Acer (TPE: 2353) announced Tuesday that it’s planning to release the XG270HU gaming monitor, a 27-inch display that has QHD (2560 x 1440) resolution, a fast 144Hz refresh rate and a 1ms response time.

Keen observers of the company’s releases might be confused. During January’s Consumer Electronics Show Acer announced the same thing, down to the connectivity (HDMI 2.0 port, Dual-Link DVI and DisplayPort 1.2a). However, this Feburary re-release has one key difference: the monitor supports the open source FreeSync from AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) and not Nvidia’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) G-Sync.

The difference between FreeSync and G-Sync is one uses open standards and DisplayPort, while the other uses proprietary components that are licensed to the monitor manufacturer. While Nvidia would argue strongly that G-Sync has technical advantages over FreeSync, for most users the difference is negligible.

The difference, however, comes down to the cost to manufacturers — which is thus passed on to consumers. Unless Nvidia delivers a strong incentives packages to companies to include G-Sync in their monitors, they will simply opt for the open source alternative. Why? Because they can pass the savings on to consumers.

It’s too early to tell if this is the beginning of a trend, or write the postmortem for G-Sync. Nvidia didn’t have much luck pushing out 3D Vision 2, which also required manufacturers to sign-on to include proprietary hardware in their monitors. Granted, consumers didn’t have much enthusiasm for 3D gaming — particularly if it required them to use a monitor which included proprietary technology.

Acer’s move is a vote of confidence for FreeSync, but not an outright rejection of Nvidia’s G-Sync. It will at least take another two or three quarters to get the first glimpse of a winner in the adaptive sync battle.

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With the annual Consumer Electronics Show right around the corner and the industry’s marketing efforts going into overdrive, what is it that we will likely see next week?

It’s a safe bet that if will be a week of opposites.

From hardware going to both larger and smaller designs, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) G-Sync versus AMD (NYSE: AMD) FreeSync, small displays with massive resolution, and gaming notebooks of both massive and diminutive sizes.

Small form factor hardware as is one of the fastest growing areas in the hardware segment, and no doubt there will be a lot of it on display at CES.  With hardware becoming so powerful and small we are seeing a lot of really powerful builds that can be done.  With even MATX X99 boards we are seeing that there is a move toward making things small and potent.  On the other side there is a lot of huge pieces of hardware showing up on the market, namely 4K and ultra wide monitors.  They are becoming even more prolific and the ultra wide monitors are drawing a lot of interest from gamers and power users who were once planning on going for a 4K monitor or two.  There will be a lot of talk this CES about AMD’s FreeSync for enthusiast gaming monitors as it is the newcomer challenging Nvidia’s established G-Sync.  FreeSync will draw the attention of monitor manufacturers since it is less costly to implement and license than the G-Sync solution.  The LG 34UM67 will be a curved ultra wide monitor that will feature AMD’s FreeSync, and should definitely steal a lot of the spotlight next week.

The mobile computing segment is also something to watch next week as we will see a lot of small notebooks with very high resolution displays.  It is easy to say that there will be a number of notebook models that will feature 3K and 4K screens, even at the 15.6-inch sizes.  There will also be a movement with ultraportable gaming notebooks of small size that can be docked with a desktop graphics card for superior gaming ability while at a desk.  With the shrinking of parts that make up computers we will be seeing a drastic reduction in size and weight of these ulta portable notebooks.  Not only will they be smaller but they will be potent and even come equipped with quad-core Intel i7 processors and decent graphics.  On the other hand you will also see that there is a move to the opposite extreme as there will be new 18″ gaming notebooks that will be the true embodiment of the “desktop replacement” name.  Some of these huge notebooks will even sport gaming grade mechanical keyboards featuring Cherry MX Brown switches.

Be sure to check back throughout next week as CES 2015 kicks off in Las Vegas.

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AMD (NYSE:AMD) and Samsung (KRX:005930) announced a partnership today at the AMD Future of Compute event in held in Singapore.

