As part of their CES 2019 keynote presentation, Nvidia announced that they will begin to support a number of "G-Sync Compatible" monitors.
In short, Nvidia is opening the door, albeit slowly, to supporting monitors that use VESA's Adaptive-Sync technologies that aren't specifically called "G-Sync." G-Sync just being Nvidia's specific form of Adaptive-Sync that they make users pay a premium for by way of specialized monitors. Adaptive-Sync was created by VESA and is actually already natively supported as part of the DisplayPort 1.2a spec. AMD also uses a form of Adaptive-Sync that they call FreeSync. FreeSync is royalty free and free to use by anybody, unlike G-Sync.
All of this basically boils down to the fact that Nvidia is finally allowing users to use FreeSync monitors. This opens the door to Nvidia GPU owners being able to purchase a wider range of Adaptive-Sync monitors, many of which are priced far more fairly than ones specifically made for G-Sync.
Nvidia is still shying away from flat out saying that they are supporting the open and free VESA Adaptive-Sync technology and they sure aren't mentioning "FreeSync" by name, but the writing is on the wall here. Nvidia made the news official late last night.
The GeForce community loves G-SYNC, and many gamers have asked for a trimmed down, GeForce-compatible Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) experience. However, with a wide variety of VRR ranges and in some cases a narrow VRR operating range the VRR feature may only work when the game framerate is in a narrow, very specific range. Which is often not the case, as game frame rates vary significantly from moment to moment.
In addition, not all monitors go through a formal certification process, display panel quality varies, and there may be other issues that prevent gamers from receiving a noticeably-improved experience.
There are good monitors out there though, and so to bring these monitors to GeForce gamers, and expand the G-SYNC ecosystem, we’re introducing “G-SYNC Compatibleâ€. We will test monitors that deliver a baseline VRR experience on GeForce GTX 10-Series and GeForce RTX 20-Series graphics cards, and activate their VRR features automatically, enabling GeForce gamers to find and buy VRR monitors that will improve their gaming experience.
G-SYNC Compatible testing validates that the monitor does not show blanking, pulsing, flickering, ghosting or other artifacts during VRR gaming. They also validate that the monitor can operate in VRR at any game frame rate by supporting a VRR range of at least 2.4:1 (e.g. 60Hz-144Hz), and offer the gamer a seamless experience by enabling VRR by default.
In addition, not all monitors go through a formal certification process, display panel quality varies, and there may be other issues that prevent gamers from receiving a noticeably-improved experience.
There are good monitors out there though, and so to bring these monitors to GeForce gamers, and expand the G-SYNC ecosystem, we’re introducing “G-SYNC Compatibleâ€. We will test monitors that deliver a baseline VRR experience on GeForce GTX 10-Series and GeForce RTX 20-Series graphics cards, and activate their VRR features automatically, enabling GeForce gamers to find and buy VRR monitors that will improve their gaming experience.
G-SYNC Compatible testing validates that the monitor does not show blanking, pulsing, flickering, ghosting or other artifacts during VRR gaming. They also validate that the monitor can operate in VRR at any game frame rate by supporting a VRR range of at least 2.4:1 (e.g. 60Hz-144Hz), and offer the gamer a seamless experience by enabling VRR by default.
In addition to this new G-Sync Compatible branding, Nvidia reiterated their desire to have pure G-Sync branded experiences. They will still keep their G-Sync certification going and are introducing a new G-Sync Ultimate line.
For the best gaming experience we recommend NVIDIA G-SYNC and G-SYNC Ultimate monitors: those with G-SYNC processors that have passed over 300 compatibility and quality tests, and feature a full refresh rate range from 1Hz to the display panel’s max refresh rate, plus other advantages like variable overdrive, refresh rate overclocking, ultra low motion blur display modes, and industry-leading HDR with 1000 nits, full matrix backlight and DCI-P3 color.
