AMD FreeSync(TM) - Q&A with Shane Parfitt, Technology Manager AMD

[LtMatt]

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the delay in posting in here, I've been chasing down the right people who could answer questions in this thread with answers that are both informative and factual.

There seems to be a lot of misinformation and assumptions being made and I'm hoping we can address that by responding to your questions personally.

I have our technology manager behind AMD FreeSync(TM) ready and waiting to answer your questions, so please post away and I'll edit this initial post to include those.

Once I have a selection of questions (Please, let's try and stay on topic) I'll pass them over internally for answers, posting back here with the final responses.

Q&A


Gibbo

1. Will the driver on the 19th be on time and will it be BETA or WHQL?

Yes, this driver has been scheduled for some time. The 19th is a firm date.

This will be a non-WHQL as with many of our recent postings, but rest-assured, this driver will have received an extensive amount of testing by the time it gets posted.

When will Crossfire support be added?

Our April AMD Catalyst driver.

What is the possibly AMD will give a BETA early driver for OcUK to host for our customers to download so they can enjoy FREESYNC NOW?

Monitors entered the market ahead of our driver schedule. We’re pleased by the enthusiasm demonstrated by our partners, but users deserve a robust driver with appropriate quality and testing. Our March 19th date ensures this.

Will the 144Hz AMD driver bug be fixed, 120Hz works fine, 144Hz is like a disco light flicker show?

144Hz functions correctly on the BenQ and Acer FreeSync monitors with the March 19 driver.




Tommybhoy

Why no Freesynch support in latest(Omega) driver as the Omega driver slides contained Freesync info/marketing?

As indicated to many outlets, AMD FreeSync was activated for special builds for partners to enable validation. The March 19th driver has a refined user experience that is ideal for daily use.

Will VSR be enabled running the combination of mgpu/Freesync?

VSR and FreeSync will work immediately with the March 19th driver. mGPU support will arrive in our April driver.




Martini1991

Will frame pacing and freesync work with crossfire?

When our April Catalyst driver arrives with AMD FreeSync + CrossFire support, yes.

Do AMD have any say with the monitor manufacturers (with the example of BenQ launching one. Were they obliged not to?

Yes, of course, AMD works closely with all our partners to test all candidate FreeSync monitors for compatibility and the highest quality experience. On the strength or our technology, we have been forming strong partnerships with many monitor vendors, and we’re happy to have them on board. That being said, it’s difficult to line up schedules with multiple companies, regions and shipping logistics. We communicated a March 19th driver availability date to all of our partners.




Quartz

Will Freesync work with older cards? I have an old HD 6850 ready for a second PC and knowing that I could use it with Freesync would be most useful in respect of future purchases.

Supported products are listed at www.amd.com/freesync. Products like HD 7000 and HD 6000 lack the right display controllers (the link between GPU<->display) to perform highly dynamic adjustments of refresh rates. This is a hardware limitation that cannot be overcome with software.

Can Nvidia cards work with Freesync? Presumably after a driver revision, of course. Or is there a hardware incompatibility?

We’ve designed Freesync to support the latest open industry standards to ensure a great experience with no or low incremental cost to partners and customers. We did this to ensure customers do not have to pay for a module at all when AMD FreeSync conclusively proves such hardware is costly and unnecessary.




Shankly1985

Does Freesync work with BenQ motion blur reduction?

No. BenQ’s Blur Reduction requires that AMD FreeSync be disabled.




Nails666

Will we be able to use Freesync, Crossfire and VSR all at the same time?

Answered above.

When crossfire is enabled with Freesync will it support 2, 3 and 4 card crossfire?

Yes.




Dockie

What's the limitation in the 7 series that means they aren't freesync compatible?

They lack the correct display controllers. This piece of silicon on the graphics chip interfaces with the graphics die and the monitor. Older AMD Radeon GPUs are not capable of executing highly dynamic refresh rate adjustments in their display controller.

Also, unrelated, when will VSR be coming to the 7 series?

VSR will not be introduced to the HD 7000 Series.




Nails666

How will Freesync work with multiple monitor setups with differing refresh rates and adaptive sync capabilities. For example: -

Two monitors, both 144Hz, both FreeSync capable
Two monitors, both 144Hz but only one with Freesync
Two monitors, one 144Hz Freesync and one 60Hz non-freesync
Three monitors in EyeFinity configuration, all with Freesync etc etc

Doing Eyefinity + AMD FreeSync will require all displays to have the same timings, i.e. the same monitor. If you have just one display with AMD FreeSync, and the rest are not, then of course only that one display would have AMD FreeSync activated.

