hey everyone Gordon here with PC world and I'm here with our GPU and gaming
expert by a Turkish expert things and I want to ask him this question that is
just been bugging me this whole week and that is is g-sync worth it anymore
that's a good question actually because earlier this year after years of saying
they would never support freesync nvidia rolled out support for free sync
monitors technically Visa Visa Visa adaptive sync monitors in reality Nvidia
supports free sync now yes with this mode they call g-sync compatible yeah
and the reason why this does bug me is I didn't realize this but NVIDIA has a
huge list while not huge 40 of the 700 monitors that they support with decent
compatible yep and they listed the refresh the variable refresh rate of
those panels and a lot of those panels were 50 Hertz like basically they had a
50 to maybe a hundred Hertz and a very very narrow variable refresh rate and of
course you look at jisuk monitors they go all the way to zero right or one but
so so that's actually one of the key selling points do you think people like
to act and think like g-sync in freesync are basically two sides of
the same coin they do have the same underlying goal they both basically
synchronized the graphics card refresh rate with your monitors refresh rate to
make it buttery smooth that's awesome once you've used a variable refresh rate
monitor it's real hard to go back because it just gets rid of stuttering
it gives there's a tearing it's great um but there are some key differences
supported refresh rate being one of them free sync monitors AMD freesync monitors
are kind of a wild-west basically entity any monitor maker can say hey we're
putting in free sync it's not ruled with an iron fist by AMD so you'll see a lot
of precinct monitors that have that limited refresh rate range so you'll see
a listing that says okay this monitor supports free sync available refresh
rate from 50 to 75 Hertz so what that means is if you're playing a game and
your framerate falls into 50 to 75 Hertz then you'll get the
benefits of adaptive sync but it falls outside of there it'll revert to vsync
behavior or just be stuttering if you go under G sync works all the way across
the board so G sync is always going to give you that buttery smooth gaming
g-sync even if you get down to 20 frames per
second which is probably a scenario where you're gonna want buttery
smoothness right as much as possible another big consideration is precinct
monitors have something called low framerate compensation LFC which is
exactly what we're talking about right now so if it gets too low they'll kind
of like double up the images to make it as smooth as possible to frames but
that's an optional feature it's standard in pricey or precinct two monitors but
in just freesync it's optional manufacturer MUP monitor manufactures
don't have to support it it's part of G sync is there any way you can tell
though like if I go to the store or website and I just see a monitor and it
says adaptive synchro free sync is there any way to know what that it's not easy
AMD has a free sync page on its website if you look up and be free sync monitors
and it'll have the specs of all the free sync monitors that certifies it they'll
tell you I'm there what the supported ranges monitor makers don't tend to
unless it's a really high-end monitor that is fully loaded that has low
framerate conversation that has you know anti-ghosting that has big refresh rate
because they don't want you to know that it only supports variable refresh rate
over like 20 frames they want you to just buy it and say oh it has freesync
g-sync monitors have hardware inside of it to make this whole experience happen
and it's not cheap it's 100 to 200 bucks depending on the monitor but it just
works out of the box so it sounds like it's worth it them over it's up to you
because if you have a geforce card and you want to use a precinct monitor there
are a handful of monitors that Nvidia certified as being g-sync compatible and
those will work right out of the box you don't have to do anything that's
actually updated in the drivers you plug in the monitor geforce driver sees it
goes oh hey that one's g-sync compatible it works there's like you said like 20
out of like 700 monitors or something like that freezing monitors so it's not
many but if you do it works otherwise you have to go into the
control center manually enable it I have an article on PC WorldCom how to enable
freeze ink on a g-force card if you need to go look that up but that's the extent
of it Nvidia doesn't support really free sync in any way they're like yeah we
turn that on knock yourself out if you want all right
they want you to buy a g-sync monitor I guess it depends on if you want that
smoother guaranteed out of the box experience or if you want to put a
little bit more legwork in to make sure that you're getting a good free sync
monitor it just takes a little bit more work on your end as a user doing some
research is there an advantage either of them has
as far as ports go does one have more ports or few reports there is it doesn't
matter for NVIDIA users because if you're using a geforce card the only
option for g-sync or free sync is DisplayPort that's what this all started
from that's all and video still supports MD AMD did a lot of work to get freesync
working over HDMI as well that doesn't matter to gsync compatible
monitors with geforce cards because only Radeon cards support free sync over HDMI
okay but that is good to know that is useful because they're one of the
benefits of free sync is that there are a lot of more affordable monitors I
think that's the question here is is it worth it so if you get like 100 to $200
free sync monitor it's probably only gonna have HDMI it might not have
DisplayPort so in that case you would want a radio card and the very last
question I have is of course to get - is it worth it we already know the
Europeans pluses and minuses versus free sync adaptive sync but if I have an old
funky 1080p panel is it worth it to do an upgrade
say I am a geforce user if i want to then if i want to buy a new monitor is
that versus a non so Freeston g-sync versus non g-sync to me these days you
should if you're a gamer always try to get an adaptive sync monitor if you
can't afford g-sync and you're willing to spend that much money to get it it's
a great out-of-the-box experience it works if you can't afford g-sync you can
put the legwork in go on that AMD website find a monitor
that has a good refresh range still get a free sync monitor and enable it to the
control panel it's a lot more work but once you've gone adaptive sync you can't
go back it's such a transcendent gaming experience so yes it is worth it
definitely so hmm anyway that's Brad's opinion come back
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