G-Sync First Impressions from TR Forums

Ummm, yeah maybe I should have been more specific with my original question. I was talking about using lightboost WITH G-Sync in 2D mode, I already knew there was a hack for lightboost in 2D mode but wasn't sure if you can use both in 2D mode too
 
The hack for 2d light boost is just the display in 3d mode. Nvidia claims that the gsync module does something for 3d vision. I would imagine that it should have some effect on 2d lightboost as well.

Now, I'm wondering what.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
People act like children here.
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"Do you even own a LightBoost monitor?"

"Links or STFU"

"Proof?"

Who's acting like a child? You went on about an off-topic subject, presumed everyone else was wrong without proof of your own, and then provided the links that rebutted your arguments yourself.
 
pontiac4life said:
Ummm, yeah maybe I should have been more specific with my original question. I was talking about using lightboost WITH G-Sync in 2D mode, I already knew there was a hack for lightboost in 2D mode but wasn't sure if you can use both in 2D mode too
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Nice as it would be if they'd tackled that issue from the beginning, the current implementation of the G-Sync module only allows the user to choose between the two.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
You went on about an off-topic subject
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How is it an off topic subject in the "G-sync first impressions" thread? I thought that it would be a discussion on gsync.

Also, I like how you leave out your condescending and childish responses.

I'm just going to add you to ignore. :)
 
Ok, there was an old article on 3dvision blog claiming the gsync worked with 3d vision.

I'll be pretty disappointed if this is the case.

Crap, I just read the responses in that article. :(

So, is this just false advertisement?

asus-vg248qe-with-gsync-specs-690x388.jpg
 
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You're misunderstanding something.

What I was saying earlier is you can have 3D Vision without Lightboost. Lightboost was something developed for 3D Vision to compliment and improve the experience, it is not a requirement for 3D Vision.

Not supporting Lightboost does not prevent support for 3D Vision and vice/versa.

Yes it is currently set as part of 3D Mode by default but that is just something defined arbitrarily through programming. It isn't a technical requirement to link the two.
 
xoleras said:
Wrong, there is no solution for input lag. If you're using vsync, you have input lag. There's no way to avoid it since frames are being delayed from output, hence, input lag. You are going to spend $2000 on GPUs. And you're still going to get input lag. And you're ignoring the fact that G-sync allows you to up the image quality "for free" even if you have 2000$ in GPUs - since the 30-60 fps range is "smooth" with g-sync, you can potentially add SGSSAA, among other things. Normally, even with 2000$ in GPUs, this will cause stutter. With G-sync? You have more room for error without getting stutter or input lag.

V-sync isn't a solution especially if you're playing any type of FPS competitive game. V-sync would be fine for games designed specifically for a "set" type of hardware as consoles are, developers can have a hardware target and design the game to more or less always be at 60 frames. This of course is not possible with PCs. You're continually dealing with a trade-off between stuttering and input lag. With that being the case, I can't see how anyone could say that g-sync is a gimmick. It's a real benefit for the majority of gamers, IMO, as long as they don't mind the cost of entry. And yeah, getting a g-sync monitor will cost less than throwing another 600$ GPU at the problem as you describe - it's almost like you're stating that you have a problem with paying 200$ for a g-sync monitor. But you don't have a problem buying another 600$ GPU for 60 fps (while still getting input lag)? What sort of cognitive dissonance is this? That doesn't even make sense. You'll throw down 2000$ for GPUs. But 200$ more for a monitor is a no-go. That's what you essentially just stated.

The only issue I see so far with G-sync is getting it into more monitors. I'd love to see this tech in a 1600p or 1440p IPS panel. Nvidia is apparently working on making that happen, so we'll see.
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I don't use vsync.. ever. That's why I bought a high-refresh panel in the first place.
 
I can't stand the screen tearing without V-Sync. I suppose my eyes are way to sensitive to this as many gamers don't even notice it
 
pontiac4life said:
I can't stand the screen tearing without V-Sync. I suppose my eyes are way to sensitive to this as many gamers don't even notice it
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Yep. Even with 120hz you still get tearing unless your framerate is fixed, and G-sync solves this issue. There are very few demanding games where you can maintain 120 FPS 100% of the time.

