AMD Shows Off An External FreeSync Monitor In Action

Written by Michael Larabel in AMD on 6 June 2014 at 11:20 AM EDT. 24 Comments
AMD
This week at Computex Taipei, AMD is showing off a FreeSync external display in action as their alternative to NVIDIA's G-Sync.

FreeSync is the AMD-developed, VESA-adopted standard for Adaptive-Sync similar to NVIDIA's G-Sync that allows for displays to have a variable refresh rate. The goal is for the display's refresh rate to match the GPU's rendering rate on a frame-by-frame basis to eliminate potential tearing or stuttering. Dropping the frame-rate out of performance-sensitive situations can also lead to lower system power use / longer battery life.

Unlike NVIDIA's G-Sync, no specialized hardware is required to support FreeSync. This week at Computex, AMD was showing off the first FreeSync capable monitor that can run between 40Hz and 60Hz. The monitor on display was a retail monitor that can already support FreeSync just via a firmware upgrade. For supported monitors out there right now that have the capability of supporting the variable refresh-rate, it will be up to the vendors to issue new firmware, but that's probably unlikely given they would rather drive new monitor sales with a line-up of official "FreeSync" monitors.

Embedded below is a video of AMD's Computex FreeSync demo courtesy of AnandTech. Sadly for those interested in FreeSync/G-Sync, the current open-source Linux graphics stack will need to see some updates in order to handle this technology, as covered yesterday within the Linux GPU driver global thermo-nuclear war article.

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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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