What do Uncertified Adaptive Sync Displays Look Like with G-Sync Enabled?

What do Uncertified Adaptive Sync Displays Look Like with G-Sync Enabled?

What do Uncertified Adaptive Sync Displays Look Like with G-Sync Enabled?

There is a big problem with the Adaptive Sync (FreeSync) ecosystem, and Nvidia knows it. Yes, there are a lot of great FreeSync monitors out there, but there are also many that don’t offer a wide enough VRR range to be worthwhile or ship with other shortcomings that leave gamers with a sub-optimal gaming experience.  

Traditional G-Sync monitors are built using Nvidia hardware and are rigorously tested to ensure that they are up to standard, making the baseline of G-Sync monitor quality much higher than that of FreeSync/Adaptive Sync. If a G-Sync monitor doesn’t need Nvidia’s requirements it isn’t released, it’s that simple. 

While many see Nvidia’s support of VESA’s Adaptive Sync standard as inevitable, it is clear why it has taken so long for Nvidia to enable Adaptive Sync support, and why the company is going down the “G-Sync Certified” route with their upcoming drivers. To be clear, Nvidia’s January 15th and onward drivers will allow Adaptive-Sync to be enabled on any compatible monitor, but Nvidia will only enable it by default if displays they meet Nvidia’s standards. So far only 12 of 400 tested displays are certified as G-Sync Compatible. 

PC WORLD has gotten to speak with Nvidia at CES 2019 and has toured their booth, with the company showcasing how G-Sync Compatible displays should work, and what some uncertified displays might look like. Some displays will present noticeable blur in motion (bad overdrive support or some other factor), others will flicker and present artifacts, while others will present harsher issues like screen blanking. 

  

What do Uncertified Adaptive Sync Displays Look Like with G-Sync Enabled?  

The video below makes it clear why Nvidia has decided to certify specific displays as G-Sync compatible, with the short answer being that it allows the company to ensure that their users achieve the best gaming experience possible on adaptive sync/FreeSync monitors. It is also worth pointing out that Nvidia’s decision to market their Adaptive Sync support in this way will push some gamers towards their existing G-Sync monitors, as their marketing materials say that they are tested with an additional “300 tests for image quality”, implying that G-Sync displays are better than G-Sync Compatible displays.   

Nvidia’s move to mark specific displays as G-Sync Compatible will push the developers of Adaptive-Sync monitors to work harder to meet Nvidia’s standards, a change that will undoubtedly improve the overall quality of adaptive sync screens over time. This will be a positive change for gamers as a whole, regardless of whether you are using AMD, Nvidia or Intel graphics hardware. 

Adaptive-Sync monitors can sit anywhere on a wide spectrum of quality, making it easy to see why so many monitors have failed Nvidia’s testing. Consider how many monitors lack a wide enough variable refresh rate range (VRR range) to activate technologies like AMD’s Low Framerate Compensation or equivalent technologies. That factor alone would be enough to fail hundreds of adaptive sync monitors in Nvidia’s testing, even without formal testing. 

The video above showcases some of the issues that have faced Adaptive Sync users since AMD FreeSync launched, but now that Nvidia has brought attention to the issue, perhaps display makers will work harder to achieve a higher standard for their gaming displays. 

You can join the discussion on what some uncertified displays look like with Nvidia G-Sync enabled on the OC3D Forums. Â