Chief Blur Buster visits AMD's FreeSync room at CES 2015

Talk about AMD's FreeSync and VESA AdaptiveSync, which are variable refresh rate technologies. They also eliminate stutters, and eliminate tearing. List of FreeSync Monitors.
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Chief Blur Buster visits AMD's FreeSync room at CES 2015

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 08 Jan 2015, 19:12

I visited AMD's room at CES 2015, at The Venetian showroom meeting rooms (found location via their press release), and got to see several displays in action, relating to FreeSync, ultrawides, and LG's MOTION240!

- LG 34UM67 ultrawide monitor, with FreeSync
- LG 24GM77 120Hz monitor with MOTION240 blur reduction strobe backlight.
- Samsung 4K FreeSync monitor (similar spec to ASUS ROG PG278Q)
- BENQ XL2730Z QHD monitor with FreeSync

Entering AMD's showroom:

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And me (Chief Blur Buster) presenting myself in front of a few FreeSync monitors, with UFO mascot placard:

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Looking closer at the LG 34UM67 ultrawide with FreeSync:

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It was running actually running beautifully smooth FreeSync in ultrawide mode:

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I moved over to look at a Samsung 4K FreeSync (model unknown) monitor running a windmill demo. This is essentially AMD's equivalent of NVIDIA's pendulum demo.

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The monitor label:

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And then, as seen below, I played around with the options of the windmill. It had an option to sweep the framerate. The sweep was seamless, seeing framerate bounce around from 40fps through 60fps without stutter. It looked every bit as good looking at G-SYNC at the same rates (40-60fps in Pendulum Demo). Disable FreeSync and VSYNC brought about ugly tearing and stutters, so it was certainly cool to see FreeSync doing its job.

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There was also a BENQ XL2730Z monitor next to it, displaying a Tomb Raider style animation, in FreeSync at a very high fluidity (It looked 120Hz, but may not be 120Hz, because the animation was spinning so slowly; and GSYNC/FreeSync often makes fluidity look better than its framerate)

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Then I noticed a series of LG24M77 monitors, which I know has the TURBO240 blur reducing strobe backlight:

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And the on-screen menu option of MOTION240:

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LG MOTION240 Impressions
I was able to sneakily run TestUFO. I was able to visually observe it to be about 2-3ms persistence (based on TestUFO Panning Map Test readability), with far less strobe crosstalk than unoptimized/untweaked BENQ Blur Reduction, but more strobe crosstalk than optimized/adjusted BENQ Blur Reduction, ULMB, or LightBoost. Colors looked far better than LIghtBoost. It's a fairly good, even if basic, implementation, of a motion blur reducing strobe backlight.

Initial FreeSync Impressions
Now, my initial impressions of FreeSync is that it's on an equal footing to GSYNC in motion quality. At least by first impression, without looking closely at them "under a microscope". FreeSync certainly eliminated stutters and tearing, just like GSYNC does, even if the methods/technologies work somewhat differently. A future article will probably compare GSYNC and FreeSync. Many sources have reported various pros and cons of GSYNC and FreeSync, but a major one that sticks out: Lower cost of implementing FreeSync.

Also, coincidentially, I ran into an AMD employee who lives in Hamilton (where I live now), so there will be more connections.

Oh, and yes -- to be fair -- I am definitely also going to be visiting NVIDIA (likely tomorrow). Keep tuned!
Head of Blur Busters - BlurBusters.com | TestUFO.com | Follow @BlurBusters on Twitter

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spacediver
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Re: Chief Blur Buster visits AMD's FreeSync room at CES 2015

Post by spacediver » 09 Jan 2015, 00:24

awesome, really glad you made it there, and thanks for bringing us the latest from the front lines :)

Falkentyne
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Re: Chief Blur Buster visits AMD's FreeSync room at CES 2015

Post by Falkentyne » 09 Jan 2015, 01:08

Nice job chief :)

Can you mail me a UFO mascot? :) I really want one of them things! :)

BTW You've dealt with both AMD and Nvidia. Which do you feel is the more 'gamer friendly' company?
What about Benq vs Asus?

