How long ago could NVIDIA cards have supported Freesync?

[Pocketmouse]

I just found out over the weekend that as of a driver update (417.71) that was released on January 15, 2019 NVIDIA GeForce cards (GeForce Series 600+) are now able to use adaptive sync on both G-Sync and Freesync Monitors. Was there any special reason why it took 5 years for this to happen or was this able to happen since the 600 series all along?

[Sakkura]

It was a business decision. Once the cards had Displayport 1.2a the hardware support was there for Adaptive-Sync.

[Pocketmouse]

3 hours ago, Sakkura said:

It was a business decision. Once the cards had Displayport 1.2a the hardware support was there for Adaptive-Sync.

Thanks, that's too bad.

[Mira Yurizaki]

FreeSync, or adaptive sync as it's called in the standard, was an optional feature of DisplayPort 1.2a.

[Princess Luna]

8 minutes ago, Pocketmouse said:

Thanks, that's too bad.

Among the reasons nVidia finally allowed FreeSync was probably to keep the GTX 1080 Ti as a better product than the Radeon 7, in other words competition saved the day as always.

[Stefan Payne]

20 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Among the reasons nVidia finally allowed FreeSync was 

...the support from the Entertainment Industry, the wide avaibility of freesync compatible displays.

When Samsung announced their upcoming TVs will support Freesync, it was over for nVidia.

[Glenwing]

They've been using the protocol in laptops for years, so they could have enabled it at any time.

[aezakmi]

nvidia with msync (money sync):

[Sakkura]

3 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

...the support from the Entertainment Industry, the wide avaibility of freesync compatible displays.

When Samsung announced their upcoming TVs will support Freesync, it was over for nVidia.

Intel GPUs around the corner probably didn't help either.

[Stefan Payne]

1 hour ago, Sakkura said:

Intel GPUs around the corner probably didn't help either.

True, I forgot about those.

Should be the next generation or so.