[AT]AMD Demonstrates "FreeSync", Free G-Sync Alternative, at CES 2014

[ShintaiDK]

ftp://ftp.cis.nctu.edu.tw/pub/csie/...Document_Center_Monitor_Interface/CVTv1_1.pdf

IF I'm reading the correct standard at all and IF I understand anything this document states:

This document describes a possibility to reduce blanking DOWN from a MAXIMUM of 60 FPS by specifying a FIXED timing to match a pre-generated source material e.g. a fixed frame rate movie.

This makes AMD's demo pretty much useless since you can only pre-determine frame rate with a known load. So knowing that your min FPS will be 52, you can set the VBLANK to that and have a fluid demo. Missing that, though, results in the same issues as VSYNC.

The document does however speak of providing said video in a window, which would mean that you could have two separate refresh rates within the same picture though my reading isn't nearly as good as to see how that's supposed to be done using the timing parameters for variable blanking. If possible though such a feature seems cool to me.

NV's solution is more advanced than this: they have special logic that holds current frame up to 1/30s in wait for next frame data to come in. At that time it displays the arrived frame and starts waiting for the next one. This provides truly variable VSYNC (down to 30FPS) and also helps with frame rates below 30FPS because you don't have to wait 1/30s for the next frame if it accidentaly comes in at 1/30s + 0.001s.

Preemptive for flaming: I have used pretty much equal number of ATI and NV cards in the past. I'm a fan of neither, but love them both. They both allow me to play games, sometimes one, other times the other

Edit: that said, enabling VSYNC on a 144Hz display seems to be much less problematic stutter-wise than doing the same thing on a 60Hz display. A 55 FPS render will yield a 30FPS VSYNC-enabled result (every second frame) on a 60Hz display and a 48 FPS VSYNC-enabled result (every third frame) on a 144Hz display. Seems pretty smooth to me even without x-sync. The way forward seems clear to me, though true variable frame rate also doesn't look bad especially since LCDs don't actually know refresh rate.

Yep. This is essentially g-sync boiled down. A buffering system. And as showed before, what the GPU delivers is something like this with uneven frame times.

Hence why "freesync" will never be a fix.

 

[krumme]

Haha, what freaking crazy news this is.

We have had an open Vesa standard for years and its in implemented in hardware for all recent AMD apu/gpu, and driver support is implemented in latest catalyst.

How can i can i see if my panel / future panel is supporting the Vesa standard?

All are happy because its free.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

AMD says the tech will cost nothing (which in itself is strange, because zero cost = zero profit),

Marketing, marketing, good will and their name means profit in other areas.

 

[Arkadrel]

I dont care if FreeSync or G-sync are perfect. Both probably are far from perfect.

I dont expect them to be perfect, I just know they look like they work better than what we currently have.
I like the improvements they aim to give.

 

[blackened23]

Actually I asked him for his references to the claims to know AMD's intentions.

I have no idea what AMD intents on doing, neither do YOU nor ShintaiDK. I never claimed I did.

That's what AMD wants. People that are gullible enough to buy into their marketing promises despite no products coming for years if that. I'm almost tempted to name countless examples of AMD doing exactly that. You know that AMD is full of fluff with no substance. Misdelivered promises. But "we don't know what AMD intends on doing". Yep. We don't know. And we won't know. Sure does sound promising to get AMD fans to buy into the hope of a g-sync alternative though, marketing at its finest.

That sums AMD up. Wait for this. Wait for that driver. Wait for our MST hubs which remove eyefinity tearing on the 5870. (released in 2013). When was the 5870 released? When were MST hubs promised? Oh yeah. Wait for our frame pacing fixed for 79xx cards (where is it?) Blah blah blah. It only took us 1.5 years to fix it in single screen resolution. But just wait 2.5 years for the DX9 and eyefinity frame pacing driver. Wait for the AMD version of 3D vision! only....we're going to abandon it. And we'll have a third party (tridef) CHARGE you for the 3D gaming driver. That's what it always is with AMD. Wait. I almost want to name like 20 more examples here, but you get the point.

Hey guys. Wait for one more thing. Wait for free-sync! Only...we dont' have monitor partners and no plans to help bring this to market. The AMD marketing dream. Wait. Wake me up when AMD has panel partners signed up and a concrete plan to market. Yawn.

 

[Silverforce11]

Nobody is against Freesync because AMD. Personally I hope it happens.

That's what AMD wants. People that are gullible enough to buy into their marketing promises despite no products coming for years if that. I'm almost tempted to name countless examples of AMD doing exactly that. You know that AMD is full of fluff with no substance. Misdelivered promises. But "we don't know what AMD intends on doing". Yep. We don't know. And we won't know. Sure does sound promising to get AMD fans to buy into the hope of a g-sync alternative though, marketing at its finest.

