Published in Graphics

FreeSync monitors to show up in November

by on16 October 2014



Starting in Q4, expanding in Q1 2015

We have learned that part of AMD's strategy in the GPU wars is to bring the FreeSync standard to market as soon as possible and we expected to see the first monitors in Q1 2015 timeframe. AMD said that we should expect Project FreeSync compatible monitors in the 4Q14-1Q15 timeframe and we assumed that Q1 2015 will be the date.

Nvidia finally started shipping its first 4K G-sync monitors such as the Acer 4k2k XB280HK 28" G-Sync Gaming Widescreen LED Monitor and this will definitely put some pressure on AMD to get its FreeSync out as soon as possible.


FreeSync comes in November rather than 2015


Our sources are confirming that the first FreeSync monitors might hit the market as soon as next month, but we don’t have any better date than that. AMD preaches that FreeSync, contrary to G-Sync, comes with no licensing fees for adoption, no expensive or proprietary hardware modules, and no communication overhead.

According to AMD, FreeSync uses industry-standard DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync protocols to pre-negotiate supported min/max refresh rates during plug’n’play, which means frame presentation to the user will never be delayed or impaired by time-consuming two-way handshakes.

We saw G-Sync in action and it remains to be seen whether FreeSync can match it, but both technologies are supposed to sync the FPS output of your graphics card and the refresh frame rates of your monitor. This prevents annoying frame tears, something that is quite common and plagues many gamers, so it's nice to see that both companies are addressing this problem.

FreeSync should end up cheaper than G-Sync


Since FreeSync has no licensing fees for vendors, no expensive or proprietary hardware modules, and no communication overhead, FreeSync capable monitors should end up cheaper than G-Sync gear. Since there are lot of diehard AMD fans who will never defect to Nvidia, this is the perfect technology for them and people might be happy to know that many AMD cards will have FreeSync support.

AMD Radeon HD 7000, HD 8000, R7 or R9 Series will support Project FreeSync for video playback and power-saving purposes, while the AMD Radeon R9 295X2, 290X, R9 290, R9 285, R7 260X and R7 260 GPUs additionally feature updated display controllers that will support dynamic refresh rates during gaming.

 

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