Nvidia has finally moved on from having G-Sync only be available in its own proprietary monitor scalers, with the announcement of a new Mediatek Nvidia G-Sync scaler partnership. This means G-Sync should now be in many more monitors and should allow those monitors to be cheaper too.
Scalers are the processors inside monitors – including many of the best gaming monitors – that perform the very final process of converting the signal from your GPU into an image onscreen. They also incorporate features such as the menus of the display. Companies such as Mediatek make the scalers used in the vast majority of displays with Nvidia previously having designed its own scaler to provide its G-Sync functionality.
There are a number of potential upsides to this development. The first is that many more monitors should now include G-Sync functionality, as there’s no need for monitor manufacturers to spend extra time and resources designing a display to use Nvidia’s G-Sync module, instead, they can just switch on the capability already built into more widely available scalers.
An extension of this is that this greater range of monitors could and certainly should allow G-Sync monitors to be cheaper than they traditionally have been. Generally, the addition of a G-Sync scaler added roughly $100 to the price of a monitor, as manufacturers have to buy a specialized G-Sync scaler, but there’s now at least scope for this premium to be reduced. However, it’s unclear if Nvidia is charging a license fee to include its G-Sync in the new Mediatek scaler – and if so, how much that fee is – so there may still be an added cost that may be passed on to buyers. We’ve reached out to Nvidia for clarification on this.
As to what features G-Sync actually gets you, the primary benefit is compatibility with the company’s proprietary version of the more generic adaptive sync tech. That’s where the refresh rate of your display syncs up with the output frame rate of your graphics card, which is done to ensure you don’t get screen tearing or stutter. For the most part, G-Sync is matched by Freesync and other generic adaptive sync implementations, but G-Sync still tends to offer a more reliable, consistent experience.
What’s more, this new G-Sync license also incorporates other G-Sync tech such as variable overdriver, which is where a display will change the overdrive of the display to match the refresh rate, reducing the change of see ghosting or inverse ghosting.
Ultra Low Motion Blur – the company’s backlight strobing blur reduction technology – is also included as is its Reflex Analyzer tech. The latter lets you measure the latency between the click of a mouse connected to a screen’s USB hub and the resultant response appearing on screen.
Finally, Pulsar is the latest addition to the G-Sync suite and it combines the variable refresh rate of G-Sync, the backlight strobing blur reduction of ULMB, and variable overdrive to reduce the appearance of ghosting and blur all at once.
Alongside the Mediatek scaler announcement, Nvidia also unveiled three new displays that will be getting the new scaler, and they’re the Acer Predator XB273U FS, the AOC Agon AG276QSG2, and the Asus ROG Swift 360Hz PG27AQNR. These are all 27-inch models with 1440p resolutions, using IPS panels but we would expect to see a wider range of panel options soon enough.
For more on what G-Sync is and does, check out our G-Sync guide which explains all its features in detail.