That sums AMD up. Wait for this. Wait for that driver. Wait for our MST hubs which remove eyefinity tearing on the 5870. (released in 2013). When was the 5870 released? When were MST hubs promised? Oh yeah. Wait for our frame pacing fixed for 79xx cards (where is it?) Blah blah blah. It only took us 1.5 years to fix it in single screen resolution. But just wait 2.5 years for the DX9 and eyefinity frame pacing driver. That's what it always is with AMD. Wait. I almost want to name like 20 more examples here, but you get the point.

Hey guys. Wait for one more thing. Wait for free-sync! Only...we dont' have monitor partners and no plans to help bring this to market. The AMD marketing dream. Wait. Wake me up when AMD has panel partners signed up and a concrete plan to market. Yawn.

I find it very hard to reconcile your twin positions.. is it hate because its AMD or isn't it?

 

[blackened23]

I've already explained this to you. If it happens, great. That still doesn't change that their demo was using v-sync and is thus inadequate. But let's just say this for some reason works. Let's say that nvidia is using FPGA just for the heck of it. Their engineers are idiots.

With that assumption, AMD's history of not delivering means everything here. AMD's history of promising things to consumers, and not following up for years, is relevant. And you know it. You just won't admit it.

I'm willing to bet...deep down...that you know free-sync probably wont' happen any time soon. How many times has AMD promised the world only to come up short. Many times. You've seen AMD's countless broken promises. But will you admit it? I don't know.

 

[Silverforce11]

Actually I am in the same boat, if Freesync happen and it works good, awesome! If not, I don't actually care because I am not going to fork out $$ for G-SYNC regardless, so no love lost as they say.

What I do care, is that I got R290s that were $150 cheaper than reference GTX780 here in my part of the world. That's it, not brand loyalty. But bang for my buck, as it has always been.

I'm just amused that so much hatred and negativity stems from a company doing a tech demo at a tech show..

 

[blackened23]

I wouldn't expect you to switch. Clearly you value hashrate over PC gaming. No disrespect or anything, that's great, but based on your love of cryptocoins I wouldn't imagine you'd opt for g-sync since you like mining. Nvidia tends to cater to actual...PC gamers. Anyway, the negativity stems from the fact that:

1) AMD has a vast history of promising things to which they don't deliver on.
2) History of lying to consumers. Or not following up for years (MST, HD3D, frame pacing, etc)
3) Marketing stunts just to get attention away from g-sync

Number 3 is key here. G-sync wasn't announced until nvidia had a firm and concrete plan to get it to market. AMD on the other hand, has nothing and just wanted a paper based proof of concept as a marketing stunt. Again, I highly suspect that you know i'm right. AMD has done this type of nonsense before without following up on their promises.

So if AMD can take attention away from G-sync for a few weeks, and give gullible fans the hope for a G-sync alternative, that's marketing at its finest.
Like I said. Hope i'm wrong. You can't ignore AMD's prior actions in this context though. It would be completely different if AMD came out and told us their plans to get products on the market. Who their panel partners are. Etc. But what we have instead is a paper proof of concept which will likely not materialize anytime soon.

 

[NTMBK]

1) AMD has a vast history of promising things to which they don't deliver on.
2) History of lying to consumers. Or not following up for years (MST, HD3D, frame pacing, etc)
3) Marketing stunts just to get attention away from g-sync

NVidia has a history of promising things that they don't deliver on- just look at the ongoing Tegra debacle. NVidia has a history of lying to consumers- remember the woodscrews? And NVidia launched G-Sync as a stunt to get attention away from Mantle in the first place! (Not saying that G-Sync itself is a stunt, it sounds like a great technology; but the timing of the announcement was definitely a stunt.) And then they purposefully held a Tegra event in the same hotel as AMD's Kaveri event, immediately after, on the same day.

They're as bad as each other. (And so is Intel, for that matter.) They're just your average tech company. I don't hold grudges, I just want good tech.

 

[DigDog]

Actually I am in the same boat, if Freesync happen and it works good, awesome! If not, I don't actually care because I am not going to fork out $$ for G-SYNC regardless, so no love lost as they say.

i'm calling you on that; will you really not spend money on it, maybe in a year, when they get the price down a bit (the 24" Asus is $350, and the module should be about a hundred bucks) .. and people start putting on YouTube all their videos on of tear, lag and blurring free gameplay ...

i dont believe it. G-Sync, as we saw it, is awesome. Maybe you're a IPS, color accuracy kind-of-guy, but for gamers, this is the holy grail.

 

[sontin]

What? nVidia was able to showcase G-Sync in Montreal.
nVidia sent G-Sync modules to sites so they can give them away.

G-Sync is real and in the hand of privat people. How could that be a"stunt to get attention away from Mantle in the first place"?

