NVIDIA’s new hardware enhancement, G-Sync, will ship fully integrated in selected brands of PC monitors in Q2 of this year, as was announced during the company’s presentation at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.
President and CEO of NVIDIA, Jen-Hsun Huang, took to the stage togive a presentation detailing the company’s current projects and future endeavors with software and hardware. When he got onto the topic, Huang stated that the company developed G-Sync to solve one of what’s said to be gaming’s oldest problems: stutter and lag.
G-Sync, functions as an enhanced V-Sync. V-Sync, if I recall from a layman’s perspective on the matter, locks and caps the game’s framerate to the monitor’s refresh rate. Turning V-Sync on improves quality by having the game’s framerate refresh in sync with the monitor’s display, and in doing so eliminates visual tearing, but it also creates stuttering. Having V-Sync switched off, however, stops the stuttering, but doesn’t give the monitor time to refresh with the GPU so as the in-game camera moves, tears appear as the monitor tries to keep up with the information that’s flowing into it, skipping some information in doing so–which results in the tears. What also doesn’t help is how the GPU generates framerates according to information it’s being given, which can be anything from 120fps to, say, 5fps, but the monitor stays at a constant refresh rate, either 60 Hertz or 120 Hertz. So, even though the monitor can be steady, the GPU can be all over the place.
What G-Sync is stated to do is combine combine the two together, which avoids both stuttering and tearing, allowing the GPU and the monitor to update each frame as they come without one having to chase after the other. In a nutshell, G-Sync is meant to improve overall latency when the game sends information to the GPU and the GPU sends information to the monitor, decreasing the amount of time the hardware has to receive, interpret and send data. Basically, G-Sync makes the monitor only refresh when a new frame is rendered by the CPU, thus reducing screen stutter and tear.
G-Sync-integrated monitors will be available from manufacturers Acer, AOC, ASUS, BEnQ, Philips and ViewSonic in a few months in sizes 24 inch (19×10) and 27 inch (19×10 & 25×14).
Sources: Polygon and NVIDIA Blog .