The partnership will have Samsung making FreeSync enabled displays, and they will begin to appear in March of next year.  The first will be 23.6 inch and 28 inch versions of the UD590 which will both be UHD (4K) displays.  Later will come some more UHD displays in the UE850 line with 23.6 inch, 28 inch , and 31.5 inch models.  AMD’s FreeSync is its alternative to Nvidia’s G-SYNC tech that has been in the market for over a year now. AMD went the royalty free route with its FreeSync technology that is based on the Adaptive-Sync open standard for DisplayPort.  VESA is implementing this technology in the new DisplayPort 1.2a and DisplayPort 1.3 specification.  With the lower costs of FreeSync tech this will no doubt encourage more manufacturers to use it in upcoming models.

It may be fairly late in the game for FreeSync since G-Sync has done well with gaming enthusiasts looking to get a good gaming monitor.  Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has made headway getting companies on the G-SYNC train, such as ASUS (TPE: 2357), BenQ (TPE:8215), Philips, and Acer (TPE:2353).  The 27″ QHD (2560×1440) 144Hz ASUS ROG Swift PG278Q is by far one of the best G-SYNC monitors that is currently available but sells for $799 and isn’t even 4K.  There are also UHD versions available such as the Acer XB280HK that retails for just under $800. But even with a decent amount of monitors on the market, Nvidia’s G-Sync monitors command a serious premium over equally specced monitors without G-Sync. As such, this could potentially put Nvidia at a disadvantage since many monitor manufacturers are constantly looking for ways to differentiate without spending too much money on the bill of materials (BOM).

There is little doubt that FreeSync will do well and that the partnership between AMD and Samsung will do well with the products.  With about four months until the models come out users will have plenty of time to set some money aside each month now that we have a date.  This will be the go-to monitor of choice for the AMD fans and there sure are plenty of them waiting for the next-gen AMD product to pair with a FreeSync monitor. There has also been talk of companies like BENQ and even ASUS potentially releasing FreeSync compatible monitors. The reality of the situation is that adaptive sync is the superior technology and will very likely get adopted by Intel and that will help AMD overcome Nvidia’s overall size and dominance in the graphics market. Once AMD can partner with Intel (crazy to think) to push FreeSync/Adaptive Sync in both companies’ products then G-Sync will effectively be dead. But you can’t blame Nvidia for wanting to improve gaming, even at a fairly high cost.

The partnership will see Samsung releasing new FreeSync monitors in March 2015.

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While AMD (NYSE: AMD) has fully embraced VESA’s Adaptive Sync standard, which powers its Project Freesync, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has flat-out rejected the idea in an interview with Chinese-language publication Expreview.

Expreview asked an Nvidia representative whether the company intends to support VESA’s Adaptive Sync, which competes with Nvidia’s G-Sync. Nvidia says it has no plans to support the protocol on its recently launched GeForce 9-series, pointing to the fact that neither of the cards have the the requisite DisplayPort 1.2a connectors (which are supported in most cards AMD has released over the past two years) for Adaptive Sync to work.

Later, Nvidia confirmed this when responding to an inquiry from Tom’s Hardware.

“Nvidia is solely focused on delivering the best gaming experience with G-SYNC—which is shipping and available today from leading monitor OEMs,” Nvidia said to the publication.

While VESA’s Adaptive Sync is based on open standards, Nvidia’s competing G-Sync is proprietary and requires Nvidia’s silicon in the monitors to work (which also brings in royalties for Nvidia).

Should Nvidia dump G-Sync?

Now that Nvidia’s G-Sync has a competitor that’s part of the broader VESA standard, questions remain on whether the company should continue to pursue the standard or simply abandon it. While Nvidia has had some luck convincing hardware partners such as Asus and Acer to include G-Sync in their monitors, the standard hasn’t been the best-seller that Nvidia no doubt hoped.