 

[Silverforce11]

I wouldn't expect you to switch. Clearly you value hashrate over PC gaming. Nvidia tends to cater to actual...PC gamers.

I've used a gtx670 for the good part of last year thank you. It was great value, got it on a sale at the time, $299 versus 7950s going for $330+. There's even a thread from me praising its cooling design, less noisy than AMD reference blowers.

So clearly you don't know jack and for you to presume to "clearly" know my preferences show how arrogant you are.

Again, I must re-emphasize this point: I'm just amused that so much hatred and negativity stems from a company doing a tech demo at a tech show..

 

[Silverforce11]

i'm calling you on that; will you really not spend money on it, maybe in a year, when they get the price down a bit (the 24" Asus is $350, and the module should be about a hundred bucks) .. and people start putting on YouTube all their videos on of tear, lag and blurring free gameplay ...

i dont believe it. G-Sync, as we saw it, is awesome. Maybe you're a IPS, color accuracy kind-of-guy, but for gamers, this is the holy grail.

NV is selling the G-SYNC kit for $199. That is too much a premium for me, so I have no intentions of going for it. Also, I do prefer IPS.

Maybe NV will develop it for better than TN monitors eventually and maybe it won't be as expensive (really, that kind of price = a decent GPU by itself for most gamers), if that happens, I will reconsider.

 

[NTMBK]

What? nVidia was able to showcase G-Sync in Montreal.
nVidia sent G-Sync modules to sites so they can give them away.

G-Sync is real and in the hand of privat people. How could that be a"stunt to get attention away from Mantle in the first place"?

Did you not read the part of my post in brackets?

Not saying that G-Sync itself is a stunt, it sounds like a great technology; but the timing of the announcement was definitely a stunt.

I was referring to the stunt timing, deliberately aimed to distract from Mantle and Hawaii.

 

[sontin]

Why should i?
G-Sync is real. It came before Mantle to the market.

As long as Mantle is not out, Mantle was the desperation move to get attention. But i guess the GTX780ti and all the custom cards were "stunt to get attention away from [290x] in the first place", too.

 

[NTMBK]

Why should i?
G-Sync is real. It came before Mantle to the market.

As long as Mantle is not out, Mantle was the desperation move to get attention. But i guess the GTX780ti and all the custom cards were "stunt to get attention away from [290x] in the first place", too.

Why should you what?

But you know what, I just went and checked, and I actually misremembered dates. I thought that the NVidia G-Sync event was scheduled to be right after AMD's one in Hawaii, but it wasn't; just my mind playing tricks on me I guess. So I rescind the claims about G-Sync announcement stunt timing.

But the Tegra K1 timing is still a complete stunt. I mean, booking out the same hotel the following hour? Come on!

 

[HurleyBird]

I'm a bit sceptical that FreeSync will do absolutely everything that Gsync does... though I'm sure in the coming weeks we'll find out what the differences are, if there are indeed any. There are smart people who will figure it out sooner than later.

I'm also sceptical we'll see any compatible monitors in the next half year. Even if both FreeSync and Gsync take off, I'm fearful that it will be a very long time before they find their way into a monitor I want to buy -- as opposed to an endless slew of crappy TN displays.

That said, the agitators in this thread are simply unbelievable, from misquoting Anand's article (repeatedly, even after it is pointed out to them) to straight up denial. Reading a lot of these posts, I'm not getting a feeling of healthy scepticism at all -- more of overly defensive fanatics dealing with something they find inconvenient. I guess it's a sign of how poor the user base on this forum has become. To be fair the same thing happens in Nvidia threads, but maybe not to the same degree.

 

[dacostafilipe]

... their demo was using v-sync and is thus inadequate ...

Ehmmm ... I don't want to burst your bubble, but G-Sync uses v-sync to, but on the controller.

An the reason they do this, is because it's the only way to remove tearing. You have to wait for the last rendering to end before starting the next one. If you don't ... *baaam* tearing.

Now, the v-sync on the controller is not 60hz like most people would think, but it's the maximum of the screen frequency. This does not remove the lag, but it get reduced from +-16ms (60hz) on to +-6ms (168hz) on the Asus screen nVidia used on the demos. With event faster screens, this input lag will be reduced even more. That's why on nVidia slides, they dont write "No Lag", but "Less Lag":

G-Sync needs to know how long the display requires to draw the frame so that it can delay a frame if it's arrives to soon.


What AMD wants to do:

- Run your screen at max frequency
- Manage redraws with VBLANK
- Use triple buffering to get the last fully rendered frame.

I don't know if they can deliver, but it sounds plausible and the end result would be the same as G-Sync.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

Either case, consumers win because of this. If AMD does truly push out this and for free, Nvidia will be forced to react, depending on Freesync's reception. Win-win.

