VESA Adopts Adaptive-Sync

[parvadomus]

G-Sync was pretty much a gimmick to begin with, but its pretty safe to call it DOA now.

Its safe until the monitor suppliers begin to compete to implement Adaptive-Sync. No one can save G-Sync. :'(

 

[Mand]

G-Sync was pretty much a gimmick to begin with, but its pretty safe to call it DOA now.

Gimmick? Hardly.

Variable refresh is the future, the same way color was. Whether it's G-Sync or FreeSync, everyone will get there eventually. It's a fundamentally superior way of displaying visual information on a computer.

 

[Mand]

Its safe until the monitor suppliers begin to compete to implement Adaptive-Sync. No one can save G-Sync. :'(

If they could, they would be. Display manufacturers are currently waiting on Nvidia's engineers to help tune G-Sync modules to each panel they want to use.

If they had the capability of developing this sort of hardware, which AMD has said is required, they would be doing it already, rather than waiting for Nvidia to help them.

 

[Skurge]

I'm for variable refresh, no matter who puts it out. It will drive every future purchase of GPU and monitor for me.

What I'm against is AMD's blatant misrepresentation of what FreeSync actually was doing in the demo, what it would require in terms of hardware, and their utter disinterest of actually doing the engineering legwork to make this happen and instead announcing that they were trying to "encourage" the display OEMs to do the R&D for them.

Now they claim to be "working closely with these vendors" - this is a change. Surprising, and a little disconcerting, that they didn't feel like it was worth mentioning just who those vendors were.

They seemed to have done fine with both 4K MST and SST support. Monitors will come. No one is going to want to be left out in the cold. Cause people are going to buy an AS over a non AS monitor and if Asus, BenQ, Samsung, etc can avoid having to buy the modules from nVidia, I would hazard a guess implementing this is cheaper for them than G-Sync.

 

[3DVagabond]

If they could, they would be. Display manufacturers are currently waiting on Nvidia's engineers to help tune G-Sync modules to each panel they want to use.

If they had the capability of developing this sort of hardware, which AMD has said is required, they would be doing it already, rather than waiting for Nvidia to help them.

They are paying for it from nVidia. Why would they do any of the research?

 

[Mand]

I would hazard a guess implementing this is cheaper for them than G-Sync.

Considering the amount of man-hours that display OEMs are reporting that Nvidia is devoting to helping display OEMs in getting G-Sync up and running, I'm not sure why people think it would just magically be cheaper for the display OEMs to do all the work themselves.

Why do you think it would be cheaper? The only thing that people can concretely point to as far as what might be cheaper is any licensing fee that Nvidia might be charging. But given how much they're investing into getting G-Sync out in the wild, do you really think they're going to work backwards with licensing fees to drive away vendors? Right now they have vendors chomping at the bit waiting for their engineers to help them, and there just isn't enough bandwidth for Nvidia to do it all.

And there's a reason that's the only concrete thing you can point to, because FreeSync doesn't exist, still. There is no solution yet, anywhere, by anyone. And until there is, until a display OEM actually implements it in a display, FreeSync will continue to not exist.

 

[Mand]

They are paying for it from nVidia. Why would they do any of the research?

Ask AMD. They're the ones who said they were leaving it to display OEMs to develop the hardware necessary to make FreeSync actually happen.

 

[3DVagabond]

Ask AMD. They're the ones who said they were leaving it to display OEMs to develop the hardware necessary to make FreeSync actually happen.

Try again, shall we?

nVidia is charging the monitor vendors to have Gsync. Therefore, it's up to nVidia to supply a working product to them.

 

[Mand]

Try again, shall we?

nVidia is charging the monitor vendors to have Gsync. Therefore, it's up to nVidia to supply a working product to them.

Nvidia designed the hardware. Why is it wrong to charge people for their efforts?

You might as well ask them to give you GTX 880 for free. Why is that reasonable?

How is it going to be cheaper for ASUS, BenQ, and all the rest to independently develop their own variable refresh hardware to use with FreeSync than it was for Nvidia to develop theirs?

 

[Phynaz]

Show me even one shred of evidence that the "standards-based implementation" will be free.

That's whole point of standardization. You spread the cost out amongst hundreds of millions of devices and it essentially becomes free to implement.

Now please respond to the questions I asked.

 

[Phynaz]

How is it going to be cheaper for ASUS, BenQ, and all the rest to independently develop their own variable refresh hardware to use with FreeSync than it was for Nvidia to develop theirs?

Because they aren't all going to design their own hardware. They are going to purchase standards compliant controllers just like they do today. You didn't really think all those companies are designing their own chips??

 

[blastingcap]

That's whole point of standardization. You spread the cost out amongst hundreds of millions of devices and it essentially becomes free to implement.

Exactly. It's like Gsync = Firewire, and Adaptive Vsync has the potential to be USB. Thanks for showing us the way forward Apple/Nvidia, but Firewire/Gsync costs too much. Once something is designed and implemented as a mass-produced industry standard, costs go down. It'll boil down to a handful of industry-standard chips that control this sort of stuff, mass-produced at low costs to wear down the fixed cost of designing the chips in the first place.

Hell look at Sandforce, it took a lot of effort to design controllers for SSDs, but spread out that R&D costs over enough units and it's quite affordable. And that's not even an open industry standard, just part of a larger market.

The components necessary for adaptive vsync, if all goes well, will become cheap, commoditized.

