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I recently read about Nvidia's G-SYNC technology and it sounds pretty cool! Their solution seemed quite elegant to me. That is, until I read about AMD's FreeSync technology.

The main difference I could gather from all that is that Nvidia is rolling out new hardware to specifically achieve what G-SYNC does. Whereas, AMD simply modified their graphics drivers without any extra hardware! However, there is a video on YouTube where AMD says that they still require some form of hardware support.

Due to the fact that Nvidia is asking for about $250 for their tech, I'm thinking there could be other differences. So now my question is twofold:

  1. Have I understood this correctly?
  2. Are there any differences? (Meaning, is one technology superior to the other in any non-monetary way?)
Hennes
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Anish Ramaswamy
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Assuming that you know what Adaptive syncing is about, Here is the difference between the two: Nvidia is looking to own the private market with the G-sync technology, where only their graphics cards paired with G-sync supported monitors can perform Adaptive Sync. whereas Amd plans to tread the open-source path, the technology that Amd is planning to use is going to be free for development,compatible with various graphics hardware and we can most probably expect compatible secondary hardware in many monitors. the Amd market is yet to evolve and we cannot make any comparisons till commercial prototypes are available.

OmarAsifShaikh
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  • Ah so I did understand it correctly then. Well you cannot say "open-source" since they will never release their driver source code. They're just being nicer than Nvidia then. – Anish Ramaswamy Jul 03 '14 at 22:56
  • Also, monitors using G-SYNC have been commercially released. – Anish Ramaswamy Jul 03 '14 at 22:56
  • According to the article, DisplayPort 1.2a already supports the sync rate being driven by the gpu, so isn't this already done (for any monitors that are 1.2a compliant)? – Paul Jul 03 '14 at 22:57
  • Yes true, Nvidia seems to be having the upper hand for now, but if the Free Sync open source project truly tempts the development crowd to contribute, then we may find ourselves with a universal and more effecient adaptive sync technology. – OmarAsifShaikh Jul 03 '14 at 22:58
  • @Paul, Whoa. Interesting. If you'd care to elaborate on that, that would be awesome. – Anish Ramaswamy Jul 03 '14 at 22:59
  • @AnishRamaswamy It is in the article you referenced: "That very ability was proposed by AMD to VESA ... Our proposal was accepted and integrated into the DisplayPort 1.2a specification as a feature going by the name of "DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync." – Paul Jul 03 '14 at 23:01
  • @Dark_Cyber Youre Welcome! – OmarAsifShaikh Jul 03 '14 at 23:02
  • @Paul, Whoops. Yeah I remember now. (That site is quite hard on the eyes.) Oh and I now understand your question. Watch that YouTube video I linked to. They talk about which graphics cards could support that. Also, they mention that they have to make some modifications to the driver. So I'm not entirely sure that it is exactly possible with pure software upgrades. – Anish Ramaswamy Jul 03 '14 at 23:03
  • @Paul We can only do so much from the graphics card and display port, But the work on the monitor side completes the package. which has yet to be developed. on the other hand Nvidia has already released the monitors. – OmarAsifShaikh Jul 03 '14 at 23:05
  • Yeah for sure @AnishRamaswamy - a change to DisplayPort specs implies both hardware and software changes. But it is an extension of an existing spec rather than something new, which makes the AMD approach far more attractive. It is a standards vs proprietary thing, and I have my own opinion on which way is better. – Paul Jul 03 '14 at 23:08
  • @Paul, And I agree with you on that one :) – Anish Ramaswamy Jul 03 '14 at 23:10
  • The interesting thing will be if nVidia produces cards with "up to date" displayport, they will support adaptive sync without G-sync. The only outcome I can see is that g-sync will go away as being pointless (in the fullness of time). Anyway, these comments are a discussion now and best moved to chat. – Paul Jul 03 '14 at 23:12