AMD Shows Off An External FreeSync Monitor In Action

[Baconmon]

The point being there are no frames coming through. You have a heavy scene and your fps temporarily drops below that 120, say to 101.

Adaptive = you get smooth 101.
Current = you would get stutter, one frame at 60 next at 120, for example.

I don't understand how you can claim to understand the technology. You clearly don't.
Your restaurant analogy is completely wrong.

This is not at all true. Your "restaurant" will just serve food to whoever happens to sit in the restaurant at the start of every hour. Monitors don't do any "checking" to see if there is new stuff to draw. There is no polling.

If the frame isn't rendered at the time of the next monitor refresh, it'll have to wait for the next one, which halfs your refresh rate.
As a worst case scenario; you have a 60Hz monitor, and you have a game that takes just slightly over 1/60 seconds to render, then you will get 30Hz on screen. With adaptive syncing, you might get 59Hz.
You can have double (to reduce) and triple buffering to avoid this major slowdown, but that also increases the amount of delay.

Noone has ever claimed it'll go beyond the monitors refresh rate. If you have a powerful GPU and play a simple game that can pull off > 120Hz always, then the monitor output will be identical.

You both are right.. When your game drops below your maximum refresh-rate that your monitor can do, adaptive-sync is superior..

And, the "polling/checking" thing was just an error in the metaphore.. A restaurant person wouldn't serve food to a non-existant customer.. But v-sync always draws a frame every time though..

Although just as I thought, *IF* your computer can keep up with rendering frames up to your monitor's maximum rate, adaptive-sync should have no advantage (in that situation) over v-sync.. Although adaptive-sync has advantages in lots of other situations..

Any way, thanks to every one for helping me understand exactly how adaptive-sync works.. I think it is a good step forward in monitor and refresh-rate technology and stuff..

[Micket]

I don't understand how you can claim to understand the technology. You clearly don't.
Your restaurant analogy is completely wrong.

Since you are v-sync, you ALWAYS have to come out from the back (every 1 minute) to check if new customers have arrived or not

This is not at all true. Your "restaurant" will just serve food to whoever happens to sit in the restaurant at the start of every hour. Monitors don't do any "checking" to see if there is new stuff to draw. There is no polling.

If the frame isn't rendered at the time of the next monitor refresh, it'll have to wait for the next one, which halfs your refresh rate.
As a worst case scenario; you have a 60Hz monitor, and you have a game that takes just slightly over 1/60 seconds to render, then you will get 30Hz on screen. With adaptive syncing, you might get 59Hz.
You can have double (to reduce) and triple buffering to avoid this major slowdown, but that also increases the amount of delay.

Noone has ever claimed it'll go beyond the monitors refresh rate. If you have a powerful GPU and play a simple game that can pull off > 120Hz always, then the monitor output will be identical.

[curaga]

You didn't read clearly.

And it doesn't want to lower it, because why the hell would you lower the rate when you already have crap-loads of frames that are coming through??

The point being there are no frames coming through. You have a heavy scene and your fps temporarily drops below that 120, say to 101.

Adaptive = you get smooth 101.
Current = you would get stutter, one frame at 60 next at 120, for example.

[Baconmon]

How I see adaptive-sync:

Okay thanks every one for helping me understand..

I guess I am confused on how some thing with a slower refresh could be faster than the maximum refresh speed..
Like how could switching to 100hz temporarily, be faster than just staying at 120hz v-sync constantly?..

If you are playing a high-paced FPS game or some thing, and your monitor goes up to 120hz, why would you ever want to switch to any thing less than 120hz during that period?.. Even if your monitor is 120hz max with adaptive-sync technology, why would the sync ever choose less than 120hz during your FPS game?.. I realize that with adaptive-sync it can tell the monitor "Hey, I'm done with a frame, so you can show it now"...but it can only do that up to 120hz (because that is your monitor's hardware limit)..

The only time I see adaptive-sync being used is if you are doing desktop work and your windows aren't changing constantly at 120hz like a FPS game would be.. Then adaptive-sync could safely lower the refresh-rate.. But in a FPS game, the adaptive-sync is already going to want to refresh the screen as often as possible, isn't it? Which would be the equivilent to v-sync stuck at constant 120hz.. So there would end up being no different during that FPS game..

To help you understand, I will use an analogy:
Pretend that you have a restaurant called the "v-sync restaurant", but it can only serve food at specific intervals (like v-sync).. Your restaurant can only serve food to a new customer at a maximum of 1 minute intervals.. So if a customer comes in at 17:00:01, they have to wait 59 seconds (until 17:01:00) to be served by you.. Since you are v-sync, you ALWAYS have to come out from the back (every 1 minute) to check if new customers have arrived or not.. So that wastes energy for you to check every 1 minute, even if a new customers isn't there yet.. (v-sync refreshes every frame, no matter what).. You can not change speeds.. Even when the restaurant is very slow, you have to keep checking every 1 minute (polling) because you have no other way to know if new customers are there or not.. Now, you have the ability to SWITCH your polling interval (refresh) to some thing slower, like 5 minutes.. (changing refresh down from 120hz to like 30hz or some thing) And that makes you work less (use less energy), but if a customer comes in at the wrong time like 18:00:01 then they have to wait 4 minutes 59 seconds for you to serve them.. So there is an obvious disadvantage to polling slower..

