[UPDATE] Official : FreeSync Launched, Dubbed Adaptive-Sync.

[Lynx]

So will this new technology ALSO require new video cards (not yet released) that have a newer DisplayPort?  Or is it just new monitors and new DisplayPort cables that need to be purchased?

 

 

 

Q: What AMD Radeon GPUs are compatible with Project FreeSync?

A: The first discrete GPUs compatible with Project FreeSync are the AMD Radeon R9 290X, R9 290, R7 260X and R7 260 graphics cards. Project FreeSync is also compatible with AMD APUs codenamed “Kabini,” “Temash,” “Beema,” and “Mullins.” All compatible products must be connected via DisplayPort to a display that supports DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync.

basically, it's GCN 1.1 card. from i can understand it only need a new monitor that support this new VESA specification

[TERAFLOP]

Interested to see the clip where I criticized FreeSync

 

I did pass along NVIDIA's response, but that was because curiously AMD ONLY briefed Anandtech on the technology back at CES.

 

Here's my excited Facebook post from the initial announcement: https://www.facebook.com/LinusTech/posts/554303207999462?stream_ref=5

 

Rawr.

AMD talked twice about FreeSync before & after Nvidia decided to react and release their quite frankly bull**** PR statement AMD even posted about it in their blog & it was released on numerous publications so it's actually curious that you chose to only parlay Nvidia's message & take their side on this issue.

 

http://youtu.be/cmuxVKCG5ws?t=1h29m06s

So here's what you said "So Nvidia has basically flat out said, look...there IS no scalar that we're aware of that is designed for actual monitors that's using actual actual interfaces on the desktop, we'd be aware of it if there was one"

And here's where the lies begin "We would love for the entire industry to move towards this because it's a better gaming experience"

 

Then you went on a rant to bash AMD's entire "open-standard" philosophy saying "Open standard this open standard that you know sometimes that's just another way of saying we didn't have the resources or the time or we didn't think it was important enough to develop so we're just gonna like tack our name on this other thing"

http://youtu.be/cmuxVKCG5ws?t=1h30m11s

When in fact it wasn't G-Sync that's pushing the industry it was FreeSync just like it wasn't PhysX, it wasn't CUDA. NONE of tese proprietary techs has ever pushed the industry forward. Nvidia chooses to compete against and undercut open standards with proprietary IP instead of contributing anything to developing open standards. On the other hand AMD has almost single-handedly developed the entire code for OpenCL over the past four years until Intel decided to jump along on the OpenCL train.

 

Why do I say that's a lie well read Nvidia's statement on the tech report.

Here's what Tom Petersen's (Nvidia's technical PR manager) response to FreeSync was

That said, Nvidia won't enable G-Sync for competing graphics chips because it has invested real time and effort in building a good solution and doesn't intend to "do the work for everyone." If the competition wants to have a similar feature in its products, Petersen said, "They have to do the work. They have to hire the guys to figure it out."

So in fact they DON'T want it to be an industry standard they want it to remain only on the PC and only inside the already very closed Nvidia ecosystem.

 

He also said this which as we know now was a complete lie since VESA did in fact end up adding AMD's FreeSync as a standard.

he doesn't think it's necessary, because DisplayPort already supports "everything required" for dynamic refresh rates via the extension of the vblank interval. That's why, he noted, G-Sync works with existing cables without the need for any new standards. Nvidia sees no need and has no plans to approach VESA about a new standard for G-Sync-style functionality—because it already exists.

http://techreport.com/news/25878/nvidia-responds-to-amd-free-sync-demo

Soon afterwards AMD's Jay Lebo (Product PR manager) posted this on the AMD gaming blog.

Doing the work for everyone

In our industry, one of the toughest decisions we continually face is how open we should be with our technology. On the one hand, developing cutting-edge graphics technology requires enormous investments. On the other hand, too much emphasis on keeping technologies proprietary can hinder broad adoption.

 

It’s a dilemma we face practically every day, which is why we decided some time ago that those decisions would be guided by a basic principle: our goal is to support moving the industry forward as a whole, and that we’re proud to take a leadership position to help achieve that goal.

 

The latest example of that philosophy is our work with dynamic refresh rates, currently codenamed "Project FreeSync”. Screen tearing is a persistent nuisance for gamers, and vertical synchronization (v-sync) is an imperfect fix. There are a few ways the problem can be solved, but there are very specific reasons why we’re pursuing the route of using industry standards.

 

The most obvious reason is ease of implementation, both for us from a corporate perspective and also for gamers who face the cost of upgrading their hardware. But the more important reason is that it’s consistent with our philosophy of making sure that the gaming industry keeps marching forward at a steady pace that benefits everyone.

