14 DAY TRIAL // You might be familiar with the NVIDIA G-Sync technology, which synchronizes the refresh rate of the monitor with the texture fill rate of the system video card. Well, Advanced Micro Devices thinks you shouldn't need G-Sync at all.
That's why the company, along with certain other IT entities, has been working on the FreeSync technology. A technology that was demonstrated at Computex 2014 not long ago.
In theory, G-Sync sounds like a godsend. A technology that allows for the frame rate made possible by a video card to sync with the refresh rates of a screen. It eliminates screen flickering, tearing or other possible glitches.
Normally, you'd have to enable V-Sync, to force the frame rate to match the refresh rate, but that results in a huge latency almost every time. The sort where you move your mouse and the cursor responds drunkenly, in slow motion even.
G-Sync got a great momentary reaction when it first came out, a couple months ago or so. However, there was one thing that got it criticism: it relies on an extra hardware part.
And not just any hardware part, but a G-Sync module that is quite large, and kind of needs monitor makers to modify their designs, build their monitors around the G-Sync module, almost. AMD proved particularly critical of this, and was quick to announce an alternative that doesn't rely on new hardware at all.
AMD dubbed the technology FreeSync (no doubt meaning free from hardware constraints, or some such thing). Moreover, the FreeSync technology is supposed to be ready for implementation as we speak.
The display in the photo above is a monitor that supports FreeSync. It uses a variable refresh functionality designed for the DisplayPort 1.2a standard. Curiously, the technique was first developed for embedded DisplayPort (eDP).
The monitor only worked at 40 Hz to 60 Hz, but actual, selling displays should have a much broader range. Apparently, the monitor already had adaptive capabilities, but didn't have the firmware for it. AMD intends to enable FreeSync on displays just through a firmware update, effectively neutering G-Sync from a marketing standpoint.
If it works, those few G-Sync monitors that have already come out will probably become the symbols of an abandoned campaign, and nothing more. Or maybe the things will keep coming out. There's always the possibility that NVIDIA will spin things somehow, and get its G-Sync module to sell despite the hardware-free alternative from its rival. At the very least, some customers are bound to think that hardware-based solutions are better just because they're, well, hardware based.
