Nvidia Card with a Freesync monitor?

[yoshimania]

Hey Guys,

So I was thinking about getting a new monitor and along with that a new graphics card. The monitor I was thinking of would have to be IPS (because my current monitor is IPS and it looks absolutely gorgeous, and 144hz because I play a lot of competitive League of Legends and I think that would help. The cheapest monitor I found was a $549 Acer XF270HU, which meets all the requirements but is a AMD Freesync monitor. The major problem is that I was thinking about buying a GTX 980 Ti, and the cheapest G-sync monitor I could find was over $700, which is just really over my budget ($1100). So the next option I had was a R9 390x because I've heard a lot of stuff about the 390x outperforming the R9 Fury or Fury X. So should I go with a GTX 980 Ti with a freesync monitor or buy the R9 390x so everything is compatible?

Thanks,
Yoshi

 

[nukemaster]

If you are not after variable refresh, An active sync(freesync) monitor works fine with Nvidia hardware. You just can not use the active sync feature.

I would look up benchmarks of the games you play to see what card is best for you.

 

[yoshimania]

If you are not after variable refresh, An active sync(freesync) monitor works fine with Nvidia hardware. You just can not use the active sync feature.

I would look up benchmarks of the games you play to see what card is best for you.

Can you explain what Freesync does? Like I know that it makes your gameplay smoother by reducing stuttering and screen tearing, but is there even stuttering or screen tearing at 100Hz+?

 

[nukemaster]

It does the same thing as Nvidia's own gsync.

You can have tearing at any frame rate(but it last for a shorter time when running higher refresh rates.). The page tear is a result of a frame being drawn and then replaced without fully being displayed. It leads to a part of the screen being ahead of another part of the screen. If a frame is ready half way though a screen refresh it will be drawn anyway(well what can be displayed).

The way to fix this has been vsync. vsync(vertical synchronization) tells the video card only to send out full frames at the same rate as the monitor displays images(60/120/144/ect times a second). It is important to know that vsync is not the same as frame rate limiting. You can run a 60hz screen with a 60hz frame cap and still have frames out of sync with the screen refresh.

Vsync is not without its own drawbacks. It adds some input delay. If your frame rate falls under your screens refresh rate, many times the frame rate will get cut to half the screens refresh rate and each frame will be displayed 2 times in a row. This is to keep things in line with the screen since 58frames can not be displayed every second on a 60hz screen. An option called triple buffer can fix this issue at the cost of added input delay.

This extra input delay is the reason why many gamers will run vsync off. Your inputs respond as fast as they can. Some game engines do not get along well with vsync as well.

The stuttering issue can happen when a frame is displayed 2 or more times to keep things in sync. You will see this as a very short pause.

How do we get rid of most of these issues?
Variable refresh(Gsync, active/freesync). Traditional monitors have a fixed refresh rate when in operation. If you switch refresh rates you will notice your screen may blank out for a second while the change happens. Variable refresh rate screens can adjust refresh rates on the fly(when in a variable mode).

With this variable refresh rate option, the monitor matches the video cards frame rate and timing instead of the video card trying to match the monitor. This means that as frame rates rise and fall the monitor follows. This keeps input delay lower(under some circumstances) removes the page tear effect since only full frames are shown and can give smoother playback.

The downside to this is that Nvidia and AMD took different paths. Nvidia uses a special video scaler in the monitor(something they developed) while AMD took the activesync route. Activesync is now a optional part of the displayport standard(AMD calls it freesync because it does not need a special scaler like gsync) so anyone can develop a scaler that uses it. The big downside is that is is unlikely that Nvidia is going to support activesync any time soon.

Some early activesync screens have issues with the screens overdrive(used to make LCD's change images faster and reduce ghosting) when in variable mode. This is something Nvidia did not seem have because they got to adjust there own hardware to deal with it. This lead to some problems on early freesync monitors(loosing or greatly reducing overdrive in variable mode).

Too much overdrive can be an issue too, but all monitors deal with it differently.