G Sync is only DRM

[GameLifter]

Looks like PC Perspective has confirmed that the driver works but it's not due to the guy on Gamenab modding anything. He just combined a file from a leaked driver found on an ASUS website with the newest Nvidia driver. Turns out the leaked driver found on the ASUS website was an alpha driver for mobile G-Sync!

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-C ... pha-Driver

[jts888]

So it looks like in the mobile space at least Nvidia is willing to brand a setup indistinguishable from Adaptive-sync (plus whatever GPU/driver side logic needed) as being G-sync.

The open question is then which way they choose going forward on the desktop.

• Continue using proprietary monitor FPGA modules and suffering a price disadvantage from Adaptive-sync.
• Selling the modules at a loss until they get custom ASICs fabbed.
• Moving away from the monitor modules but doing some sort of vendor EDID check and only enabling the GPU functionality on licensed displays.
• Throwing in the towel completely and making G-sync 2.0 work identically to the announced FreeSync architecture, supporting any display that advertises the DP 1.2a/1.3+A-s capability.

It would be nice to not have to worry about proprietary standards moving forward, but Nvidia probably was planning the entire G-sync platform with the goal of making a per-display profit from licensing royalties and hardware sales, so it's not like I'm too optimistic.

[RealNC]

So NVidia's plan on laptops is to utilize existing eDP functionality and brand it as "G-Sync" in order to get royalty fees.

Not sure how I feel about that :-/ With the G-Sync module that's OK. They created that technology, it's theirs, they can license it however they see fit. But with eDP? That's not their work. Slapping their own licensed brand on top of it is kind of a dick move.

[Sparky]

So it looks like in the mobile space at least Nvidia is willing to brand a setup indistinguishable from Adaptive-sync (plus whatever GPU/driver side logic needed) as being G-sync.

The open question is then which way they choose going forward on the desktop.

• Continue using proprietary monitor FPGA modules and suffering a price disadvantage from Adaptive-sync.
• Selling the modules at a loss until they get custom ASICs fabbed.
• Moving away from the monitor modules but doing some sort of vendor EDID check and only enabling the GPU functionality on licensed displays.
• Throwing in the towel completely and making G-sync 2.0 work identically to the announced FreeSync architecture, supporting any display that advertises the DP 1.2a/1.3+A-s capability.

It would be nice to not have to worry about proprietary standards moving forward, but Nvidia probably was planning the entire G-sync platform with the goal of making a per-display profit from licensing royalties and hardware sales, so it's not like I'm too optimistic.

I'm hoping for an option you didn't mention: make g-sync 2.0 significantly better than freesync. Here's a quick wishlist:

Window shifting (On displays with max refresh more than double the minimum refresh, eliminate the dead zone just below the display's minimum refresh rate, by forcing a refresh early when frame rates dip near the monitor's minimum refresh rate.)

fast partial updates (For example, updating the cursor at 1khz while g-sync is updating the whole screen as frames finish..

Variable persistence (When g-sync is on, transition between low framerate high persistence to high framerate low persistence, without noticeable flicker or brightness changes.)

Support for non-LCD displays, like OLED, Projectors, etc.

[jts888]

Because VESA Adaptive-sync is just a protocol and not a defined hardware implementation, the only thing on your list DP 1.2a/1.3+AS scalers couldn't do in theory is the partial screen updating. Any AS scaler with a full frame buffer could advertise 0 Hz minimum input and do self-refresh, as well as doing time-compressed panel writeout, adaptive strobing, etc.

While it would be great to have most of these features and more, a >120 Hz mouse cursor alone is worth a $150 premium to very few people. Nvidia wants to sell maybe millions of monitor modules and get maybe a few dollars profit from each board/license, while the established scaler manufacturers are already selling many tens of millions of ASICs a year with periodic updates anyway. Because Nvidia is intentionally going after a higher-margin/lower-volume segment, every ASIC they get masked out costs them proportionately a lot more than what the established players have to budget.

If Nvidida can't deliver any of these upgrades, and soon, it will be a moot point anyway.

[Sparky]

Because VESA Adaptive-sync is just a protocol and not a defined hardware implementation, the only thing on your list DP 1.2a/1.3+AS scalers couldn't do in theory is the partial screen updating. Any AS scaler with a full frame buffer could advertise 0 Hz minimum input and do self-refresh, as well as doing time-compressed panel writeout, adaptive strobing, etc.

While it would be great to have most of these features and more, a >120 Hz mouse cursor alone is worth a $150 premium to very few people. Nvidia wants to sell maybe millions of monitor modules and get maybe a few dollars profit from each board/license, while the established scaler manufacturers are already selling many tens of millions of ASICs a year with periodic updates anyway. Because Nvidia is intentionally going after a higher-margin/lower-volume segment, every ASIC they get masked out costs them proportionately a lot more than what the established players have to budget.

If Nvidida can't deliver any of these upgrades, and soon, it will be a moot point anyway.

I'm not saying these are things only Nvidia can do, I'm saying we need Nvidia in the race to keep the display industry from stagnating again. Window shifting in particular is definitely low hanging fruit.

[jts888]

While I appreciate a lot of the technical innovation Nvidia has done, my regard on the net benefit to consumers differs a bit from yours. IMO, their walled garden style of feature releases substantially hurt the adoption of stereoscopic displays and physics engines in the cases of 3DVision and PhysX compared to what we might have seen if standard HDMI 1.4 and OpenCL had been used as open platform bases, and I'd rather see dynamic syncing be a single open protocol instead of multiple incompatible closed solutions.

If Nvidia wanted to design and sell scalers that worked with any DP1.2a source, I'd be more than happy to consider buying a monitor using one if it had the right price and features, but that doesn't really match they way of doing things. The big problem is that monitors are a large volume highly price sensitive market while anything related to gaming is rather niche, so only entities like Nvidia or AMD are likely to push even marginally cost-raising features. Still, I've been rather happy my entire life until now not having to worry about vendor lock-in between my GPUs and monitors, and I'd rather not start now.

[yakapo]

I wasn't able to get gsync working when I tried it with my last video card (a gtx670). I didn't like the monitor anyway, so I ended up returning it without putting much effort into it. After reading this new info about gsync, I'm glad I didn't keep it. I'm hoping nvidia loosens up their grip and supports adaptive framerates on 1.2a.

Now, I've got a gtx970 and a 21:9 monitor, but I've been on the lookout for a 21:9 monitor that supports 120hz or higher. If they release a freesync 21:9 2560x1080 monitor, I'll probably just sell my gtx970 and pick up the AMD 3 series that's about to be released.

[Cooknn]

I'm really gonna be jones'n for G-Sync on Oculus Rift. Or Freesync. I don't care. Anything but V-Sync.