 

It sometimes takes longer to do things that way — lots of stakeholders need to coordinate their efforts — but we know it’s ultimately the best way forward. This strategy enables technologies to proliferate faster and cost less, and that’s good for everyone.

 

The same philosophy explains why we’re revealing technology that’s still in the development stage. Now’s our chance to get feedback from industry, media and users, to make sure we develop the right features for the market.  That’s what it takes to develop a technology that actually delivers on consumers’ expectations.

 

And Project FreeSync isn’t the only example of this philosophy and its payoffs. We worked across the industry to first bring GDDR5 memory to graphics cards— an innovation with industry-wide benefits. And when game developers came to us demanding a low-level API, we listened to them and developed Mantle. It’s an innovation that we hope will speed the evolution of industry-standard APIs in the future.

 

We’re passionate about gaming, and we know that the biggest advancements come when all industry players collaborate. There’s no room for proprietary technologies when you have a mission to accomplish. That’s why we do the work we do, and if we can help move the industry forward we’re proud to do it for everyone.

 

Jay Lebo is a Product Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

- See more at: http://community.amd.com/community/amd-blogs/amd-gaming/blog/2014/01/08/doing-the-work-for-everyone#sthash.PexQLG4t.dpuf

In our industry, one of the toughest decisions we continually face is how open we should be with our technology. On the one hand, developing cutting-edge graphics technology requires enormous investments. On the other hand, too much emphasis on keeping technologies proprietary can hinder broad adoption.    

It’s a dilemma we face practically every day, which is why we decided some time ago that those decisions would be guided by a basic principle: our goal is to support moving the industry forward as a whole, and that we’re proud to take a leadership position to help achieve that goal.    

The latest example of that philosophy is our work with dynamic refresh rates, currently codenamed "Project FreeSync”. Screen tearing is a persistent nuisance for gamers, and vertical synchronization (v-sync) is an imperfect fix. There are a few ways the problem can be solved, but there are very specific reasons why we’re pursuing the route of using industry standards.    

The most obvious reason is ease of implementation, both for us from a corporate perspective and also for gamers who face the cost of upgrading their hardware. But the more important reason is that it’s consistent with our philosophy of making sure that the gaming industry keeps marching forward at a steady pace that benefits everyone.    

It sometimes takes longer to do things that way — lots of stakeholders need to coordinate their efforts — but we know it’s ultimately the best way forward. This strategy enables technologies to proliferate faster and cost less, and that’s good for everyone.    

The same philosophy explains why we’re revealing technology that’s still in the development stage. Now’s our chance to get feedback from industry, media and users, to make sure we develop the right features for the market.  That’s what it takes to develop a technology that actually delivers on consumers’ expectations.    

And Project FreeSync isn’t the only example of this philosophy and its payoffs. We worked across the industry to first bring GDDR5 memory to graphics cards— an innovation with industry-wide benefits. And when game developers came to us demanding a low-level API, we listened to them and developed Mantle. It’s an innovation that we hope will speed the evolution of industry-standard APIs in the future.    

We’re passionate about gaming, and we know that the biggest advancements come when all industry players collaborate. There’s no room for proprietary technologies when you have a mission to accomplish. That’s why we do the work we do, and if we can help move the industry forward we’re proud to do it for everyone.    

 

[Humbug]

Yeah, i'd give it a short while after it being released before someone manages to force it to work on Nvidia. NVIDIA could allow it themselves, but that'd basically be them admitting that g-sync has failed.

As an open standard I think it would be hard for Nvidia to keep ignoring it. It's not like they need to pay royalties to AMD for this. Anyway Nvidia deserves credit for bringing the issues here into the public light.

 

@TERAFLOP

Good post. This is one of the reasons I chose to support AMD as a company. I know they are not perfect and they do have issues, but I like the direction in which they push the industry.

[KamiKatze]

Long story short: you need a AMD GPU and a new monitor. By that it is absoluteley zero different to G-Sync imo. Adoption will probably be higher because the implementation in the monitor will be cheaper but you still need a AMD GPU + new monitor. So....... meh, not excited!

[Humbug]

Long story short: you need a AMD GPU and a new monitor. By that it is absoluteley zero different to G-Sync imo. Adoption will probably be higher because the implementation in the monitor will be cheaper but you still need a AMD GPU + new monitor. So....... meh, not excited!

In the short-term yes you're right.

But in the long-term This development and it becoming an industry standard has paved the way to ensure that within a couple of years all GPUs from Intel, Nvidia and AMD as well as all monitors with displayport can support the tech.

[KamiKatze]

In the short-term yes you're right.

But in the long-term This development and it becoming an industry standard has paved the way to ensure that within a couple of years all GPUs from Intel, Nvidia and AMD as well as all monitors with displayport can support the tech.

