VESA adds AMD’s Freesync as Adaptive-Sync to Displayport standard
The VESA has announced that it will include AMD’s Freesync standard, which can drive monitors with a variable refresh rate, in the displayport 1.2a standard. The technology will henceforth be called Adaptive-Sync.
AMD presented the Freesync technology earlier this year at the CES fair, as a counterpart to the proprietary G-Sync technology from competitor Nvidia. Freesync uses the existing VESA standard to adjust the vblank intervals, enabling variable refresh rates on compatible displays. This should prevent tearing and stuttering in gaming. The technology is also interesting for showing videos. This avoids the judder problems of video material with typical frame rates of 24 and 25 fps on 60Hz monitors. Lower frame rates with static content on, for example, a laptop can also benefit the battery life.
The VESA has now included Freesync in the displayport 1.2a standard, although implementation of the technology is not mandatory. The technology had already been included in the embedded displayport specification for some time, so that some integrated hardware for, for example, video display on laptops is already compatible with the technology. The VESA has also changed the name of the technology to Adaptive-Sync.
With the implementation of Freesync, the VESA hopes that the technology will be implemented more widely than G-Sync, for which license costs must be paid to Nvidia. AMD thinks that in six to twelve months the first monitors that can handle Adaptive-Sync and are VESA certified will be on the market. In addition, a suitable Radeon video card or AMD apu is required. AMD lists Radeon R9 290X, R9 290, R7 260X, and R7 260 as compatible video cards, and APUs codenamed Kabini, Temash, Beema, and Mullins should also work.
The gpu or apu must be able to recognize a compatible monitor in order to subsequently define minimum and maximum refresh rates. The frequency bands 36-240Hz, 21-144Hz, 17-120Hz and 9-60Hz are among others possible. The chip maker also announces that it will soon add support for Adaptive-Sync to its Catalyst video drivers.