AMD FreeSync™ technology has arrived!

AMD FreeSync™ technology has arrived!

Singapore – 3/20/2015 – No stuttering. No tearing. No extra
costs. Just smooth gaming. Those are pretty straightforward and reasonable
requests from gamers, right? Today it becomes reality with our latest AMD
Catalyst™ driver release. This is our first driver with AMD FreeSync™ technology
enabled, and I’m happy to report that there are FreeSync technology-enabled monitors
shipping or are about to ship imminently. Should this be your first encounter
with AMD FreeSync technology, please make sure you check this out first to learn about how it works! You
can also find more information on our website.

SPEAKING OF MONITORS

Below
you’ll find a chart with all of the AMD FreeSync technology-compatible monitors
announced to date. I’ve had the pleasure of playing around with a few of them,
and they’re more than worth your consideration. You may prefer the Acer or
BenQ’s 1440p models that have a wide refresh rate range (40-144Hz). Alternatively,
proponents of IPS panels or ultra-wide aspect ratios would be keen to check out
the 29” or 34” options from LG. And more monitors are on their way. Up to 20
monitors supporting AMD FreeSync technology are in the pipe for 2015, in fact!

Now, think
back to when you saw your first HD video—it was difficult to be satisfied with
standard-def content. It was for me, anyhow. That’s how I feel about gaming on
AMD FreeSync technology. I always disliked tearing and stuttering, but I
couldn’t do much about them with yesterday’s technologies. AMD FreeSync
technology changes the game, fixing both tearing and stuttering with smooth
gameplay at virtually any framerate. I can now dial up the detail without
worrying about whether or not I’m sacrificing smoothness, and I find it
difficult to game on normal monitors now.

THE DEFINITION OF “FREE”

AMD
FreeSync technology costs virtually nothing for a monitor manufacturer to
adopt. Most of them already had the relevant components in their supply chains,
but needed the right software to come along to expose latent capabilities. With
the help of VESA, the DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync specification was born to do
exactly that.

DisplayPort
Adaptive-Sync has no unique material or licensing costs, and AMD FreeSync
technology builds on top of that industry standard to give gamers a benefit in
all of their games.

No
licensing. No proprietary hardware. No incremental hardware costs. As some
might say: “free as in beer.”

All of
these savings are reflected in the price tags. Several of the displays
announced by our technology partners are up to hundreds cheaper than comparable
displays featuring our competitor’s dynamic refresh technology. Other displays,
like the ones from LG, are actually cheaper this year with AMD FreeSync than comparable
models were last year without. This is the advantage from doing technologies
the right way: as open standards with low and inexpensive barriers to entry.
You’ve heard that from us time and time again, but it rings true with AMD
FreeSync.

PERFORMANCE BENEFITS

Here’s
another interesting fun fact: our testing indicates that AMD FreeSync
technology doesn’t incur any performance penalties. The competition can’t say
the same. In fact, the competition remarked to AnandTech last year that enabling their technology
costs you 1ms of latency—an average performance hit of 3-5%. AMD FreeSync
technology is smarter than that. Our data suggests a modest performance gain
with AMD FreeSync enabled, and that too is the advantage of taking the time to
thoughtfully develop an industry standard.

(x) footnote

FOR TWITCH FPS GAMERS

We heard
you guys loud and clear: Vsync isn’t enough. You don’t want it because it
limits framerates, and that limits opportunities for the freshest mouse data to
reach your eyeballs. Call it what you will: mouse lag, input latency, whatever.
With AMD FreeSync™ technology, we uniquely give you the opportunity to turn
Vsync off when the framerate of the application leaves the dynamic refresh
range supported by the monitor.

So, if you
have one of those 144Hz BenQ or Acer displays, but you’re a Counter-Strike:
Global Offensive player that wants to run at 240 FPS… you can! You still get
beautifully smooth, tearing-free gameplay from 40-144Hz with those monitors,
but you don’t have to sacrifice your input latency to get it when the framerate
goes to 145+.

Below you
can see a conceptual example of this relationship. In this theoretical
exercise, the red line reflects framerates and input latency of an application
Vsynced to 60Hz, and the blue line demonstrates the superior framerates and
mouse latency of a game unrestricted by Vsync.  This is a hypothetical
scenario, and you’ll want to tinker with your favorite game, but AMD FreeSync
actually gives you the choice—the competition doesn’t.

WRAP UP

AMD
FreeSync technology is free of incremental hardware costs, free of performance
penalties, free as a standard, open for use by anyone in the gaming industry,
and unbelievably smooth framerates are I-can-never-go-back-to-the-old-way incredible
for PC gaming.

It’s hard
to go wrong. What monitor will you buy?

Robert
Hallock is Technical Marketing Manager for AMD. His/her postings are his/her
own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions.
Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly
stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no
endorsement is implied.