One option for Nvidia would be to simply drop the royalties associated with G-Sync altogether and make it freeware. Nvidia isn’t likely to adopt Adaptive Sync, as it could be seen as a capitulation to its competitor AMD. Alternatively Nvidia may simply treat the protocol to an unceremonious and undignified death next year, much like how Nvision — its 3D gaming platform — simply faded away in 2012-2013.

Regardless of what option Nvidia takes, it now faces an uphill battle convincing vendors that they should adopt its proprietary standard instead of embracing what VESA and AMD are offering.

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This past Thursday (September 18^th), Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) hosted its GAME24 event from Hangar 8 at the Santa Monica Airport in Los Angeles. The event was billed as a “celebration of PC gaming”, and it certainly was. However, the main event was no secret to those in the press – the release of the new top end Maxwell GPUs: GTX 980 and GTX 970.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang soon took the stage to welcome the attendees and to present Maxwell and the new technologies that come with it.

Maxwell has a variety of improvements over the previous generation of GPU technology. Memory consumption has been drastically reduced, using approximately 25% less memory bandwidth on the games Nvidia tested with when comparing the GTX 980 to GTX 680.

Energy efficiency was also improved, with Nvidia boasting a 2x improvement in efficiency (measured in performance per watt as determined by frames per second).

Two interesting new software features are DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution) and MFAA.

DSR is designed to be used with games that are already running at maximum visual settings and are still getting extremely high framerates. DSR uses the extra GPU horsepower to render the frames at 4K resolution and downscale them to the monitor’s native resolution, resulting in improved visual fidelity.

MFAA is a different type of anti-aliasing designed to provide higher levels of AA at a lower performance cost. Nvidia stated it as “4x MSAA Quality at 2x AA Performance”. That’s not entirely accurate as the number was compared to 4x MSAA on a GTX 680 vs 4x MFAA on a GTX 980. As seen in the slide below, going from 4x MSAA to 4x MFAA on a GTX 980 provides an increase of approximately 27%, going from 41 FPS to 52 FPS. Nevertheless, the improvement is still impressive.

Nvidia also significantly improved input lag time for the purpose of VR displays, making Oculus Rift a much more attractive product.

VXGI (Voxel Global Illumination) is a low-cost (in terms of performance) lighting technology. The results looked very good and ran in real-time. They also demonstrated a debunking of the moon landing conspiracy using VXGI lighting effects to simulate the images of the moon landing.

At the end of the presentation, the GTX 980 was launched at an MSRP of $549 and the GTX 970 at an MSRP of $329. (Check out the GTX 980 review here)

After the presentation, there was more food and drinks, as well as a variety of stations set up to try out Nvidia’s tech.

Stations included the following: three display 4K surround, Nvidia Shield gaming stations, G-Sync enabled 4K gaming stations, and most impressively – Oculus Rift testing stations utilizing Nvidia’s new input lag-reducing tech.

The Oculus Rift one was definitely the most impressive of all the demos on display. Even those prone to motion sickness have no problem enjoying games with the headset. The experience was totally immersing and very smooth. The immersion was so complete that people around me took the opportunity to take amusing photos.

Nvidia also did a massive giveaway, giving away a total of approximately 45 products. Considering the crowd appeared to be about 300 people, the opportunities to win were quite good. Even more appealing was the fact that the giveaways consisted solely of GTX 980 and 970 GPUs, 4K monitors from ASUS and Acer, and Nvidia Shield and Shield tablets. Each attendee also received free game codes for Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Far Cry 4, and The Crew. Considering the event was open for free public registration, the event was definitely worth attending.

Prior to the start of the event there was a hands-on preview of Zotac’s new GTX 980 and 970 offerings. Both product releases here and here, so we won’t go into too much detail here, but pictures of some of the new cards are below:

This post originally appeared on Bright Side of News*, VR World’s sister site.