Now imagine an other restaurant called the "adaptive-sync" restaurant.. It has a bell thingy on the front desk that customers can ring to tell you "I'm here!".. This is great news if you operate this restaurant, because now you can stop polling/checking every 1 or 5 minutes, and you can just relax in the back room, and customers will notify you their selves, by ringing that bell.. So when the restaurant is slow or virtually dead, you can relax for a long time in the back with out having to check all the time.. You only serve a customer when they NEED to be served.. They ring the bell at 18:00:07, and you serve them at 18:00:07.. That is some thing that the v-sync restaurant just can't do.. That is amazing..

However, at busy times when the restaurant is fully packed with people (when you are running FPS game), you are receiving so many customers that you eventually hit your limit, and can't work any faster.. The fastest you can go is 1 customer per 1 minute..(120hz-capable monitor) This is no different now from the v-sync restuarant, who also have a limit of 1 customer per 1 minute.. So when both restaurants are full, and have customers (frames) being thrown at them as fast as they can take them, they reach a limit of how fast they can process each customer (frame)..

So yes, if an adaptive-sync monitor isn't already going the maximum speed that it can, it has the ability to make a frame show up even if it isn't with in the specified polling interval like v-sync has to abide by.. This is adaptive-sync's advantage..
However, games will try to push through as many frames as possible (unless you are just staring at an unmoving scene with no pixels changing at all).. adaptive-sync is an improvement over v-sync, but doesn't give the monitor magickal powers.. It still can't make the monitor go any faster than, say, 120hz.. If the game is already pushing through 120fps, what room does adaptive-sync have to improve the experience? The only thing it can do at that point is LOWER the rate..since it can't possible raise it because of the monitor hardware limit.. And it doesn't want to lower it, because why the hell would you lower the rate when you already have crap-loads of frames that are coming through??.. Why would the adaptive-sync restaurant guy decide to LOWER his speed at the time when the restaurant is being inundated with customers?.. That would make no sense..

Now, I want every one to apologize to me 1000 times and then bow to me and admit that I actually knew what I was talking about this entire time..
And no I'm not a troll, sadly this is actually my personality.. Although when I say things like that, I'm just joking around, I'm not really that arrogant actually..

P.S.: I do think that adaptive-sync is still an improvement over v-sync.. I would love to have an adaptive-sync monitor..

[grndzro]

Powersavings is probably extremely minor.

No it isn't. It saves a lot of power.

[Micket]

Correct me if I'm wrong.......but the ONLY advantage that this adaptive-synchronization thing offers (compared to normal vertical-sync) is that is can reduce power usage a little of your monitor by dynamicly lowering the frame-rate at times when you are viewing low frame-rate stuff.. Right?..

The last time this was posted on phoronix, a lot of people were cheering about finally having tear-free games......but that's stupid, because v-sync has already done that for eons..

I guess some people just don't understand what they are talking about some times.. Oh well.. At least I do..

It is meant to fix stuttering.

If a new frame isn't made available to the monitor in time for the next refresh, the monitor will keep the old image for 2 frames, before eventually jumping forward.
This technology tells the monitor to wait slightly more than 1/60 seconds because the new frame isn't rendered yet.
This wouldn't be much of a problem if you have a really high refreshrate, or a really fast graphics card.
This is just common sense, and everyone is surprised it wasn't already like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PJjhBUSuHk

Powersavings is probably extremely minor.

[ssokolow]

Correct me if I'm wrong.......but the ONLY advantage that this adaptive-synchronization thing offers (compared to normal vertical-sync) is that is can reduce power usage a little of your monitor by dynamicly lowering the frame-rate at times when you are viewing low frame-rate stuff.. Right?..

The last time this was posted on phoronix, a lot of people were cheering about finally having tear-free games......but that's stupid, because v-sync has already done that for eons..

I guess some people just don't understand what they are talking about some times.. Oh well.. At least I do..

V-Sync introduces GUI latency unless you've got a monster video card because if a frame is a few milliseconds too late, it has to be either discarded or delayed to the next refresh interval.

Adaptive sync lets the video card say: "This time, we're doing 59Hz rather than 60Hz so I can still immediately display this frame I just finished."

[grndzro]

For this to work you will need both a monitor and GPU that support DisplayPort 1.2a, this is the version that makes it part of the core VESA standard. Turns out it has been in the VESA spec for years, but was an optional extension that nobody was using.

Might be worth calling around to find out which companies have this extension and a firmware update. Might save a bit of cash.

[Ericg]

Correct me if I'm wrong.......but the ONLY advantage that this adaptive-synchronization thing offers (compared to normal vertical-sync) is that is can reduce power usage a little of your monitor by dynamicly lowering the frame-rate at times when you are viewing low frame-rate stuff.. Right?..

The last time this was posted on phoronix, a lot of people were cheering about finally having tear-free games......but that's stupid, because v-sync has already done that for eons..

I guess some people just don't understand what they are talking about some times.. Oh well.. At least I do..

Lol... Troll is ALMOST successful. Next time tone down the elitism. For the record of everyone else... This is not a "power usage only" feature. This IS about fixing tearing and stuttering

[Baconmon]

Feature for power nazis..

Correct me if I'm wrong.......but the ONLY advantage that this adaptive-synchronization thing offers (compared to normal vertical-sync) is that is can reduce power usage a little of your monitor by dynamicly lowering the frame-rate at times when you are viewing low frame-rate stuff.. Right?..

The last time this was posted on phoronix, a lot of people were cheering about finally having tear-free games......but that's stupid, because v-sync has already done that for eons..

I guess some people just don't understand what they are talking about some times.. Oh well.. At least I do..