That's the entire problem with current technology. It's a continual trade-off between tearing, stuttering and input lag. Unless you have a fixed 60 or 120 framerate level which is not realistic. Even if it were realistic, G-sync allows you to increase your image quality with extra "stuff" such as SGSSAA or other types of AA that you normally would not be able to use because of stuttering. Fact of the matter is, variable framerate will always cause a trade-off of stuttering, tearing and input lag.

I'm fairly excited about G-sync because it goes a long way towards addressing that. I just hope more monitors (IPS in particular) get it. I love the VG248QE for gaming, but I personally wouldn't use it for productivity tasks - IPS all the way for actual windows usage IMO. My solution right now is dual monitors, which works just fine for me.
 
Seems like there's a bit of distaste for G-Sync here due to it not being a magical and flawless fix-all solution, which seems strange to me.

It's better to think of G-Sync as a solution to a specific display-side problem that, by addressing that particular problem (isochronous display updates), at least partially solves some ancillary issues. If the expectation is that G-Sync is going to make GPU upgrades a thing of the past, that it's going to be a magic bullet for hyper-competitive gaming or that it's going to make your wife's tits twice as big, your expectations are completely unrealistic.
 
xoleras said:
Yep. Even with 120hz you still get tearing unless your framerate is fixed, and G-sync solves this issue. There are very few demanding games where you can maintain 120 FPS 100% of the time.

That's the entire problem with current technology. It's a continual trade-off between tearing, stuttering and input lag. Unless you have a fixed 60 or 120 framerate level which is not realistic. Even if it were realistic, G-sync allows you to increase your image quality with extra "stuff" such as SGSSAA or other types of AA that you normally would not be able to use because of stuttering. Fact of the matter is, variable framerate will always cause a trade-off of stuttering, tearing and input lag.

I'm fairly excited about G-sync because it goes a long way towards addressing that. I just hope more monitors (IPS in particular) get it. I love the VG248QE for gaming, but I personally wouldn't use it for productivity tasks - IPS all the way for actual windows usage IMO. My solution right now is dual monitors, which works just fine for me.
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Yeah, I still don't know why they're introducing it in TN monitors only. It's bad for the industry if we keep using them. Don't get me wrong - they have their place and I certainly have one myself, but it would have been nice to put this on IPS monitors.

Technology can be a bitch sometimes, can't it? It's near impossible to have one's cake and eat it too. It's all about what you're willing to put up with, or which tradeoff is more important.
 
wonderfield said:
Seems like there's a bit of distaste for G-Sync here due to it not being a magical and flawless fix-all solution, which seems strange to me.

It's better to think of G-Sync as a solution to a specific display-side problem that, by addressing that particular problem (isochronous display updates), at least partially solves some ancillary issues. If the expectation is that G-Sync is going to make GPU upgrades a thing of the past, that it's going to be a magic bullet for hyper-competitive gaming or that it's going to make your wife's tits twice as big, your expectations are completely unrealistic.
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A bit of hate too. Mind you, nothing to the level of the R9 290 release, but still - there's already been one G-Sync thread closed due to ridiculousness.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
Yeah, I still don't know why they're introducing it in TN monitors only.
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They aren't. This is a misconception. The first display to use G-Sync is just a retrofit in a TN display. Four vendors are working on brand new displays to be released in 2014 that will use G-Sync. There's nothing stopping them from using IPS panels in those displays, and I would be very surprised if IPS was not used in the first round of announcements.

That said, if you need an IPS display and want to play games with G-Sync, then you're best off with a dual display setup; IPS display on one side, TN G-Sync on the other.
 
That strobe light mod will melt your eyeballs out.
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LOL....Lightboost is the closest thing to a true CRT available. Set it up right and once your eyes get readjusted to it from the years of crappy, high ms LCD's, it's the best.
 
wonderfield said:
Seems like there's a bit of distaste for G-Sync here due to it not being a magical and flawless fix-all solution, which seems strange to me.

It's better to think of G-Sync as a solution to a specific display-side problem that, by addressing that particular problem (isochronous display updates), at least partially solves some ancillary issues. If the expectation is that G-Sync is going to make GPU upgrades a thing of the past, that it's going to be a magic bullet for hyper-competitive gaming or that it's going to make your wife's tits twice as big, your expectations are completely unrealistic.
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These forums are really bad for AMD praise and nVidia hate.