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This past Thursday (September 18^th), Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) hosted its GAME24 event from Hangar 8 at the Santa Monica Airport in Los Angeles. The event was billed as a “celebration of PC gaming”, and it certainly was. However, the main event was no secret to those in the press – the release of the new top end Maxwell GPUs: GTX 980 and GTX 970. This announcement was made in conjunction with the NDA expiry of the GTX 980 reviews, including our very own review of the GeForce GTX 980.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang soon took the stage to welcome the attendees and to present Maxwell and the new technologies that come with it.

Maxwell has a variety of improvements over the previous generation of GPU technology. Memory consumption has been drastically reduced, using approximately 25% less memory bandwidth on the games Nvidia tested with when comparing the GTX 980 to GTX 680.

Energy efficiency was also improved, with Nvidia boasting a 2x improvement in efficiency (measured in performance per watt as determined by frames per second).

Two interesting new software features are DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution) and MFAA.

DSR is designed to be used with games that are already running at maximum visual settings and are still getting extremely high framerates. DSR uses the extra GPU horsepower to render the frames at 4K resolution and downscale them to the monitor’s native resolution, resulting in improved visual fidelity.

MFAA is a different type of anti-aliasing designed to provide higher levels of AA at a lower performance cost. Nvidia stated it as “4x MSAA Quality at 2x AA Performance”. That’s not entirely accurate as the number was compared to 4x MSAA on a GTX 680 vs 4x MFAA on a GTX 980. As seen in the slide below, going from 4x MSAA to 4x MFAA on a GTX 980 provides an increase of approximately 27%, going from 41 FPS to 52 FPS. Nevertheless, the improvement is still impressive.

Nvidia also significantly improved input lag time for the purpose of VR displays, making Oculus Rift a much more attractive product.

VXGI (Voxel Global Illumination) is a low-cost (in terms of performance) lighting technology. The results looked very good and ran in real-time. They also demonstrated a debunking of the moon landing conspiracy using VXGI lighting effects to simulate the images of the moon landing.

At the end of the presentation, the GTX 980 was launched at an MSRP of $549 and the GTX 970 at an MSRP of $329. (Check out the GTX 980 review here)

After the presentation, there was more food and drinks, as well as a variety of stations set up to try out Nvidia’s tech.

Stations included the following: three display 4K surround, Nvidia Shield gaming stations, G-Sync enabled 4K gaming stations, and most impressively – Oculus Rift testing stations utilizing Nvidia’s new input lag-reducing tech.

The Oculus Rift one was definitely the most impressive of all the demos on display. Even those prone to motion sickness have no problem enjoying games with the headset. The experience was totally immersing and very smooth. The immersion was so complete that people around me took the opportunity to take amusing photos.

Nvidia also did a massive giveaway, giving away a total of approximately 45 products. Considering the crowd appeared to be about 300 people, the opportunities to win were quite good. Even more appealing was the fact that the giveaways consisted solely of GTX 980 and 970 GPUs, 4K monitors from ASUS and Acer, and Nvidia Shield and Shield tablets. Each attendee also received free game codes for Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Far Cry 4, and The Crew. Considering the event was open for free public registration, the event was definitely worth attending.

Prior to the start of the event there was a hands-on preview of Zotac’s new GTX 980 and 970 offerings. Both product releases here and here, so we won’t go into too much detail here, but pictures of some of the new cards are below:

The post Nvidia Game24 Event: The Launch of GTX 980 and GTX 970 appeared first on VR World.

Today, the day before Computex 2014 officially starts, Nvidia held their very first Gamer’s Day across the street from Taipei’s famous Taipei 101 at ATT 4 Fun’s 7th floor Show Box. The company had trucks driving around the area making the public and Computex attendees alike aware of the all-day festivities which started at 11 am and went til 7 pm.

While we didn’t get a chance to stay for the whole event, we did spend quite a bit of time walking around the venue and watching the festivities unfold, mostly in Mandarin. The focal point of the event was the professional League of Legends tournament being held on the main stage with commentators and $10,000 USD prize. There were also a series of amateur gamers playing League of Legends on separate machines. All of the gaming machines for the day with the exception of the three 4K gaming display were powered by MSI and their logo was plastered all over the event.

