At AMD, many of us working on gaming technologies and products are gamers ourselves. We all want the lowest possible latency and fastest frame rate, but we also want the games to look stunning and realistic. This is why all Radeon™ RX graphics products support HDR rendering and why we created the FreeSync 2 program: we wanted to combine the best that AMD Radeon FreeSync™ technology1 has to offer—wide variable refresh rate range and low framerate compensation (LFC)–with the gorgeous pixel quality HDR rendering offers. It takes us one step closer to gaming pixel perfection.
Over the past two years, we’ve seen tremendous adoption of AMD Radeon FreeSync technology. 9 out of 10 gaming monitors with GPU adaptive sync technology are based on AMD Radeon FreeSync™ technology, according to GfK research from 51 countries excluding North America2. We’ve had growing interest from monitor vendors and developers to join the FreeSync 2 family3, and there are now eleven monitors available (and more in the pipeline!) which enable FreeSync 2 technology. We also recognized feedback from all of you that it wasn’t perfectly clear to you what FreeSync 2 stands for. We want this program to click immediately for you when you hear the name, and so we’re tweaking it slightly to AMD Radeon™ FreeSync 2 HDR Technology.
In addition, we’re planning a program where people browsing monitors in retail stores will have better visibility on FreeSync and FreeSync 2 HDR products – stay tuned for more on that.
Being an evangelist for HDR is tricky, just like VR or FreeSync. You can talk about it for hours, show simulated pictures and videos, but they aren’t quite as effective as sitting down in front of two monitors where you can see and experience the real difference. Once you see it, you believe it, and you won’t want to go back.
We’ve been working on a showpiece to show you that difference with and without FreeSync and between HDR and SDR.
The demo is built in Unreal Engine 4 and supports HDR10, as well as FreeSync 2 HDR transport protocols. We hope that once you experience the demo live at a store, you’ll be convinced to get on the AMD Radeon FreeSync 2 HDR Technology train and never look back.
If you want to learn more about FreeSync, also check out these videos:
Finally, to reflect the diverse ecosystem of AMD Radeon FreeSync Technology and AMD Radeon FreeSync 2 HDR Technology, we’ve re-vamped our FreeSync pages on AMD.com. Be sure to check out the new pages here.
Let us know in the comments what other additional information about FreeSync you’d like to see as we evolve these pages over time.
Stella Lee is GTM Manager, Gaming Segment Marketing for AMD. His/her postings are his/her 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. GD-5
ENDNOTES
1 Requires a monitor and AMD Radeon™ graphics, both with FreeSync support. See www.amd.com/freesync for complete details. Confirm capability with your system manufacturer before purchase. GD-127
2 AMD internal analysis based on research commissioned by AMD from GfK Market Insights, January 2019.
3 FreeSync 2 does not require HDR capable monitors; driver can set monitor in native mode when FreeSync 2 supported HDR content is detected. Otherwise, HDR content requires that the system be configured with a fully HDR-ready content chain, including: graphics card, graphics driver and application. Video content must be graded in HDR and viewed with an HDR-ready player. Windowed mode content requires operating system support. GD-105
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