I'd rather not be forced to pay money for G-Sync, so I'm keeping an eye on this. If nothing comes of it, oh well. I've learned never to trust tech companies. They're always the most optimistic that technology can solve everything.

 

[sontin]

Ehmmm ... I don't want to burst your bubble, but G-Sync uses v-sync to, but on the controller.

It uses only V-Sync when the frame rate is <=30FPS or reach the maximum hz of the monitor. Between both ends G-Sync doesn't use any kind of V-Sync.

An the reason they do this, is because it's the only way to remove tearing. You have to wait for the last rendering to end before starting the next one. If you don't ... *baaam* tearing.

That's the reason why the GPU communicates with the G-Sync module. The module is responsible to refresh the monitor.

G-Sync needs to know how long the display requires to draw the frame so that it can delay a frame if it's arrives to soon.

G-Sync only operates to maximum Hz of a monitor. Under that a monitor is always able to render a frame faster than the GPU is able to deliver.

What AMD wants to do:

- Run your screen at max frequency
- Manage redraws with VBLANK
- Use triple buffering to get the last fully rendered frame.

I don't know if they can deliver, but it sounds plausible and the end result would be the same as G-Sync.

No, the end result is not the same. Using TB will introduce lag and stuttering. VBLANK limits the "maximum Hz" of a monitor to a lower one. Change the VBLANK is only possible by throwing frames away before you can display them. Or to use more buffers to analyse the stream.

 

[railven]

Am I the only who read any of the articles and interpreted as this is not AMD's technology? It seems VESA is the one creating it, AMD is just one of the companies involved in implementing (shoot the demo seems to be a quick app designed to show it works, without AMD's involvement in the laptop/display/other hardware except the GPU.)

It seems like AMD did their part (made a gpu that supports it, and has working software/drivers that support it) but since unlike Nvidia they aren't the IP holders for the hardware, they can't simply force display makers to flip the VBLANK switch. Seems that will have to come from VESA once they do finalize a spec. Reminds me of HDMI-CEC, it was there, but it only worked once manufacturers flipped the switch (and now thankfully I can control my PS4/XBone with my TV remote.)

Either way, it seems more like Nvidia caught wind of VESA's plan and produced something for the market first. They benefit from the additional hardware costs (as they produce the chips) and frankly it would be a financial gain for them since any vendor wanting to support G-Sync would have to pay royalties. Now you get something like "FreeSync" which sort of throws a monkey wrench into things.

Not sure why people are claiming AMD has to get this feature to market, since it isn't their baby. Nvidia has to promote/sponsor/endorse G-Sync.

 

[dacostafilipe]

It uses only V-Sync when the frame rate is <=30FPS or reach the maximum hz of the monitor. Between both ends G-Sync doesn't use any kind of V-Sync.

So, and how do they know when they can draw the next frame?

That's the reason why the GPU communicates with the G-Sync module. The module is responsible to refresh the monitor.

The communication does not remove tearing. Waiting fort the draw to end does. That's why they have the RAM on the controller, so they can store frames that have to be delayed.

G-Sync only operates to maximum Hz of a monitor. Under that a monitor is always able to render a frame faster than the GPU is able to deliver.

Thank you to confirm what I said :thumbsup:

No, the end result is not the same. Using TB will introduce lag and stuttering. VBLANK limits the "maximum Hz" of a monitor to a lower one. Change the VBLANK is only possible by throwing frames away before you can display them. Or to use more buffers to analyse the stream.

No, no lag with triple buffering. Why should it add lags?

VBLANK is the time the display has to "hold" a frame before the next one.
If VBLANK is over, *edit* and we don't have a new frame yet *edit*, we use an old frame as placeholder. With G-Sync you use the frame in the RAM, with FreeSync we take the last frame from the GPU buffer.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I've used a gtx670 for the good part of last year thank you. It was great value, got it on a sale at the time, $299 versus 7950s going for $330+. There's even a thread from me praising its cooling design, less noisy than AMD reference blowers.

So clearly you don't know jack and for you to presume to "clearly" know my preferences show how arrogant you are.

Again, I must re-emphasize this point: I'm just amused that so much hatred and negativity stems from a company doing a tech demo at a tech show..

I didn't see this thread until now, it was created just yesterday afternoon. Now it is 10 pages long because the same small handful of anti-AMD posters are doing their thing. Every single time... It has gotten really old now. :thumbsdown:

 

[railven]

I didn't see this thread until now, it was created just yesterday afternoon. Now it is 10 pages long because the same small handful of anti-AMD posters are doing their thing. Every single time... It has gotten really old now. :thumbsdown:

To be fair, it's the same handful of people it just about any thread.

At this point I'd petition to flush a few people :twisted:

Oh well, I've stuck to reading perhaps the first few pages of any thread since they just devolve. I only posted in this one since the hypocrisy was so think.

Back to skimming.