A Week With NVIDIA's G-SYNC Monitor

[LtMatt]

Until our full review is published early next year, I can safely say that after a week of using G-SYNC, there’s really only one word to sum up my experience thus far: awesome.

G-SYNC’s Current Limitations Explained

While G-SYNC may look like a cure-all for many of the glaring shortcomings in the display market, it isn’t infallible and it can’t rectify every issue. Stuttering will continue to rear its ugly head when games load textures or when a system storage device becomes a bottleneck. In addition, blur still occurs and detracts from the overall experience despite G-SYNC’s improvements in other areas but with tweaks to LightBoost this can be overcome as well.

With input lag all but eliminated from the display side of the equation, according to NVIDIA you’ll need a suitably high end gaming mouse with an extreme polling interval to take full advantage of what G-SYNC offers. I didn’t notice anything more than the usual improvements in response time and accuracy when moving from an MX510 to a G9x but professional gamers (I’m certainly not one of those) may say otherwise since the screen’s response time has been significantly reduced.

There are some additional limitations as well. While it can be used with an SLI system, G-SYNC can’t operate in Windowed Mode, doesn’t currently support NVIDIA’s Surround multi monitor technology and will only be available through a DisplayPort interface. Don’t expect any external G-SYNC adapters either since existing monitor scalers can’t be adapted to work with the technology, nor can they be bypassed via an external hub. As you might expect, the technology is only compatible with NVIDIA’s Kepler-based cards but due to the its unique nature, I’m sure we can all understand why this needs to be held close to their chests.

Full Article
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/64586-week-nvidias-g-sync-monitor.html

 

[LtMatt]

Nice find Matt and I did notice that you picked out the only negative section in the article for one of your quotes . All I would say to people is read the full article and decide for yourselves.

I noticed that as well but I will afford him that for the crap the AMD guys have had lately

Nope pretty much just copied it from oc.net.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1450446/hardware-canucks-a-week-with-nvidias-g-sync-monitor

 

[LtMatt]

Nice find Matt. Although you need to work on your misleading quotes.

 

[LtMatt]

Nope pretty much just copied it from oc.net.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1450446/hardware-canucks-a-week-with-nvidias-g-sync-monitor

The article ended on an extremely positive note, yet you chose to quote compatibility let downs lol

See above.

Also i decided it was better to put the positive spin first to highlight it better. The quotes were from the article anyway, nothing that i added so nothing was misleading.

 

[LtMatt]

Guru3D's got a write up, he's quoting GBP 445.00 Incl. VAT for the Asus, available next week?

Sounds nice, but the price.

Sorry, that is an absolute joke. That is DELL monitor money which are far superior in image quality.

Infact for £599, buy you a Samsung 27" PLS. Absolutely zero chance, over-priced beyond belief for a 1920x1080 TN panel, what a joke.

Sorry for the shameless pimping, but I am sure I am not alone that £450 is way too much for a TN panel, WAY TOO MUCH.

That's more expensive than my 1440P IPS screen.

In that case apologies to you Matt, I like many others on here often jump the gun, thinking that some posts are written in a certain way to antagonize when in fact they are not meant that way.
So again apologies to you Matt.

No worries, thanks for the apology.

 

[LtMatt]

Just noticed this as well ;



How can a tech that is supposed to reduce stutters, introduce them where they were previously unnoticed?

I guess everything comes with a caveat. I'm beginning to wonder what caveats Mantle will have.

 

[LtMatt]

In a few days, that shall change and my god is the performance gain a nice one.

Don't get my hopes up unless its deserved!!

EDIT

IN A FEW DAYS??

 

[LtMatt]

Tearing does not always happen in all games with vsync off. That's how it is for me anyway. Depends on the game engine i guess. Stutter only occurs for me with vsync on if fps dips below 50. If it stays above 45 then the stutter is very small and barely noticeable. If it goes below 45 then yeah, it can be very noticeable. This is the case for most but not all games that have triple buffering support.

 

[LtMatt]

Hah, £450 for a TN Film screen. I did mention that NVidia would overprice this in another thread!

I have to admit, NVidia's adaptive VSync helps quite a lot with tearing - you get the smoothness of a 60Hz lock without all the silly halving to 30fps it does.

I do with AMD would build something similar into drivers.

Agreed. You can use RadeonPro though which has Adaptive Vsync and is easy to setup and use.

 

[LtMatt]

Does it really? The people that buy value won't buy a £400 monitor.

I want some of what Andy's been smoking.

 

[LtMatt]

Competitor hinting is now allowed!

 

[LtMatt]

Well..

