At the beginning of the year, Nvidia announced that it was opening up to the world of alternative VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) solutions. This move adds VESA Adaptive-Sync support to Nvidia’s graphics cards, enabling VRR support on a non-G Sync display.
As a result of a number of factors, Nvidia’s decision was taken. First, G-Sync modules are expensive and limit Nvidia’s VRR options to a relatively small number of gaming monitors. Second, VESA Adaptive-Sync and HDMI 2.1 VRR were introduced in a growing number of televisions and monitors. For this reason, Nvidia had to support alternative standards or give its competitors an advantage.
In a press release from LG, Nvidia announced that it intends to offer HDMI 2.1 VRR support for its RTX 20 series graphics cards, according to a press release by LG, which announces that its 2019 series OLED TVs will become G-Sync compatible displays thanks to an upcoming firmware upgrade.
Matt Wuebbling, Chief Marketing Officer at Nvidia, explained that HDMI VRR compatibility had only reached the RTX 20 series graphics cards, and Nvidia announced that the GTX 16 series graphics cards would not be mentioned: HDMI VRR support comes with a new Geforce driver that we hope will tell us more about the limitations of Nvidia’s VRR support.
However, AMD is committed to adding HDMI 2.1 VRR support to its Radeon software drivers. Currently, compatibility with Radeon FreeSync and FreeSync 2 is already available on several Samsung TVs.