 

Nvidias implementation is just so janky with that enormous module. I like that someone has found an easier implementation for this. I hope Nvidia can do a rev. 2 or sth. to make it available more easily/ cheaper.

[Humbug]

Nvidias implementation is just so janky with that enormous module. I like that someone has found an easier implementation for this. I hope Nvidia can do a rev. 2 or sth. to make it available more easily/ cheaper.

All Nvidia has to do now is comply. It's an open standard. Widespread adoption can drive the price down.

[LAwLz]

AMD talked twice about FreeSync before & after Nvidia decided to react and release their quite frankly bull**** PR statement AMD even posted about it in their blog & it was released on numerous publications so it's actually curious that you chose to only parlay Nvidia's message & take their side on this issue.

http://youtu.be/cmuxVKCG5ws?t=1h29m06s

So here's what you said "So Nvidia has basically flat out said, look...there IS no scalar that we're aware of that is designed for actual monitors that's using actual actual interfaces on the desktop, we'd be aware of it if there was one"

And here's where the lies begin "We would love for the entire industry to move towards this because it's a better gaming experience"

How did Linus "take only Nvidia's side" and on what issue are you talking about? You can't "take someone's side" if an objective yes/no question. The issue was that there were no scalers that supported commands for variable frame rates so Nvidia built their own. These are all facts, and you can't really "take someone's side" on this.

Which part of the sentence is a lie? That they want the industry to move towards variable frame rate or that it is a better gaming experience? Neither of those seems like lies to me.

 

Then you went on a rant to bash AMD's entire "open-standard" philosophy saying "Open standard this open standard that you know sometimes that's just another way of saying we didn't have the resources or the time or we didn't think it was important enough to develop so we're just gonna like tack our name on this other thing"

http://youtu.be/cmuxVKCG5ws?t=1h30m11s

When in fact it wasn't G-Sync that's pushing the industry it was FreeSync just like it wasn't PhysX, it wasn't CUDA. NONE of tese proprietary techs has ever pushed the industry forward. Nvidia chooses to compete against and undercut open standards with proprietary IP instead of contributing anything to developing open standards. On the other hand AMD has almost single-handedly developed the entire code for OpenCL over the past four years until Intel decided to jump along on the OpenCL train.

AMD doesn't have an "open-standard philosophy". Can we please stop pretending like AMD is pro open source/open standards? I have no idea where that idea comes from, at all. Not even Freesync is "free" because it relies on proprietary drivers and it seems like they are going to lock it down to some specific cards even though it's purely a software feature on the GPU side.

Can you please elaborate on how it was FreeSync that pushed the industry towards variable frame rates? I'd say it was either VESA (because they already had a standard for it, for laptops) or Nvidia (made a big deal about it with the introduction of G-Sync). I really don't see how you can give credit to AMD for it.

Proprietary things pushes the industry forward all the time. Want an example? Game engines... Want another example? AMD's architectures, and Nvidia's architectures. Want more examples? Their drivers. Want even more examples? Mantle is proprietary and was a big step towards better utilization of hardware in games. HSA is also proprietary and will push the industry forwards. I'm not even sure if it's fair to say AMD "almost single-handedly developed the entire code for OpenCL". Apple started the development and got help from AMD, IBM, Qualcomm, Intel and Nvidia. It's Khronos Group that maintains and writes the specifications, not AMD (although, AMD is a member of Khronos, but so are Nvidia, Intel, Samsung, Apple, ARM and many others as well).

I would like a source to your claim that AMD  developed almost the entire code for OpenCL by themselves.

 

Why do I say that's a lie well read Nvidia's statement on the tech report.

Here's what Tom Petersen's (Nvidia's technical PR manager) response to FreeSync was

So in fact they DON'T want it to be an industry standard they want it to remain only on the PC and only inside the already very closed Nvidia ecosystem.

You're reading it the wrong way. They want adaptive refresh rate to become an industry standard, but they don't want to give away the technology they developed for free.

They developed their solution because they want the industry to use it, not because they don't want to use it.

They would be very happy if G-sync became the industry standard. They would probably license it to everyone at the right price. While I would have preferred it if they had made G-sync royalty free and made everything surrounding it public domain/patent free, I can still see why they want to make a profit from it. They have made a big investment and want a return on that.

A royalty free and open standard is better for everyone except the one who made the work.

 

He also said this which as we know now was a complete lie since VESA did in fact end up adding AMD's FreeSync as a standard.

It's actually the other way around. AMD rebranded a VESA standard and called it FreeSync. They then talked to VESA about implementing their existing eDP standard into regular DP.

FreeSync was a rebrand of Adaptive-Sync, not the other way around. Quote from VESA:

"Project FreeSync is an AMD effort to leverage industry standards, like DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync, to deliver dynamic refresh rates."

and:

"The DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync specification was ported from the Embedded DisplayPort™ specification through a proposal to the VESA group by AMD. DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync is an ingredient feature of a DisplayPort™ link and an industry standard that enables technologies like Project FreeSync."