 

[LtMatt]

PCM2 - have you spoken to AMD PR? Message me in trust if not and we can chat.

Gonna post here too, but PCM2 I'm not sure who you might've spoken to - drop me a note in trust or tweet me @iainbristow and we can have a chat.

That's appalling imo. AMD are massively lagging behind in mind/marketshare and should be doing all they can to promote their technologies. This is probably part of the problem, apathy.

This isn't Matt's fault obviously, more endemic of the culture inside AMD (again, numbers don't lie).

 

[LtMatt]

I love ya Matt, am just on a rant Sorry. I'll keep it to the relevent threads

It's ok Si.

 

[LtMatt]

Matt,

as no one has asked any about Freesync video playback:

Will Freesync video smooth out playback on this:

We can't polish a turd tommy, but we can wrap it in glitter.

 

[LtMatt]

Any more FreeSync questions guys?

I will be sending the questions over at 12, so you have another 40 minutes or so.

 

[LtMatt]

Thank you everyone for your patience, here are the answers.


Gibbo

1. Will the driver on the 19th be on time and will it be BETA or WHQL?

Yes, this driver has been scheduled for some time. The 19th is a firm date.

This will be a non-WHQL as with many of our recent postings, but rest-assured, this driver will have received an extensive amount of testing by the time it gets posted.

When will Crossfire support be added?

Our April AMD Catalyst driver.

What is the possibly AMD will give a BETA early driver for OcUK to host for our customers to download so they can enjoy FREESYNC NOW?

Monitors entered the market ahead of our driver schedule. We’re pleased by the enthusiasm demonstrated by our partners, but users deserve a robust driver with appropriate quality and testing. Our March 19th date ensures this.

Will the 144Hz AMD driver bug be fixed, 120Hz works fine, 144Hz is like a disco light flicker show?

144Hz functions correctly on the BenQ and Acer FreeSync monitors with the March 19 driver.




Tommybhoy

Why no Freesynch support in latest(Omega) driver as the Omega driver slides contained Freesync info/marketing?

As indicated to many outlets, AMD FreeSync was activated for special builds for partners to enable validation. The March 19th driver has a refined user experience that is ideal for daily use.

Will VSR be enabled running the combination of mgpu/Freesync?

VSR and FreeSync will work immediately with the March 19th driver. mGPU support will arrive in our April driver.




Martini1991

Will frame pacing and freesync work with crossfire?

When our April Catalyst driver arrives with AMD FreeSync + CrossFire support, yes.

Do AMD have any say with the monitor manufacturers (with the example of BenQ launching one. Were they obliged not to?

Yes, of course, AMD works closely with all our partners to test all candidate FreeSync monitors for compatibility and the highest quality experience. On the strength or our technology, we have been forming strong partnerships with many monitor vendors, and we’re happy to have them on board. That being said, it’s difficult to line up schedules with multiple companies, regions and shipping logistics. We communicated a March 19th driver availability date to all of our partners.




Quartz

Will Freesync work with older cards? I have an old HD 6850 ready for a second PC and knowing that I could use it with Freesync would be most useful in respect of future purchases.

Supported products are listed at www.amd.com/freesync. Products like HD 7000 and HD 6000 lack the right display controllers (the link between GPU<->display) to perform highly dynamic adjustments of refresh rates. This is a hardware limitation that cannot be overcome with software.

Can Nvidia cards work with Freesync? Presumably after a driver revision, of course. Or is there a hardware incompatibility?

We’ve designed Freesync to support the latest open industry standards to ensure a great experience with no or low incremental cost to partners and customers. We did this to ensure customers do not have to pay for a module at all when AMD FreeSync conclusively proves such hardware is costly and unnecessary.




Shankly1985

Does Freesync work with BenQ motion blur reduction?

No. BenQ’s Blur Reduction requires that AMD FreeSync be disabled.




Nails666

Will we be able to use Freesync, Crossfire and VSR all at the same time?

Answered above.

When crossfire is enabled with Freesync will it support 2, 3 and 4 card crossfire?

Yes.




