Do G-sync monitors work with older games that can only output lower resolutions?

[lubey]

Hey, I'm trying to decide whether to go with AMD/free-sync or Nvidia/Gync.

Now, g-sync monitors have a custom scalar unit thing, which I believe doesn't have the capacity to run lower than native resolutions? Is this correct?

What happens when you want to play an older game on a new monitor? Let's say I had a 1440p G-sync monitor and want to play simcity 200 which might only support up to 1024x768 in the in-game settings menu? Will it work?

 

[boju]

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/g-sync/faq

Q: Does NVIDIA G-SYNC work for all games?

A: NVIDIA G-SYNC works with all games. However, we have found some games that do not behave well and for those, we recommend that users take advantage of our control panel’s ability to disable G-SYNC per game. Games that NVIDIA discovers that have trouble with G-SYNC will be disabled by default in our driver.

So Gsync can be game sensitive, im not sure about the games you mentioned but least you know you might need to disable it if the game behaves badly.

 

[Rookie_MIB]

G-sync is a hardware solution in both the monitor and the video card (nvidia only at the moment), and what it does is raise or lower the monitor refresh rate based on the frame rate which the card is capable of outputting on an 'instant' basis. There is a difference between 'resolution' (pixels) and 'refresh' (hertz). The two are completely independent of each other in the monitor, and are only related in the video card in as much as in general the more pixels the video card has to push, the lower the 'hertz' is in the video card.

I believe with what I've read on it that there is no real restriction on G-sync as far as resolution. It should work on almost any resolution your game supports.

 

[lubey]

Thanks guys. I've done some further searches and actually it should be ok as you say. TFTcentral says this in one of their reviews (emphasis mine):

"The XB270HU does not offer any aspect ratio control options through the OSD menu at all. This is due to a limitation of using NVIDIA's new G-sync technology. As we understand it, it is locked to only one defined resolution, in this case 2560 x 1440 so it is not possible (or easy) to provide G-sync support with a scaler. This isn't really a problem for PC use since you can just control the aspect ratio through your graphics card settings. It would be an issue perhaps for external devices, but since the XB270HU only has one input, you probably aren't going to be using this screen for anything else anyway (consoles, DVD players etc). It's firmly aimed at PC gaming use, so the absence of a scaler is not a big issue here. The native 16:9 aspect ratio is of course beneficial since a lot of content is in this aspect ratio anyway"

Also other random forums report issues with g-sync turning off with funny resolutions, but that's not a big deal really.