So please, repeat after me: FreeSync is what AMD called the variable refresh-rate standard VESA developed which was first introduced in eDP and now ported to desktop monitors. FreeSync is Adaptive-Sync, but Adaptive-Sync is not FreeSync.

 

 

With all that being said, I am really glad that AMD pushed VESA to include this in the DP standard, and I would be very glad if this completely destroys G-Sync in every possible way.

I want good things like this to be as open and available as possible, and Adaptive-Sync is hell of a lot better than G-Sync in those regards.

Hopefully monitor manufacturers won't screw us over with their prices though, and I am really hoping we get an open standard for strobed backlight which works with Adaptive-Sync as well. That would be so damn good.

[Redheadsrule13]

Awesome, I just hope AMD makes it an open standard and allows Nvidia to start using it too. Cuz I don't want to have to start replacing things.

[ForsakenLive]

while it can be put as 'expensive proprietary hardware' it can also be seen as a decent controller. We have seen lack of decent monitor controllers since 4k, where companies have to come with weird solutions to drive a 4k signal at 60hz on a good quality panel, e.g. Asus first 4k monitor. The G-Sync module, not only had adaptive frame refresh, but also was a much more powerful controller, enough for the 120hz 4k monitor that everybody wants.  

[LAwLz]

Awesome, I just hope AMD makes it an open standard and allows Nvidia to start using it too. Cuz I don't want to have to start replacing things.

Well it's not AMD that made this standard, it's VESA, so you don't have to worry.

Nvidia can implement it if they want and hopefully they will.

[TERAFLOP]

Well it's not AMD that made this standard, it's VESA, so you don't have to worry.

Nvidia can implement it if they want and hopefully they will.

AMD's the one who proposed this standard to be rectified by VESA.

[LAwLz]

AMD's the one who proposed this standard to be rectified by VESA.

Yes and? It's still VESA that developed and maintains the standard, so AMD won't be able to prevent Nvidia from using it like Redheadsrule13 feared.

[ACatWithThumbs]

If it's only GCN 1.1 than G-sync isn't going anywhere.
Because G-sync has support on all Kepler desktop GPUs.

People will rather pay $100 more on a new monitor than buy a new monitor + GPU.

AMD isn't open their even more closed down than Nvidia the standard is open but the support isn't they are forcing people to buy GCN1.1.
 

[TERAFLOP]

Yes and? It's still VESA that developed and maintains the standard, so AMD won't be able to prevent Nvidia from using it like Redheadsrule13 feared.

Proposed standards aren't developed by VESA, they're developed by whomever proposed the standard. VESA merely adopts it.

AMD developed DockPort and the made a proposal for it to be incorporated as a VESA standard.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7755/amds-dockport-given-virtual-overview

Adaptive-Sync is AMD's FreeSync which AMD has developed and the Video Electronics Standards Association has adopted.

[jezza39]

AMD doesn't have an "open-standard philosophy". Can we please stop pretending like AMD is pro open source/open standards? I have no idea where that idea comes from, at all. 

 

I think the idea came from OpenCL vs CUDA. Of course NVidia also work hard on OpenGL so...yeah..

[LAwLz]

Proposed standards aren't developed by VESA, they're developed by whomever proposed the standard. VESA merely adopts it.

AMD developed DockPort and the made a proposal for it to be incorporated as a VESA standard.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7755/amds-dockport-given-virtual-overview

Adaptive-Sync is AMD's FreeSync which AMD has developed and the Video Electronics Standards Association has adopted.

In this case, it was developed by VESA, and even if it was AMD that developed it they still wouldn't have any control over it since it's maintained by VESA and is royalty free (once it gets accepted as a VESA standard, the submitted can't decide which companies get to use it or not).

You do know that typing out "Video Electronics Standards Association" instead of just typing VESA doesn't make you look smarter, right?

VESA made the standard AMD used to demo "FreeSync". AMD made the driver that supported it but that's about it really. AMD also proposed that VESA should port their eDP standard to regular DP, which they did.

Please stop trying to give AMD the credit for something VESA developed. If you want to give AMD credit then give them credit for proposing it and also the work they are doing with scalar manufacturers right now (and they deserve a lot of credit for that). Don't try to say they invented Adaptive-Sync though because they didn't, VESA did.

[SkilledRebuilds]

Consoles have DP?

[MattDaemontools]

Consoles have DP?

Even if they don't the hardware itself supports DP. So Sony & Microsoft can release revisions that support FreeSync.

[AllstaRawR]

Consoles have DP?

 

No, but all they'd need is an addition to their chipset/GPU. It's not like the rest of the hardware can't support it.