Over the last year, there have been changes in the environment for variable refresh rate monitors for gaming based on Nvidia’s G-sync or AMD’s Freesync technology. Historically, G-sync users could only use this feature with G-sync monitors and Freesync users could only use their monitors. The feature meant that frames were only updated between scans so there was no ‘tearing’ of the image and was a popular feature for game players.
G-sync was developed first, but to support G-sync, a special hardware module was needed, so there was an extra cost and so the G-sync version was seen as a more premium technology. AMD developed Freesync and made it available to Vesa for standardisation via DisplayPort. For a long time, Nvidia would not support Freesync officially, but in January 2019, the company introduced a scheme to certify monitors that didn’t have a module and called those ‘G-Sync compatible’. The firm also has a G-Sync Ultimate classification (but with only six certified displays at press time).
In September 2019, the Acer Predator X27P arrived, which supported VRR over HDMI, a feature that had not been available before. Since then, Nvidia has confirmed that future G-sync monitors will support HDMI-VRR as well as adaptive sync for HDMI and DisplayPort. The logic, then, is that you will be able to use a monitor with a G-Sync module with an AMD board that supports VRR.
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