It gets old really fast to be honest. The AMD fanboys are just so dominate that it makes reading threads frustrating.
 
Yeah, there's so much mantle hype when there's no actual games and number comparisons to use. But when Nvidia releases a working prototype that deals with actual issues with vsync and doesn't make you have to balance tearing, stuttering and input lag, there's nothing but complaints about it not working with every monitor feature right out of the box, and there isn't a monitor for me yet.
 
wonderfield said:
That's hardly an endorsement with regard to the "eye melting" bit.
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Our eyes have all become accustomed to the years of abuse early LCD's brought. So (and this included myself at first), Lightboost seems really almost too smooth and almost dizzying at first until your eyes re adjust. Once I played for about 2-3 days my eyes were literally back in 2000. It's the closest thing to a true CRT, and I have had many CRT's.
 
canon.tk said:
These forums are really bad for AMD praise and nVidia hate.

It gets old really fast to be honest. The AMD fanboys are just so dominate that it makes reading threads frustrating.
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A large portion of those are probably AMD "influencers" who are hired specifically to man forums like this one and post such things about AMD hardware. They actually have a top 100 influencer website which ranks their shills. And they get free AMD gear for their rankings. I wish I were joking, but i'm not - someone linked this website before, and one of the guys on their shill ranking list was banned from Anandtech for misrepresenting 290X benchmarks.

Nvidia probably does the same thing. Seems like shilling the internet to influence opinions is the new thing for tech companies to do and it's pretty sickening. What gets me though is AMD has such vast numbers of these people apparently, and they seem to be more or less obvious at times. I should add it is REALLY bad at anandtech.
 
Terpfen said:
They aren't. This is a misconception. The first display to use G-Sync is just a retrofit in a TN display. Four vendors are working on brand new displays to be released in 2014 that will use G-Sync. There's nothing stopping them from using IPS panels in those displays, and I would be very surprised if IPS was not used in the first round of announcements.
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Yep, nvidia did announce that they're working with other panel vendors for more choices in this respect. Viewsonic in particular is the one i'm keeping an eye on - they're on board for developing G-sync screens, perhaps they could retrofit one of their PLS panels with g-sync. I would be first in line for a 1440p viewsonic screen with G-sync.

Specifically, the VP2770 1440p PLS panel is excellent. With g-sync added? Where do I sign up? I do hope that happens.
 
xoleras said:
What gets me though is AMD has such vast numbers of these people apparently, and they seem to be more or less obvious at times.
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I doubt there are more paid AMD shills than there are NVIDIA shills. AMD wins a lot of favor because they're the underdog in this arena, and historically always have been, and because they're more prone to being somewhat more open and less restrictive with their technologies (in order to gain a competitive foothold against NVIDIA). As such, NVIDIA tends to be viewed as the more 'evil' of the two.

Those two things win them a natural social favor, and it's perfectly understandable.
 
I don't doubt that both companies do that sort of thing. Heck, I remember Samsung was fined several million dollars for hiring folks to specifically bad-mouth HTC across internet forums, reddit, and across social media. Like I said, it's just sickening all around that this is the new trend for tech companies these days. That said, I still do feel it's rather disproportionate at anandtech. Not so bad here. But really bad there.
 
Gsync doesn't work below 30fps because displays don't work below 30hz. The whole point of gsync is that the display holds it's image until the new frame comes. After 33ms, the panel has to refresh it's pixel information or they'll start to decay and you'd get weird corruption as pixels colors fade. To prevent this, it effectively just falls back to normal vsync once it's waited as long as it can... The 30fps mark.

This is because at this point it has no choice but to refresh the panel with the same frame again to avoid pixel decay corruption... Even if you finish rendering a new frame just 1ms too late. Once the refresh is kicked off it takes 16ms to update every pixel on a 60hz display and 8ms on a 120hz display and you are now delayed waiting for the refresh cycle to finish since you can't have tearing. This is just like you would have with normal vsync.... Meaning you drop from 30fps to about 20fps if you dip below 30fps on your 60hz display. On a 120hz display you drop to about 24 fps in the same situation.

