Nvidia has revealed a new tech on their official blog today: G-Sync, a solution that addresses the dilemma of the choice of synchronizing to your monitor.
For competitive play, gamers often choose to play games with V-Sync off. Response time remains fast, but these players have to accept that they will see a lot of screen tearing. With V-Sync on, screen tearing is not an issue, and games look beautiful, but then the frame rate dips and animation starts stuttering.
Nvidia claims they did research with GPU architects and senior engineers to get to the root of the problem, and that they found it. They believe the industry has been syncing the GPU frame rendering rate to the monitor refresh rate. Monitor refresh rates are fixed at 60Hz on average, a standard that’s been around since the 1940s. Nvidia’s proposal at this point is to synchronize the monitor refresh rate to the GPU render rate instead.
And so, we have the G-Sync module, which you actually put inside your gaming display and is meant to work with GeForce GTX GPU run computers, working both with software and hardware. Using G-Sync, your monitor will start a refresh cycle just after the GPU renders it completely. The GPU renders in variable time, so now, the monitor’s refresh rate is similarly variable.
So, in one full sweep, the GPU and monitor will always be in sync, there will be no more screen tearing, stuttering, and response time remains perfect.
Nvidia talks the big talk, but regardless of price, this seems like a hard sell to the average consumer, and so I don’t see this gaining widespread traction. Of course, the hobbyists who will get it are guaranteed a graphically impressive experience way better than what current and maybe even next generation consoles can provide.
Who knows though, maybe installing this thing is easier than it looks. We look forward to more details on G-Sync installation and price from Nvidia soon.
Source: Nvidia Blogs
