2024/03/29 12:02:33 PM

To Improve How Games Are Played, We’re Revolutionizing How They’re Displayed

PEEK NV GSync MonitorKV

Montreal, to me, has always meant hockey masks, maple syrup and Mounties. I never thought it was the doorway to gaming heaven.

But when NVIDIA launched NVIDIA G-SYNC, I could see my life as a gamer getting better. Actually, I could see the rest of my life getting better, too, because we’ve been working flat out to get this out the door for several years.

The idea behind G-SYNC is simple, even if the technology isn’t. It’s to deliver visually stunning games, without the artifacts that jolt you out of the zone – like a guy who keeps standing up in front of you during a great movie.

GSYNCVERTICAL1

Gaming headaches? Take one of these and call us in the morning.

An Obstacle to Great Gaming

With V-SYNC off you can have fast input response time, but images are seriously corrupted by tearing. Or, you can use V-SYNC on, but then games get laggy, and any time the GPU’s FPS falls below the refresh rate of the monitor, animation stutters badly.

Imagine if your fully armed buddies can see you. But your system won’t let you see them. The input lag can get you killed. Given the options, it’s not surprising that competitive gamers pick the lesser of two evils and run with V-SYNC off. But it’s still short of perfection.

Getting to the Root of The Problem

Our entire industry has been syncing the GPU’s frame-rendering rate to the monitor’s refresh rate – usually 60Hz – and it’s this syncing that’s causing a lot of the problems.

Sadly, monitors, for historic reasons, have fixed refresh rates at 60Hz. That’s because PC monitors initially used a lot of technology from TVs, and in the U.S. we standardized on a 60Hz refresh way back in the 1940s, around the time Ed Sullivan was still a fresh face. That occurred because the U.S. power grid is based on 60Hz AC power, and setting TV refresh rates to match that made early electronics easier to build for TVs. The PC industry just sort of inherited this behavior because TVs were the low-cost way to get a display.

So back at NVIDIA, we began to question whether we shouldn’t do it the other way. Instead of trying to get a GPU’s output to synchronize with a monitor refresh, what if we synchronized the monitor refresh to the GPU render rate?

PEEK NV GSync MonitorKV

No More Tearing, No More Stutters

Hundreds of engineer-years later, we’ve developed the G-SYNC module. It’s built to fit inside a display and work with the hardware and software in most of our GeForce GTX GPUs.

 

G-Sync: your ticket to gaming nirvana.

With G-SYNC, the monitor begins a refresh cycle right after each frame is completely rendered on the GPU. Since the GPU renders with variable time, the refresh of the monitor now has no fixed rate.

This brings big benefits for gamers. First, since the GPU drives the timing of the refresh, the monitor is always in sync with the GPU. So, no more tearing. Second, the monitor update is in perfect harmony with the GPU at any FPS. So, no more stutters, because even as scene complexity is changing, the GPU and monitor remain in sync. Also, you get the same great response time that competitive gamers get by turning off V-SYNC.

G-SYNC moves us a little closer to gaming nirvana – a world of great image quality with no tearing, no monitor stutter, and really fast input response. That lets me get back in the zone when I game. Already, I can see my beige shag carpet and Costco art prints in their crooked frames slowly replaced by the hard rock roads and dragon fire of “Skyrim.”

Life is good again.

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