This technology certainly offers an improvement over vsync if your using a mid range GPU. If you have a fast GPU, Ie GTX770 or above or 7970 or above and do you know what happens? The GPUs run fast enough that vsync is always in sync and the difference between the gsync monitors and an expensive lush IPS when you have a decent high end GPU and system is barely noticeable.

I personally would prefer a nice IPS over an TN panel as most if its use isnt going to used for gaming.

£400 for a TN monitor regardless of the technology is just too high in my opinion. If your spending that money on a monitor you have likely spent a fair amount on your GPU and the rest of your system.

If your looking to buy gsync I would wait until the new Benq units come out next year, far better price than £400 which makes the technology a much nicer proposal.

In the mean time, AMD may have something around the corner and you can mine on them where as the nvidia units you cant so perhaps it is worth seeing what they have coming to the table before making a commitment?

This coming from a 780-ti sli owner

Sounds legit. I'm interested to see AMD's version after Gibbo hinted it could be free.

 

[LtMatt]

As I continue to struggle to get my head around what it does it also strikes me it would be impossible for amd to do something similar for free? As its the monitor timing the frame release not the gpu, gpu still acts as normal throwing frames out at will?

Sure will be interesting to see won't it.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=25482564&postcount=19

 

[LtMatt]

Any chance you can link to that quote??

Yes mate.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=25482564&postcount=19

AMD still don't have eyefinity frame pacing sorted yet, so I wouldn't hold my breath on AMD coming with anything in the next year.

They have it fixed for the 290 series on Eyefinity but Tahiti is still awaiting the driver. Better they get it right first time, If that means another month then so be it.

Phase 2 in January which should solve that. Would be funny if amd call there version Free-sync.

Lol now that would be funny. Pretty sure that would ruffle some feathers as well.

 

[LtMatt]

The obvious reason would be to supplant Nvidia's proprietary tech as the preferred implementation, and the best way to do that is to make it free. The motivation is that if G-sync becomes popular it will cost AMD card sales.

And the R&D on a similar device might not be so bad now that we know that it's possible and some details about how it's done. I would think patent issues could potentially be more of a problem.

But this is all guess work. I just don't see AMD launching a hardware replacement for the g-sync monitor component when releasing a standard is much quicker and more in line with their past behaviour.

Good shout.

 

[LtMatt]

AMD should just put a patent on patents and then make it copyright.

 

[LtMatt]

As an owner of both green & red rigs I'm looking forward to Mantle more, purely because I get to see it's benefits without spending any more cash. It's also going to be a good few years before G-Sync (if it takes off) gets to a saturation point where you are not limited to choice of monitor and is (for now) off limits to multi monitor setups. I would also be loathed to spend extra money on what is arguably the least often upgraded component only to have that extra feature redundant should I plug it into an AMD based rig.

As I game at 21:9, I'm far more interested in bigger 21:9 screens than I am G-Sync enabled screens. Obviously a bigger 21:9 G-Sync screen would tick all the boxes though - at the right price

Lastly, G-Sync does have it's quirks and limitations. As Anand pointed out, it seems to work best between certain frame rates and is not perfect even then. Mantle will have no such quirks, it will just be faster period. The only drawbacks are going to be in people's expectations rather than of the system itself.

Interesting. I've not actually read anything regarding it. Got a link to that?

 

[LtMatt]

I don't think Gsync is a feature i would particularly benefit from much, outside of a small selection of titles as my fps are rarely below 60, if i use vsync. But it sounds like a nice feature to have nonetheless. I look forward to seeing AMD's response to Gsync. There's going to be an announcement regarding it soon i hear and its supposedly free. That remains to be seen though and i have no actual idea if thats possible or not. If it is free, they'll be doing something at driver level id imagine.

 

[LtMatt]

Do AMD have an equivalent to NVIDIA's adaptive vsync?

Yes via RadeonPro.

Dynamic V-sync Control or DVC feature dynamically turns display vertical synchronization on or off based on sustained frame rate vs. display’s refresh rate. When DVC is on, RadeonPro monitors frame rate in real time and when it is equal or greater than display’s refresh rate (e.g. 60 Hz), v-sync is kept on to avoid tearing and improve gaming smoothness, whereas when sustained frame rate is below display’s refresh rate, v-sync is turned off to reduce stuttering. Keep in mind some tearing can be visible while v-sync is off. - See more at: http://www.radeonpro.info/features/dynamic-vsync-control/#sthash.wNKcs9I8.dpuf

Source
http://www.radeonpro.info/features/dynamic-vsync-control/

 

[LtMatt]

Well i guess whatever their counterpart is for g-sync will probably be a hardware solution too

I agree. Makes me wonder how it can be free though if thats the case. Unless they introduce some sort of 'new standard' that comes with all monitors.