Dockie

What's the limitation in the 7 series that means they aren't freesync compatible?

They lack the correct display controllers. This piece of silicon on the graphics chip interfaces with the graphics die and the monitor. Older AMD Radeon GPUs are not capable of executing highly dynamic refresh rate adjustments in their display controller.

Also, unrelated, when will VSR be coming to the 7 series?

VSR will not be introduced to the HD 7000 Series.




Nails666

How will Freesync work with multiple monitor setups with differing refresh rates and adaptive sync capabilities. For example: -

Two monitors, both 144Hz, both FreeSync capable
Two monitors, both 144Hz but only one with Freesync
Two monitors, one 144Hz Freesync and one 60Hz non-freesync
Three monitors in EyeFinity configuration, all with Freesync etc etc

Doing Eyefinity + AMD FreeSync will require all displays to have the same timings, i.e. the same monitor. If you have just one display with AMD FreeSync, and the rest are not, then of course only that one display would have AMD FreeSync activated.

 

[LtMatt]

Clears up all my concerns, cheers Matt.

Glad to hear that Adam, thanks.

 

[LtMatt]

Is the R7 260x/HD 7790 getting VSR?

Yes, both cards will have similar VSR functionality as the 290X.

The 7790 will also fully support FreeSync.

 

[LtMatt]

Thanks for answering Matt. Also Which VSR Modes will they support? Up to 3200x1800 or?

Up to 3200x1800.

 

[LtMatt]

Major disappointment - I take it that includes the 280X?

AMD’s implementation of Virtual Super Resolution uses an AMD Radeon graphics card’s hardware scaler to perform downsampling on a game’s rendered output before it reaches the user’s displays. These hardware scalers have varying capabilities across the AMD Radeon R9 and R7 Series, and the supported resolutions reflect these capabilities.

AMD intends to deploy a “phase 2” update to Virtual Super Resolution in the near future that will explore alternative implementations to enable Virtual Super Resolution on all AMD Radeon™ R7 260 (or higher) GPUs with a variety of downsampling options. This includes the R9 280/280X.

 

[LtMatt]

I'll just leave this here.

LOL, i noticed that too.

There are board and bios level differences between the 7xxx series and the 280/280X series. The R9 280/280X should get VSR support in the future, the 7xxx series will not.

 

[LtMatt]

How is it possible for certain 7970's to be flashed with a 280x bios then? Would that mean those particular cards could run vsr after flash?

Unfortunately a bios flash will not overcome a hardware limitation on the scaler used on the older 7xxx series chips.

We're exploring alternative methods to bring VSR to the R9 280/280 cards but this will not arrive on the 7xxx series.

'Yes, both cards will have similar VSR functionality as the 290X.

The 7790 will also fully support FreeSync.'

Is the 7790 not 7xxx series then, has this anything to do with GCN?

The 7790 'Bonaire' part is the only exception to this because it's actually GCN 1.1, same as the R9 290X. This is why it shares the same functionality on VSR and FreeSync as our Hawaii and Vesuvius parts.

Seems like the AMD reps aren't singing from the same hymn sheet.

So many lies, false promises and mis-information.

We still intend to deploy a Phase 2 driver update to improve on our VSR technology Benny. You're correct though, this is different from our Phase 2 FreeSync driver which is scheduled to arrive in our April Catalyst update.

There is no set date for the VSR Phase 2 driver yet, but we're working on it diligently behind the scenes.

Robert posted the JAN/FEB time frame for a Phase 2 update as a rough estimate. It's not quite ready yet so rather than release it we decided to spend more time ensuring it's up to the incredibly high standards we've set with 14.12 Omega.

Hope this clears things up a bit.

Cheers AMDMatt for getting this information.....

Thanks for the replies matt.

Thanks for getting these questions answered Matt, These Q&A things are one thing i do think AMD do way better then Nvidia

Thanks everyone, glad this helped.

 

[LtMatt]

Sorry about the moan, have not had a good week so far and let loose a bit too much. I still think the mis-information should have been clarified, which you have clarified now.

That's ok Benny.

 

[LtMatt]

Are new crossfire profiles going to be added in the driver coming 19th March? Are you able to say which games are getting new profiles and/or updated profiles?

We have lots of improvements coming in the next driver. You'll be able to find more specific improvements in the release notes, which I'll publish in the AMD driver thread when the driver launches.