AMD Posts Updated Mesa Patches For Variable Refresh Rate (FreeSync / Adaptive-Sync)

[Spazturtle]

Ideally your compositor should find a refresh rate that is useful for all displayed windows by finding everyone's Least Common Multiple.

For 24, 30 and 60 that is 120 Hz: 24*5, 30*4 and 60*2. 144 Hz is nice for full-screen games but 120 Hz is perfect for most desktop uses.

Yes I know 30 Hz video is really 29.97 Hz. I don't know anyone who notices if you drag it up to 30 Hz as long as the audio stays in sync. Or you could run the desktop at 119.88 Hz.

You are forgetting about frame timming, 2 different applications could be running at 30FPS, but they might not be synced up.

[Guest]

This was never intended for compositors and window managers anyway. Gsync and Freesync were developed for gaming, specifically for the use case where in a demanding game your GPU cannot reach your monitor's refresh rate.

[varikonniemi]

I'm confused. One of freesync benefits over gsync is that it also works on the desktop and not only in games. Is this feature not coming to Linux?

[Brisse]

Disabling it for compositors make sense, since those have a bunch of things rendering at different rates, and browsers generally run windowed, but video playback however is something this would be perfect for. That of course includes video playback in browsers.

Freesync/Adaptive sync is leveraged for video playback on Windows 10 with the built in video playback app and it works quite well. For example, if I play a 23.976fps video, my monitor will refresh at 47,952hz seamlessly when the video is in fullscreen. There's no traditional modeswitching, no flicker or delay when entering fullscreen. Sadly, it does not seem to work with any decent third party video player. Would be cool if this feature could come to the open source world and be supported by software such as mpv, VLC, etc...

[Brisse]

I'm confused. One of freesync benefits over gsync is that it also works on the desktop and not only in games. Is this feature not coming to Linux?

Where did you get that from? Except for the video playback example in the post above, it is not used for the desktop.

[aufkrawall]

Sadly, it does not seem to work with any decent third party video player. Would be cool if this feature could come to the open source world and be supported by software such as mpv, VLC, etc...

It should work with mpv if you turn off vsync.

[torsionbar28]

However I have a 1080Ti MINI but once AMD release a compatible faster card in a semi-sff then I'll be all over it. Could be a LONG while!

Huh? Those who follow the gaming GPU market know that AMD invented the category for powerful SFF cards with the R9 Nano and R9 Fury X. Prior to this, you could only get low power OEM cards in such small sizes. Of course the competition decided to follow, and attempt to compete in this space, hence your 1080 mini. As far as open source AMDGPU drivers have come in recent years though, there really is no valid reason for a true Linux geek to choose the competition any more.

[Brisse]

theriddick torsionbar28

Powercolor makes a "RX Vega 56 Nano Edition" but I guess they are rare and might be hard to get while also being overly expensive. Should be faster than those based on the Fury though which makes it AMD's fastest SFF to date.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12778/powercolor-confirms-plans-for-miniitx-radeon-rx-vega-due-next-month

[theriddick]

Their not 4k cards, the 1080ti mini barely manages at 4k these days.
Also I had the FuryX beforehand, if it had 8GB HBM I might have kept it long but the 4GB vram was terrible, plus it struggled at 4k alot.

At the moment there is absolutely no reason to choose a AMD GPU... no reason at all except at the 1070/Vega56 or below performance bracket.

[gurv]

It's great to see progress in this area!
Can't wait to finally be able to test it