When my 2720Z S-switch broke, Benq sent me a new one which arrived the very next day, after they verified my serial number. I don't think Asus would do such a thing...but I guess it depends ?

IwantGSYNC
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Re: Chief Blur Buster visits AMD's FreeSync room at CES 2015

Post by IwantGSYNC » 09 Jan 2015, 02:15

Very useful post, thank you! Glad to see FreeSync is not poor man's G-Sync after all. Unfortunately, I am very disappointed by the minimum refresh rates.

I can't enjoy the game if framerate drops below 45 fps so I would like to buy an IPS display with as low minimum refresh rate as possible. I hope display manufacturers will add some secret sauce to their LCD panels in order to make them work without artifacts at 24-40hz range.
Last edited by IwantGSYNC on 09 Jan 2015, 07:03, edited 1 time in total.

Black Octagon
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Re: Chief Blur Buster visits AMD's FreeSync room at CES 2015

Post by Black Octagon » 09 Jan 2015, 02:43

Thanks so much Mark. Very exciting

Sparky
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Re: Chief Blur Buster visits AMD's FreeSync room at CES 2015

Post by Sparky » 09 Jan 2015, 03:43

Chief Blur Buster wrote: Oh, and yes -- to be fair -- I am definitely also going to be visiting NVIDIA (likely tomorrow). Keep tuned!
Oooh I'd love if you asked a few questions about progress and plans on possible improvements to g-sync:

Variable persistence.

non-LCD panel technologies

And a few possible techniques for working around a panel's minimum refresh rate:

Timing window shifting. (self-refresh before you have to, if you think the next frame will finish during the lockout for self-refresh, reduces likelyhood and average severity of the penalty for framerate dipping below the minimum refresh rate).

Interruptible self refresh (Similar to above, but instead of sitting idle between frames, the display continuously refreshes it's self, and when it starts to receive a new frame it just drops whatever it was doing and starts over from the top. Can completely eliminate the minimum if the maximum refresh rate is at least double the minimum refresh rate, and reduces the maximum penalty for the rest)

Multiple scanline refresh (Similar to above except it continues scanning out the old frame while it starts scanning the new frame, can in principle remove the penalty even on displays with very high minimum refresh rates and low maximum refresh rates.)

Thanks for the updates.

nuninho1980
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Re: Chief Blur Buster visits AMD's FreeSync room at CES 2015

Post by nuninho1980 » 09 Jan 2015, 09:35

Hi, admin.

NOTICE!!
Your photos #2, #7 and #11 have incorrect angles - you make mistaked, if the horizontal CRT/LCD monitor used... :?
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Re: Chief Blur Buster visits AMD's FreeSync room at CES 2015

Post by MrBrown » 09 Jan 2015, 09:41

Great, thanks for the update.

I wonder why the LG 24GM77 is there, because it doesnt have gsync or anything special, its just a normal 144hz monitor with motion240.

Yeah I would be interested about progress of OLED for PC Monitors or let alone OLED Notebooks as a start.
Falkentynes BenQ Service Menu thread: http://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2467

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Re: Chief Blur Buster visits AMD's FreeSync room at CES 2015

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 09 Jan 2015, 15:41

nuninho1980 wrote:Hi, admin.

NOTICE!!
Your photos #2, #7 and #11 have incorrect angles - you make mistaked, if the horizontal CRT/LCD monitor used... :?
It appears to be a browser behavior. The camera's accelerometer (gravity) data is embedded in the photo EXIF header, and some browsers (e.g. Safari) automatically rotate the photos to its correct orientation. But not all web browsers do.

I will need to run a script to hard-code the rotation later -- but for now, I'm blogging everything wirelessly completely from iDevices (for better or for worse).
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  2. Please report rule violations If you see a post that violates forum rules, then report the post.
  3. ALWAYS respect indie testers here. See how indies are bootstrapping Blur Busters research!

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Re: Chief Blur Buster visits AMD's FreeSync room at CES 2015

Post by GameLifter » 09 Jan 2015, 16:31

Thanks for the impressions! I'm glad to see more monitors coming with variable refresh rate technology. It will bring prices down and it's good that both AMD and Nvidia users can experience it.

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