with Freesync is its (relatively) poor implementation on a large number of panels...  G-Sync generally doesn't have that problem. 

 

That’s more of a statement of strict quality standards associated with certification (and Freesync not actually having a certification process since, to my knowledge, it’s open source) then a statement of the VRR tech.

With G-Sync, a monitor will meet a certain minimum of quality standards in terms of image and screen/panel quality, with Freesync you need to do more due-diligence.

 

However, again, with what I was responding to and posting about: G-Sync is technically a better technology as there is less input lag, however, that difference would not be discernible to anyone using the monitor. Again, I am speaking solely of the VRR tech, not the panel it’s being used on.

[Massdriver]

22 minutes ago, mikechorney said:

One of the problems with Freesync is its (relatively) poor implementation on a large number of panels...  G-Sync generally doesn't have that problem. 

 

Edit:  There have been numerous posts in this forum about monitors that don't offer a good VRR experience, but believe they are as good as most G-Sync monitors, because they have the Freesync label.

All you have to do is read some articles and reviews to find good freesync panels. AMD also has the freesync 2 label which has stricter quality controls, larger ranges, etc.

[AbsolutSurgen]

7 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

That’s more of a statement of strict quality standards associated with certification (and Freesync not actually having a certification process since, to my knowledge, it’s open source) then a statement of the VRR tech.

With G-Sync, a monitor will meet a certain minimum of quality standards in terms of image and screen/panel quality, with Freesync you need to do more due-diligence.

 

However, again, with what I was responding to and posting about: G-Sync is technically a better technology as there is less input lag, however, that difference would not be discernible to anyone using the monitor. Again, I am speaking solely of the VRR tech, not the panel it’s being used on.

Agreed.  At it's best, Freesync seems to be virtually indistinguishable from G-Sync.  The technology CAN  be as good -- but in actual implementation, often isn't.

 

1 minute ago, Massdriver said:

All you have to do is read some articles and reviews to find good freesync panels. AMD also has the freesync 2 label which has stricter quality controls, larger ranges, etc.

Many reviewers don't do a very good job of highlighting how good the VRR is on a display.

[Spork3245]

2 hours ago, mikechorney said:

The technology CAN  be as good -- but in actual implementation, often isn’t.

 

What you’re describing is not a fault of the technology, it’s to do with manufacturers using sub-par panels. If you buy a low-quality 4k HDR monitor, do you blame 4k, HDR, or the panel?

[AbsolutSurgen]

1 hour ago, Spork3245 said:

 

What you’re describing is not a fault of the technology, it’s to do with manufacturers using sub-par panels. If you buy a low-quality 4k HDR monitor, do you blame 4k, HDR, or the panel?

I think we're in violent agreement.