The Gamer’s Day also had a series of giveaways that would go on over the course of the day and included Nvidia-powered devices like a Gigabyte Tegra Note 7 as well as Nvidia SHIELDs. The last and ultimate giveaway for the day, at the end, was one GeForce GTX Titan Z. To do the math, this card is $3,000 USD and would come out to about 90,000 NTD (New Taiwanese Dollars), an even more daunting sounding price. According to Nvidia’s figures, they had around 1,500 people pre-register for the all day Gamer’s Day event. While we didn’t get any exact figures of how many people attended Nvidia’s Gamer’s Day, I can say with absolute certainty that their numbers were well into the high hundreds as people came and went over the course of the day.

Nvidia was also showing off a multitude of new G-Sync monitors from their partners including Acer’s 4K G-Sync monitor, ASUS’ 2560×1440 G-Sync monitor as well as G-Sync monitors from AOC and Phillips.

Nvidia chose to do a Gamer’s Day instead of having a booth on the show floor this year and it isn’t going to be the last time they do it either. Because at E3, Nvidia has already announced similar plans to forego a booth on the show floor and to build a Gamer’s Day-like experience outside of the convention center in order to make themselves more accessible to the public and local gamers. Nvidia is still going to have to pay the convention organizers at both events in order to do what they’re doing, but it alos

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As many of you may already know, AMD has proposed a standard unofficially dubbed FreeSync as a way to allow monitors to sync with graphics cards in a way that allows them not to render half frames and to sync the refresh rate of the monitor with the frame rate of the GPU. This standard is designed to be a ‘free’ alternative to Nvidia’s announced G-Sync which will only work with Nvidia’s own GPUs and monitor hardware. AMD’s solution is designed to be more ‘open’ and ‘free’ meaning that you don’t have to necessarily commit to a specific brand of graphics card or monitor. While I haven’t seen FreeSync, I have seen G-Sync and I can tell you that the experience without a doubt elevates the quality of gaming without a doubt in my mind.

Now, there has recently been a rumor circulating around the press for the past few days about the fact that AMD’s dubbed FreeSync standard has been ratified by VESA and will become part of the DisplayPort standard. We did some digging around and managed to get some pretty definitive answers about this new standard that will be part of DisplayPort 1.2a. We were told that while the name itself isn’t too bad, there is a strong likelihood that when the new standard is officially announced as part of DisplayPort  that it’ll lose its current name.  We were also told that there’s a strong likelihood that we could see it as soon as May, shortly before VESA makes another announcement.

That announcement will precede an even bigger one, in the announcement of DisplayPort 1.3. For those unfamiliar with DisplayPort 1.3, we wrote a pretty lengthy exclusive article back in December detailing all of the aspects of DisplayPort 1.3, however, once FreeSync gets integrated into 1.2a, that feature will also be added to 1.3 by default. I suspect that because of FreeSync, there may be a possibility that we could see DisplayPort 1.3 gaining faster adoption as a result of the fact that a generally lower refresh rate will allow for less power drawn by the display. In fact, one of the best applications for FreeSync in DisplayPort 1.2a and later standards will be the fact that monitors will spend less time refreshing and as a result drawing less power. Not to mention the overall experiential improvements. Additionally, it may be easier to implement things like 8K video over DisplayPort 1.3 if we know that initial testing can be done at lower refresh rates than 60 Hz. Hopefully they’ve resolved the cable bandwidth issue with DisplayPort 1.3, and if we find out anything new about FreeSync or DisplayPort 1.3, we’ll be sure to report it to you as soon as possible.

The expectation is that DisplayPort 1.3 will be announced sometime in late Q2 or early Q3, which leaves DisplayPort 1.2 to come anywhere between that time and now.

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