AMD demoes FreeSync at CES2014

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More details here:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7641/a...ve-at-ces-2014

Using two Toshiba Satellite Click notebooks purchased at retail, without any hardware modifications, AMD demonstrated variable refresh rate technology. According to AMD, there’s been a push to bring variable refresh rate display panels to mobile for a while now in hopes of reducing power consumption (refreshing a display before new content is available wastes power, sort of the same reason we have panel self refresh displays). There’s apparently already a VESA standard for controlling VBLANK intervals. The GPU’s display engine needs to support it, as do the panel and display hardware itself. If all of the components support this spec however, then you can get what appears to be the equivalent of G-Sync without any extra hardware.

In the case of the Toshiba Satellite Click, the panel already supports variable VBLANK. AMD’s display engines have supported variable VBLANK for a couple of generations, and that extends all the way down to APUs. The Satellite Click in question uses AMD’s low cost Kabini APU, which already has the requisite hardware to support variable VBLANK and thus variable display refresh rates (Kaveri as well as AMD's latest GPUs should support it as well). AMD simply needed driver support for controlling VBLANK timing, which is present in the latest Catalyst drivers. AMD hasn’t yet exposed any of the controls to end users, but all of the pieces in this demo are ready and already available.

It looks like FreeSync uses a VESA standard so in theory should work with any monitors which support VBLANK:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_blanking_interval

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http://translate.googleusercontent.c...9MZJ-iVFlrnkag

In our conversations with AMD, we of course discussed the G-SYNC. Is AMD is ready to propose an alternative. With a big smile while AMD has launched a demonstration on two phones, one equipped with a variable frequency refreshment, as does G-SYNC.

To our surprise, AMD then explained to us that this display technique was already in development for some time, but mainly for other reasons: to reduce consumption display related to mobile systems. AMD also specifies a standard VESA already exists for this frame and the consortium was very surprised at the announcement of G-SYNC by Nvidia.

So many tiles already would support the frequency of variable cooling via a variable period VBLANK (exactly what G-SYNC so). If the email linked to the display supports it, which is not a problem according to AMD, then it is sufficient that the display engine of the GPU and drivers to do the same. AMD says that its recent GPU are capable and software support is also ready even if the access interface is not yet in place.

AMD has yet designed a small demo that shows all in action and it works just as well as priori G-SYNC, no extra hardware, no additional extra cost! AMD drives the point facing Nvidia stating that they do not intend to do so to add an additional cost to operate a technology that is already a standard. Why they call him now FreeSync.

AMD does not yet know when or how this display technology will be offered to users Radeon or which screens actually incorporate this possibility. AMD seems to have been surprised by G-SYNC-like according to its leaders a way for Nvidia to earn a few months on the timing of arrival of a technology standard expected.

It is not impossible that a firmware update can make this support on some screens already on sale, then this should be the case at no extra cost on future screens. Moreover, this approach allows a fairly simple use in the mobile world, which could benefit more quickly.

This is new in our case and is of course a big surprise. We are trying to learn more and our current assumption is that the Nvidia GPU may not directly support this possibility, which would explain the use of G-SYNC module.

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I hoping this'll be a real G-Sync competitor - I've got my heart set on an AMD card this time around and it could be a winning combination with Mantle