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CES kicks off this Th, which means a number of companies are announcing new products, capabilities, and technologies they intend to bring to market in 2022. AMD tossed its chapeau into the ring with a discussion of FreeSync 2 — the follow-on to the FreeSync (VESA refers to this every bit Adaptive-Sync) standard that competes with Nvidia's G-Sync in the display business organization. FreeSync, like K-Sync, is designed to synchronize your brandish's refresh rate with your GPU. This guarantees that you don't miss a frame's worth of content if a new frame shows up more quickly than your monitor can brandish information technology. Both FreeSync and G-Sync can dramatically improve game smoothness, and the lower the frame charge per unit is by default, the bigger the advantage of enabling information technology.

AMD's FreeSync 2 is meant to build on and expand the advantages of FreeSync. Unlike that technology, which relied on a single feature, there are several facets to FreeSync 2 that we need to talk about. Commencement, FreeSync is meant to standardize HDR support on Windows (it'southward currently somewhat erratic). While Sony was able to flip a switch and enable HDR on all PlayStation 4s and PS4 Pros, moving an HDR bespeak from Windows to a monitor is more complex. At present, many HDR monitors struggle to catechumen a game'south tone mapping under Windows 10 into a properly-displayed output on an HDR monitor. The engineering works, only there'southward meaning lag involved, exacerbated by the fact that HDR10 requires tone mapping twice — once from games to the display pipeline, and once more from the pipeline to the brandish's colour space. With FreeSync two, AMD wants to change this.

AMD-HDR

The graphic above shows how AMD'due south FreeSync ii eliminates the problem by handling it directly in hardware. In AMD's FreeSync two standard, games would tone map to the native colors of a FreeSync two-compatible monitor. AMD's GPU drivers then pass that information forth to the panel, which displays it without any of the additional processing. This significantly cuts input lag and could brand HDR easier to employ in modern games.

AMD-HDR-2

Because Windows generally takes a dim view of this kind of colour space overwriting, FreeSync two allows for mode switching. When you're using your desktop or running conventional applications, information would exist handled by the standard SRGB color gamut that Windows prefers. Leap into a game or application that uses HDR, and AMD's driver support would boot in to enable its advanced functionality. Leave the game, and you lot drop back down to SRGB.

The other advantage of FreeSync 2 is that AMD is tightening its requirements for the standard. Currently, FreeSync displays must offering at least 2x the lowest refresh rate (meaning a 30Hz display must be capable of at least 60Hz). The ideal range is 2.5x (24Hz – 60Hz). At that bespeak, games can offer Depression Framerate Compensation, or LFC, which means that the GPU sends frames twice to smooth gameplay and avoid hiccups. Extending back up downward to 24Hz from 30Hz may not sound like a huge change, but information technology helps ensure that all simply the biggest stutters are smoothed out and improved. FreeSync 2 will require this as a minimum feature where FreeSync did not.

Developer purchase-in, display cost

Unlike FreeSync, which by and large doesn't require any kind of 'awareness' from a game, FreeSync two would require specific support from game developers and engine creators. AMD is partnering with monitor manufacturers to design displays that would exist able to deactivate their own tone mapping to permit the GPU take over. Game developers would still need to map their own titles to specific displays, and it would need to happen seamlessly and so that users don't have to worry about trivial with special modes just to enable HDR.

To pull all this off, AMD will need to piece of work with game engine developers, game studios, and ramp up a more detailed testing and evaluation procedure on the monitor side of things as well. One of the major selling points for FreeSync over K-Sync is that the technology doesn't really carry a premium. With FreeSync 2, however, AMD is aiming for the loftier terminate of the marketplace, and FreeSync won't be phased out only because FreeSync 2 ships. The implication is that FreeSync will remain a valid option for people who just want the improved frame timing, while gamers looking for something a little more high-end will have FreeSync 2 as a feature.

One affair that would aid AMD's efforts would exist prominent buy-in from Intel. Back in August 2022, Intel said it would support Adaptive-Sync / FreeSync in future Intel CPUs. We've since heard rumors that AMD may have licensed a GPU to Intel or might build 1 for them, and buy-in from Intel (whether AMD builds its GPUs or not) would be a huge win for the time to come of the FreeSync standard. Every bit things stand up, AMD likes to tout how many FreeSync panels are on the market compared with a relative paucity of G-Sync displays. But this evidence of strength is undercut by how Nvidia dominates the loftier-terminate gaming market that caters to the kinds of customers that might seek out and buy a gaming monitor with FreeSync or Thou-Sync support.

AMD has not stated if it will charge royalties for the more difficult testing and validation wheel these new monitors will require. Its conclusion could accept a significant touch on on how M-Sync and FreeSync 2 display prices compare in the future, as well as how much purchase-in the company gets for its products. And of course all of this will hinge significantly on how strong a production Vega turns out to be. There's cipher wrong with pairing a FreeSync or G-Sync display with a lower-end graphics bill of fare (in fact, such cards stand to benefit the nigh from this pairing), simply the kind of people who purchase $200 GPUs often don't plow around and purchase $500 – $750 monitors. We'll need more information on cost and positioning before we can fully evaluate FreeSync 2.