So several of the dare I say usual people are making bold claims like, it's Toshiba's technology, not AMD's.
It's not Toshiba's technology, Toshiba have merely implemented a proposed Vesa standard which ANYONE can do at any time, this feature works because it is ALREADY IMPLEMENTED IN THE DRIVER. This will ALREADY WORK on any screen that implements this feature, this worked because this has already been in drivers. It's not AMD technology, not completely anyway, the driver/hardware support is, but a screen needs to support dynamic refresh rates, there is a proposed industry standard method to do this(non final methods being used before they are finalised is fairly common), not many have implemented it.
AMD/Vesa are all surprised by it because as I suggested might be the case months ago, Nvidia were simply aware of an up and coming technology, decided to jump the gun and rather than wait for the natural progression of Asus's new screens(and everyone elses) implementing this, have struck a deal to use an Nvidia chip allowing Nvidia to lock their own users in.
from Tech Report
Koduri explained that this particular laptop's display happened to support a feature that AMD has had in its graphics chips "for three generations": dynamic refresh rates. AMD built this capability into its GPUs primarily for power-saving reasons, since unnecessary vertical refresh cycles burn power to little benefit. There's even a proposed VESA specification for dynamic refresh, and the feature has been adopted by some panel makers, though not on a consistent or widespread basis. AMD's Catalyst drivers already support it where it's available, which is why an impromptu demo was possible.
There are few monitors that support it, like every single new feature. Can it be added through firmware updates, possibly but lets think about who that benefits.... the end user, great, but the manufacturer? So they can sell you a new freesync compatible screen or enable a great option for free which will make them zero money...... I don't hold high hopes on that one
I expect when a decent gaming desktop screen is released that supports the Vesa feature, AMD will tell gamers about freesync. Till some desktop screens support it, what is the point of shouting at the rooftop about it?
For the record, my somewhat gloaty "lol Nvidia" opening post wasn't aimed remotely at Nvidia, but at the people on here who basically ganged up together to tell me how much I hate Nvidia and how wrong I am because I dare suggest AMD, and Intel and everyone else(because that is so pro AMD) will have this for free because it's a painfully basic idea that Nvidia can't possibly patent, that will end up as another lock in Nvidia feature. I got pure rubbish constantly thrown back at me for nothing but realistic posts about the future of freesync and what it means for Nvidia users.