So yes it's a panel technology limitation not a gsync limitation.
 
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ShuttleLuv said:
It's the closest thing to a true CRT
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Except it's not necessarily bringing any of CRT's good qualities to the table...

Lightboost causes severe flicker, something that bothers a lot of people. I personally can't stand monitors that have PWM flicker, and feel that it's the sign of cheap low-quality monitors that couldn't afford a proper dimming circuit.

And then there's the intentional stroboscopic effect, which DESTROYS persistence-of-vision. This will make motion on low-framerate content appear LESS smooth than a normal monitor, as you end up seeing "a series of stills" rather than fluid movement. While this effect does make it easier to do things like read text that's being rapidly panned across the display, it will make the motion of said text far less fluid (again, that "series of stills" effect).

BlueStorm said:
Gsync doesn't work below 30fps because displays don't work below 30hz
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The display doesn't need to operate below 30Hz, just run it double-time when the frame-rate is too low...

Nothing wrong with running the monitor as follows. No issues with decay, and sub-30-FPS works:
30 FPS / 60 Hz
29 FPS / 58 Hz
28 FPS / 56 Hz
27 FPS / 54 Hz
26 FPS / 52 Hz
25 FPS / 50 Hz
etc, etc, etc...

BlueStorm said:
So yes it's a panel technology limitation not a gsync limitation.
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If G-Sync can't intelligently switch to double-time (knowing full-well there are decay issues when using low refresh rates), then that seems like a G-Sync limitation.
 
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wonderfield said:
I doubt there are more paid AMD shills than there are NVIDIA shills. AMD wins a lot of favor because they're the underdog in this arena, and historically always have been, and because they're more prone to being somewhat more open and less restrictive with their technologies (in order to gain a competitive foothold against NVIDIA). As such, NVIDIA tends to be viewed as the more 'evil' of the two.

Those two things win them a natural social favor, and it's perfectly understandable.
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It's understandable to like one or the other, but leave emotions out of it. I thought the Canon vs Nikon fanboys were bad but the video card and CPU ones are way worse. It's a double dose of AMD fanaticism.
 
DO NOT install the toastyx lightboost hack, it will disable any mention of Gsync in the nvidia control panel. to unistall it simply run strobelight-setup.exe and click on "Reset this display (uninstall)" checkbox and then on "Reset this display" button.

If history repeats itself, soon we will have a gsync hack to use these monitors with AMD cards, as happened before with lightboost. If NVIDIA is serious about this, they should bundle the 780ti with a lichtboosted 120hz 4k VA monitor, otherwise it will follow the way of the dodo, as every other proprietary gaming hardware solution before.
 
TR just posted their first-impressions article on G-Sync, with pictures and videos and charts and stuff. Here's a quote from the conclusion:

Scott Wasson at TR said:
The speed and fluidity of that game (*Borderlands 2) on this G-Sync display is like a combo meth/crack IV drip. I could probably make "faces of G-Sync" a thing, if others are affected by it like I am.
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Terpfen said:
They aren't. This is a misconception. The first display to use G-Sync is just a retrofit in a TN display. Four vendors are working on brand new displays to be released in 2014 that will use G-Sync. There's nothing stopping them from using IPS panels in those displays, and I would be very surprised if IPS was not used in the first round of announcements.

That said, if you need an IPS display and want to play games with G-Sync, then you're best off with a dual display setup; IPS display on one side, TN G-Sync on the other.
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I see. So first display to use it doesn't necessarily mean we won't have to wait a couple of generations before we see the G-Sync-capable IPS models. Makes sense. I do wish they would have retrofit an IPS other than a TN though.
 
xoleras said:
Yep, nvidia did announce that they're working with other panel vendors for more choices in this respect. Viewsonic in particular is the one i'm keeping an eye on - they're on board for developing G-sync screens, perhaps they could retrofit one of their PLS panels with g-sync. I would be first in line for a 1440p viewsonic screen with G-sync.

Specifically, the VP2770 1440p PLS panel is excellent. With g-sync added? Where do I sign up? I do hope that happens.
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PLS + GSync would be pretty sweet. Though to me, motion clarity is probably just a notch higher in importance right now.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
I see. So first display to use it doesn't necessarily mean we won't have to wait a couple of generations before we see the G-Sync-capable IPS models. Makes sense. I do wish they would have retrofit an IPS other than a TN though.
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I'd like to see this in an IPS monitor as well, but IPS seems to have trouble with high refresh rates.

