Slashdot Mirror


AMD Debuts Radeon FreeSync 2 For Gaming Displays With Stunning Image Quality (venturebeat.com)

AMD announced Tuesday it is introducing Radeon FreeSync 2, a new display technology that will enable monitors to show the exact intended image pixels that a game or other application wants to. The result will be better image quality for gamers, according to AMD. From a report on VentureBeat: With the FreeSync 2 specification, monitor makers will be able to create higher-quality monitors that build on the two-year-old FreeSync technology. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD is on a quest for "pixel perfection," said David Glen, senior fellow at AMD, in a press briefing. With FreeSync 2, you won't have to mess with your monitor's settings to get the perfect setting for your game, Glen said. It will be plug-and-play, deliver brilliant pixels that have twice as much color gamut and brightness over other monitors, and have low-latency performance for high-speed games. AMD's FreeSync technology and Nvidia's rival G-Sync allow a graphics card to adjust the monitor's refresh rate on the fly, matching it to the computer's frame rate. This synchronization prevents the screen-tearing effect -- with visibly mismatched graphics on different parts of the screen -- which happens when the refresh rate of the display is out of sync with the computer.

2 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Freesync has nothing to do with color gamut. by BenJeremy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One thing is not related to the other.

    Freesync is just a way to handle variant refreshes without screen tearing. Those refreshes can happen faster or slower. If a refresh happens faster than the LCDs can make the transition (which is rare, and only will really be an issue on whole scene changes, and likely you'll never see ghosting anyway), it will still happen.

    That said, Sync tech has to do with human perception of changes that respond more precisely, and eliminating stutter (which happens because the refresh can't occur at the cyclical vertical refresh, which is mostly an artifact of CRT tech anyway). It is frustrating that nvidia has pushed proprietary sync tech that is costly to implement, rather than go with "Free Sync" which only requires firmware changes for most basic monitor controllers.

    It seems like AMD's real push here is to maintain Free Sync capability as monitor manufacturers increase the color gamut and enhance LCD response times.

  2. Re:Nvidia is still better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    you understand that g-sync is a objectively inferior standard when it comes to latency right? Because it requires additional hardware processing on the display's end to enable g-sync. Whereas FreeSync makes use of an optional ISO standard extension for LCD screens (that was mostly designed for laptops as a battery saving measure but is now being used on desktops for stopping screen tear) and therefore doesn't require any additional hardware cost.

    Say what you want about 'support' (I personally have opinions about anti-trust/anti-consumer practices that I whole-hardheartedly believe nvidia has done on purpose http://techreport.com/review/21404/crysis-2-tessellation-too-much-of-a-good-thing/2 to make games run slower on all systems, but slowest on ATI/AMD cards (Due to ATI/AMD cards being better at particle effects than nvidia cards, but less strong on poly counts... so nvidia pushes everything to have stupidly high poly counts when it doesn't need it..)) ... but back on topic...

    Say what you want about 'support', but AMD's contributions to the open source (mantle -> openGL's replacement: vulkan), freesync (which monitors could EASILY support ALONG with gysnc ... but nvidia won't license its gysnc to any manf. who wants to do that...(again, might be good business, but anti-consumer and I'd argue anti-trust issue)) along with a lot of other technical specifications over the last ...ohh 4~5 years (HBM memory among them) far out weighs in my opinion the crap nvidia has pushed onto society with its practices...