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@ 2018/06/21Dynamic refresh rate technologies like AMD’s FreeSync and NVIDIA’s G-Sync have become de-facto standards for gaming PCs and displays. Last year the HDMI Forum introduced a more industry-standard approach to variable refresh rate as a part of the HDMI 2.1 package, and recently makers of consumer electronics started to add VRR support to their products. At Computex the consortium demonstrated VRR operation using a Samsung QLED TV and a Microsoft Xbox One X, but the demonstration was somewhat inconclusive.
Select Samsung QLED TVs to be launched this year are set to support a 120 Hz maximum refresh rate, HDMI 2.1’s VRR, as well as AMD’s FreeSync technologies, the company announced earlier this year. The technologies do essentially the same thing, but they are not the same method – AMD's Freesync-over-HDMI being a proprietary method – and as such are branded differently. From technological point of view, both methods require hardware and firmware support both on the source (i.e., appropriate display controller) as well as the sink (i.e., display scaler). As it appears, Samsung decided to add support for both methods.
As an added wrinkle, AMD sees VRR and FreeSync as two equal technologies, which is why it intends to keep relying on its own brand, even when over time it adds support for both technologies to its products. An example of such universal support for VRR and FreeSync is Microsoft’s Xbox One X console, which according to a Microsoft rep at the HDMI Consortium booth at Computex, supports both technologies. Meanwhile during its own press event at Computex, AMD demonstrated a Radeon RX Vega 56-based system with FreeSync working on a 1080p QLED TV from Samsung, so unless said GPU already supports HDMI 2.1’s VRR (which is something that would be logical for AMD to announce), it more likely proves that Samsung supports both VRR and FreeSync on select TVs. Meanwhile, it does not seem like Samsung’s TVs support LFC (low framerate compensation), at least not right now.
Select Samsung QLED TVs to be launched this year are set to support a 120 Hz maximum refresh rate, HDMI 2.1’s VRR, as well as AMD’s FreeSync technologies, the company announced earlier this year. The technologies do essentially the same thing, but they are not the same method – AMD's Freesync-over-HDMI being a proprietary method – and as such are branded differently. From technological point of view, both methods require hardware and firmware support both on the source (i.e., appropriate display controller) as well as the sink (i.e., display scaler). As it appears, Samsung decided to add support for both methods.
As an added wrinkle, AMD sees VRR and FreeSync as two equal technologies, which is why it intends to keep relying on its own brand, even when over time it adds support for both technologies to its products. An example of such universal support for VRR and FreeSync is Microsoft’s Xbox One X console, which according to a Microsoft rep at the HDMI Consortium booth at Computex, supports both technologies. Meanwhile during its own press event at Computex, AMD demonstrated a Radeon RX Vega 56-based system with FreeSync working on a 1080p QLED TV from Samsung, so unless said GPU already supports HDMI 2.1’s VRR (which is something that would be logical for AMD to announce), it more likely proves that Samsung supports both VRR and FreeSync on select TVs. Meanwhile, it does not seem like Samsung’s TVs support LFC (low framerate compensation), at least not right now.