IPS panels, by their very nature, require longer power-on intervals for their sub-pixels to reach a requested value. If you refresh an IPS panel too quickly, you begin to lose color accuracy. If you push an IPS panel way too far, you'll actually end up with severe inverse-ghosting (the leading and trailing edges of objects being moved across the screen become invisible)
 
Unknown-One said:
I'd like to see this in an IPS monitor as well, but IPS seems to have trouble with high refresh rates.
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G-Sync doesn't rely on high refresh rates to operate, so I'm not sure why you're concerned about this.
 
Terpfen said:
G-Sync doesn't rely on high refresh rates to operate, so I'm not sure why you're concerned about this.
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G-Sync does, in fact, rely on high refresh rates in order to operate optimally. Not sure where you got the idea that it doesn't...

The goal of G-Sync is to refresh the monitor every time a new frame is ready. New frames can be ready at ANY time. Even if you average 60 frames per second over the course of 1 second, those 60 frames could have been delivered with any number of delays between them.

There might have been an 8ms gap between some of those frames, a 16ms gap between others, and a 24ms gap between a few stragglers. A monitor that can only handle 60Hz max can only service requests every 16ms... so what happens to the frames that only had an 8ms gap? A gap that small between frames requires a refresh rate equivalent to 120Hz... even though the average framerate for that single second was was 60, some frames needed a MUCH higher refresh rate to be delivered EXACTLY as they were ready.

If you have a monitor that can't handle these fast on-demand refreshes, a frame either has to be skipped entirely (which is bad) or has to wait until the next time the display can refresh to be displayed (which lands you with the same input-lag issues as V-Sync)
 
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IPS displays can handle the refresh rate just fine. I think that you may be confusing actual pixel response time and the processing lag that you'll see on many ips displays. If you try out something like a 120hz catleap which has no scaler and next to no added processing lag you'll see that they feel very responsive. They just blur a bit more than an 120hz tn due to the pixel response time.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
IPS displays can handle the refresh rate just fine.
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IPS displays cannot handle 144Hz "just fine"

That requires each sub-pixel be able to reach its desired value in 7ms. There is, as of yet, no IPS panel that can do this reliably.

If you drive an IPS panel at 144Hz you will end up with visual artifacts. The color accuracy and contrast ratio of anything in-motion degrades.

BababooeyHTJ said:
I think that you may be confusing actual pixel response time and the processing lag that you'll see on many ips displays
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No, I'm not confusing anything. An IPS display can't make large adjustments to the value of a pixel with only 7ms to work with.

If you hooked up G-Sync to an IPS monitor and it attempted to update the display only 7ms after the previous frame was sent, you'd end up with anything in-motion being distorted. As you spun the camera around in a video game, the leading edge of objects would become soft and the trailing edge would smear across the screen. High contrast scenes would experience this effect more than low-contrast scenes.

BababooeyHTJ said:
If you try out something like a 120hz catleap which has no scaler and next to no added processing lag you'll see that they feel very responsive.
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They also suffer from visual artifacts. The pixels CANNOT reach the desired values quickly enough. The faster you update the monitor, the worse the effect gets. You end up requiring MULTIPLE refreshes in order to get a pixel to a requested value. That's not a desirable scenario, and it severely devalues running those high refresh rates when you need two refreshes to get the requested image to actually display correctly.

BababooeyHTJ said:
They just blur a bit more
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Aaaaand there's exactly what I've been talking about this entire time. Artifacts caused by driving the panel faster than it can actually update...
 
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Unknown-One said:
Aaaaand there's exactly what I've been talking about this entire time. Artifacts caused by driving the panel faster than it can actually update...
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I have yet to see a single person say that their overclockable ips or pls blurs more at higher refresh rates. I don't see how a higher pixel response time is going to make gsync not work all of a sudden. The only thing that I have noticed is that at higher framerates the effect of higher refresh rate becomes less noticeable.

Also doesn't Samsung use VA displays with equally low response time in their 3d tvs? That work at 60fps per eye in 720p?
 
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