Unless you make a habit of living under a rock,
or if you're just not that into gaming, that too,
you've probably seen the headlines,
AMD FreeSync working on GeForce cards.
And it's true, but there's a catch.
So the current methods for enabling FreeSync
on a GeForce graphics card
require you to also have an AMD GPU in your system
that is capable of supporting FreeSync itself.
So today's video then has us trying it out
to see if it's worth the hassle
to save money on a G-Sync monitor.
And while we're at it,
we were thinking maybe we'd try to run G-Sync
on an AMD graphics card.
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So let's start with how this works.
There are actually two different ways to go about this.
There's the GPU way and the APU way.
So we'll be using the APU method for the uninitiated.
And APU is AMD's name for a CPU
that has a graphics processor built into it.
Now, normally, as soon as you install
a dedicated graphics card,
your onboard graphics gets disabled,
when you can use this.
But for what we're doing,
we actually need to force the Vega 11 GPU
that's built into our Ryzen 5 2400G on.
So we're gonna change IGFX multi-monitor to enabled,
and we are going to set the primary video device
to our onboard graphics.
Let's go ahead and reboot.
Now, while we wait for that to happen,
let's talk about what's going on under the hood here.
If you watched our gaming on Linux video a little while ago,
we showed a piece of software called Looking Glass
that Wendell from Level 1 Techs was using to game
with very low latency in Linux
by running the game effectively in a virtual machine
that was running Windows and then capturing its output.
TLDR, the API that Windows is using here is called DXGI.
And what it does is essentially mirror the output
from one card to another with very little delay.
Though, there is no delay.
There is still a delay.
So as you can see here,
we've already got our GeForce driver installed and working.
So the next thing we need to do,
we've already downloaded it here,
is install the drivers for our Radeon graphics.
Now that our Radeon drivers are installed,
which, yes, is working correctly,
we need to change our display configuration
a little bit here.
So what we want is our FreeSync monitor
plugged into our onboard graphics,
and we want nothing plugged
into our GeForce graphics card.
One cool thing, by the way,
is that because of the way that this works,
in theory, we could actually do the same thing
with Intel's upcoming integrated graphics
with FreeSync support.
That's not confirmed at this time yet though.
So now that all of this is done,
we can go into our display settings.
Then on the bottom,
we're going to see an option here for graphic settings.
Now, all we need to do is add whatever we want to run.
We want to run here.
Okay, so now we go into options,
and then we just need to set our graphics preference.
So we're going to set that to high performance,
right about here.
See, here's our power saving GPU.
Here's our high performance one.
Now, when we launch this demo,
theoretically, FreeSync technology will work.
We can actually test it too.
Check this out.
So let's go ahead and,
turn AMD FreeSync off.
Oh, we got to turn V-Sync off for one thing.
Okay, there we go.
That's more like it.
Now let's turn FreeSync off and boom, there's our tearing.
Let's go ahead and do an FPS sweep
so we can get some really nasty tearing there.
Yep.
Now let's turn FreeSync back on.
Okay, so let's try Counter-Strike.
So V-Sync's off.
Let's see how smooth this is.
So in theory, this DXGI thing only adds about one to two
milliseconds of additional lag.
So for the people out there claiming they can feel
the difference, okay, maybe,
but you're probably super human because at 60 frames
per second, that is, what does that work out to?
Wait, oh wow, this feels like ass.
I think this is running on the wrong GPU.
So it's a little kludgy for every one of your,
there we go, for every one of your programs,
you're going to have to actually change that.
Let's see if we can just re-maximize it
and it'll run on the right one.
Yeah, that super did not work.
Let's try relaunching it.
There we go.
That's more like it.
All right.
I am getting a frigging mess ton of tearing here.
When you're running FreeSync,
are you supposed to enable V-Sync within the game?
Yeah.
Oh, well there's our problem.
Also the developer console isn't enabled, crying out loud.
One problem with CSGO though is that it's not demanding
enough for us to dip below 60 frames per second.
So it's not really giving us a benefit over just running V-Sync.
Other than theoretically a little bit less lag.
So what we're going to do then,
is we're going to fire up Deus Ex Mankind Divided.
Can really tell it's much smoother.
Wow, I suck.
All right.
So here we go.
Now we are right in the sweet spot
where we're going to be benefiting from our FreeSync display
where we're not quite able to maintain 60 frames per second,
but we're right in that 45 to 50 FPS range.
What kind of annoying thing about this game
is it has some on-screen effects
that kind of look like tearing, but we are not,
oh, see like that, but that's not that, that's me dying.
I can't believe that this is working.
Like this just blows me away.
Okay.
So remember how I said that because of the way this works,
we could in theory use Intel's iGPU for FreeSync
with an NVIDIA card actually churning through the frames.
Once those come out, that got us thinking,
what if we did it the other way around?
What if you're on team red?
Like a Vega 64,
but some baller new gaming monitor is only available
in a G-Sync flavor.
Wow, that happened so fast.
I didn't even get a chance to show you guys.
Check this out.
So as soon as we plugged it in, boom,
G-Sync display connected.
What?
So we'll go ahead and fire that up.
Enable G-Sync, enable G-Sync for all the things.
Now all we have to do is the same process, but in reverse,
going into our graphic settings and going, okay, CS go.
We don't want high performance.
We want power saving.
Now we can launch Counter-Strike.
And in theory, we'll be running G-Sync
for our NVIDIA graphics card,
but we'll actually be rendering with our onboard graphics.
Now that wouldn't make a lot of sense in this case,
but if you were running something like a Vega 64,
and then you just installed like a GeForce 950 or something
in another slot, you couldn't do that.
You couldn't do that.
You could make it work.
Whether or not you should make it work
is another question though,
because unless someone automates this GPU switching process,
it is a bit of a pain in the butt, at least at this time.
And it's not that cost-effective
because one way or another, you will have to have two GPUs.
Would you look at that?
It feels a little laggy,
but that's because we're running at 33 frames per second.
There's no tearing,
and it's as smooth as it could be given the situation.
Now, one way that you could make the solution make sense
would be if you had some old compatible hardware
lying around, or actually maybe if you're team green
in terms of your gaming rig,
but you wanted to hook your gaming machine
up to one of Samsung's FreeSync TVs, for example,
because until BFGDs actually make their way to the market,
there are no large format G-Sync displays.
That could be pretty cool.
But in most cases,
you'll probably end up spending
more than you are actually saving
or very close for what isn't an amazing experience.
The real takeaway is that we shouldn't have to do
any of this.
FreeSync and VESA Adaptive Sync
are both industry standards at this point.
And NVIDIA, if you're listening,
we're not saying that you need to ditch G-Sync.
We know that you guys have special green G-Sync socks,
that you pour on it,
that makes it a little better in your opinions.
Personally, I haven't looked at it
with a high speed camera yet,
but you guys think it's better, so okay.
We're just saying that like CUDA and OpenCL,
there's no reason that you couldn't support both,
especially since as we've demonstrated here,
there's no physical link reason
that you couldn't support both.
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So thanks for watching guys.
If this video sucked, then I see you NVIDIA employees.
I see you.
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