AMD Shows Off An External FreeSync Monitor In Action

[Daktyl198]

40-60Hz?

I think G-sync was meant to go with 120-144Hz monitors, which help with mouse lag.

In the video, the guy mentions that the spec allows for variance from 2-240hz, and the monitor picks a slice out of that and reports it to the GPU as what it supports (for example, 40-60hz). The monitor in the demo is an already released monitor with a special firmware upgrade, so that 20hz variable is probably the best it could do.

[A Laggy Grunt]

40-60Hz?

I think G-sync was meant to go with 120-144Hz monitors, which help with mouse lag.

[Kraut]

Will it work in windowed/?fake fullscreen? mode in games? I'm sadly not sure at all.

Do games or layers like SDL need specific code to support this?

I think this will be implemented so that applications don't even have to know its there. It's basically just adaptive vsync except that the PC/GPU triggers the monitor redraw start.

"No specialized hardware" Means "No hardware who's sole purpose is to make this work." DisplayPort 1.2a capable monitors and cards would have found their way out into customers hands eventually.

I read somewhere that AMD will support it on all GCN 1.0 and higher GPUs. On the monitor side you need new hardware of course.
I wonder if this will help with Oculus, too.

[Ericg]

Really dude? That's a contradiction right there, you need no specialized hardware except *cough* a FreeSync capable monitor with DisplayPort 1.2a or newer + a card with the same specs (and I assume an AMD card unless Nvidia decide they want to support it too)

"No specialized hardware" Means "No hardware who's sole purpose is to make this work." DisplayPort 1.2a capable monitors and cards would have found their way out into customers hands eventually.

[rabcor]

Unlike NVIDIA's G-Sync, no specialized hardware is required to support FreeSync. This week at Computex, AMD was showing off the first FreeSync capable monitor

Really dude? That's a contradiction right there, you need no specialized hardware except *cough* a FreeSync capable monitor with DisplayPort 1.2a or newer + a card with the same specs (and I assume an AMD card unless Nvidia decide they want to support it too)

Standalone monitors as is typically do not support this technology meaning you DO need specialized hardware. You just don't need that expensive GSync chip. I hope Nvidia responds to this by supporting freesync as well.

But judging by the differences that GSync is a much more complicated implementation of this, I am sure there are benefits it has that freesync does not (not that I care, I prefer freesync because it's hardly any extra price for me to get that)

[Calinou]

Will it work in windowed/?fake fullscreen? mode in games? I'm sadly not sure at all.

Do games or layers like SDL need specific code to support this?

[Kivada]

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.

[entropy]

Thank you both.

Is it important to you not to use a compositor?

Nope.

If not, compton seems quite featureful while still being pretty light. Also, well documented: https://github.com/chjj/compton/wiki/vsync-guide

I'll give that one a try.

Thanks again!

[ChrisXY]

radeon + awesome wm without compositor.
I guess there is technically no way to avoid it with this setup?

Is it important to you not to use a compositor? If not, compton seems quite featureful while still being pretty light. Also, well documented: https://github.com/chjj/compton/wiki/vsync-guide

[Ericg]

LOL - I was like "oh that still tears like hell" ...

until I realized it is actual my setup that does.

radeon + awesome wm without compositor.
I guess there is technically no way to avoid it with this setup?

DRI3 Should help a little...otherwise just run a minimal compositor.