 

[3DVagabond]

Nvidia designed the hardware. Why is it wrong to charge people for their efforts?

You might as well ask them to give you GTX 880 for free. Why is that reasonable?

Nowhere did I say nVidia should give it to the monitor vendors for free. Let me try this a 3rd time.

Since nVidia is selling (charging, making them pay) G-sync to the monitor vendors it is on them to do the research etc... AMD is not selling a product to the monitor vendors. They developed Free-Sync, got it accepted as an industry standard, and are helping the monitor manufacturers with implementation.

How is it going to be cheaper for ASUS, BenQ, and all the rest to independently develop their own variable refresh hardware to use with FreeSync than it was for Nvidia to develop theirs?

Do you believe that nVidia is marketing Gsync at a loss? It's called cutting out the middle man. Also, they do have AMD's help and expertise.

 

[Phynaz]

Displayport Adaptive Sync is not AMD's Freesync. They are two different things.

Adaptive Sync is the technology standard. Freesync is a hardware and software implementation of the protocols.

 

[Mand]

That's whole point of standardization. You spread the cost out amongst hundreds of millions of devices and it essentially becomes free to implement.

Now please respond to the questions I asked.

Adaptive Sync is not a requirement. There will be monitors that have it, and monitors that don't. The ones that have it will cost more.

 

[dacostafilipe]

How is it going to be cheaper for ASUS, BenQ, and all the rest to independently develop their own variable refresh hardware to use with FreeSync than it was for Nvidia to develop theirs?

"ASUS, BenQ, and all" are not the ones doing the hard work. They "just" buy the controllers, put them on the LCD board and fine-tune the firmware.

Having multiple companies building those "Adaptive Sync" controllers will make the price fall kinda fast (supply & demand).

G-Sync is only provided by one source (nVidia) who dictates the price and the supply, and this is bad for business.

 

[Mand]

Because they aren't all going to design their own hardware. They are going to purchase standards compliant controllers just like they do today. You didn't really think all those companies are designing their own chips??

So who is going to design it?

So far, you guys seem to be trying to convince it that having it in a spec means that compatible hardware will just show up, that nobody had to pay much for. How, exactly?

 

[sirroman]

People are a little blindfolded. This is the biggest push in recent history for widespread monitor change. The TV/monitor industry lives of new monitors being sold and they compete not only with the monitors that the competition is selling now, but they also compete with the monitor that is in front of you right now.

The industry was hailing 4K as the savior, but A-Sync is cheaper and faster to implement (any company that works with eDP can start adapting it already).

A whole lot of gamers will jump over A-sync, much more than those that will jump to 4K, which means that most monitors have the potential to be replaced. That's why A-Sync i "better" for the companies and I expect a really good push for it.

Don't forget that DP in itself is ALSO free, AFAIK.

 

[Phynaz]

Adaptive Sync is not a requirement. There will be monitors that have it, and monitors that don't. The ones that have it will cost more.

It's going to be checkbox feature. Did you bother to read the press release? Joe Blow isn't going to buy a non-Adaptive Sync monitor when the one sitting next to it on the shelf has the Adaptive Sync logo on it.

Who designed and paid for the HDMI 2.0 spec? Are monitors that implement it more expensive than 1.4 monitors?

Did monitors suddenly go up in price when the 1.3 spec came out? Or how about DP 1.2? How much of a price premium is a DP 1.2 monitor over a DP 1.1 monitor?

 

[moonbogg]

If implementing this whole "Freesync" thing is so amazingly trivial, like a cave man could do it, then why wasn't it done before? Especially if its just so great and just so easy and free and a no brainer etc, etc?
Why did it take a single company, Nvidia, to invest and develop hardware to perform this single function? How did they manage to sneak this by the competition if its just so trivial?
I'll be buying the Asus ROG swift, trivial or not.

 

[Mand]

It's going to be checkbox feature. Did you bother to read the press release? Joe Blow isn't going to buy a non-Adaptive Sync monitor when the one sitting next to it on the shelf has the Adaptive Sync logo on it.

When the non-Adaptive Sync monitor costs $150 less due to the more sophisticated hardware it doesn't have, he just might.

Open standards doesn't mean things become free, as much as people would seem to believe. Especially not when the display manufacturers can market it as an upsell.

 

[3DVagabond]

When the non-Adaptive Sync monitor costs $150 less due to the more sophisticated hardware it doesn't have, he just might.

Open standards doesn't mean things become free, as much as people would seem to believe. Especially not when the display manufacturers can market it as an upsell.

Where did you get this figure from?

 

[Throckmorton]

When they say "adaptive frame rate" do they mean that the monitor image is only updated when the video card sends it a new one, rather than updating at a constant 60hz?

 

[Phynaz]

When the non-Adaptive Sync monitor costs $150 less due to the more sophisticated hardware it doesn't have, he just might.

Open standards doesn't mean things become free, as much as people would seem to believe. Especially not when the display manufacturers can market it as an upsell.

Then we had all better buy monitors now, because the DP 1.3 standard is about to be ratified. What do you think those displays will cost, maybe $200 more than current displays? All those companies are going to have to design new hardware after all.

Oh wait, no they won't, because they don't make their own display controllers.

 

[Phynaz]

When they say "adaptive frame rate" do they mean that the monitor image is only updated when the video card sends it a new one, rather than updating at a constant 60hz?

Correct.