- NVIDIA announced on its keynote at CES 2019 that it will now allow FreeSync monitors to work with G-Sync, supporting the Adaptive Sync/VESA standard
- The company has also opened a certification program for Adaptive Sync monitors that are being tested and are compatible with NVIDIA’s G-Sync technology, where they tested over 400 monitors and more.
- Specifically, there are now 12 certified models that works with G-Sync automatically when NVIDIA drivers detects the monitor
- The driver roll-out will start on January 15
This is big.
NVIDIA just announced what would be a big game-changer in terms of gaming displays, as it will now support the Adaptive Sync standard instead of its proprietary G-Sync technology, which effectively translates to also supporting cheaper FreeSync monitors with its GeForce graphics cards.
On its CES keynote, NVIDIA has stated that it is now opening support for the widely-used Adaptive Sync VESA standard, which AMD uses on its FreeSync technology. To explain, both G-Sync and the Adaptive Sync technology work very similar. The monitor continuously adjusts the refresh rate to the actual FPS of the graphics card, which makes screen tearing and ugly streaks when playing games a thing of the past.
The problem is that NVIDIA has decided at first not to use the Adaptive Sync standard and instead developed its own, which is what we know now as G-Sync. As a result, the monitors that come up with G-Sync tend to be priced higher than those which use FreeSync, which are cheaper because most panels in the market do come with support for Adaptive Sync standard already.
By opening support for FreeSync monitors to work with NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards, users who have FreeSync monitors could use them on their computers with GeForce graphics cards that support G-Sync and take advantage of its features.
NVIDIA has also provided a list of monitors that are ‘certified’ already and fulfills all requirements for G-Sync, with models coming from ASUS, Acer, AOC Agon and BenQ, which would be automatically getting G-Sync support thru a driver update on January 15th. Here are the list of models:
- Acer XFA240
- Acer XZ321Q
- Acer XG270HU
- Acer XV273K
- ASUS MG278Q
- ASUS XG258
- ASUS VG258Q
- ASUS XG248
- ASUS VG278Q
- AOC Agon AG241QG4
- AOC G2590FX
- BenQ XL2740
Also, NVIDIA added that you can manually enable G-Sync on all Adaptive-Sync monitors, even those ones which are not listed on the above list. If you have a monitor that has not been certified, you can enable Adaptive Sync manually in the NVIDIA control panel.
And although this change is a good news especially to the PC community, there are worries now about the price of FreeSync/Adaptive Sync monitors going higher after this news. Let’s just hope that this doesn’t do anything about its prices, though.
Check out our special coverage of CES 2019 here.
