UPDATE: If you missed our live stream today that covered NVIDIA G-Sync technology, you can watch the replay embedded below.  NVIDIA's Tom Petersen stops by to talk about G-Sync in both high level and granular detail while showing off some demonstrations of why G-Sync is so important.  Enjoy!!

Last week NVIDIA hosted press and developers in Montreal to discuss a couple of new technologies, the most impressive of which was NVIDIA G-Sync, a new monitor solution that looks to solve the eternal debate of smoothness against latency.  If you haven't read about G-Sync and how impressive it was when first tested on Friday, you should check out my initial write up, NVIDIA G-Sync: Death of the Refresh Rate, that not only does that, but dives into the reason the technology shift was necessary in the first place.

G-Sync essentially functions by altering and controlling the vBlank signal sent to the monitor.  In a normal configuration, vBlank is a combination of the combination of the vertical front and back porch and the necessary sync time.  That timing is set a fixed stepping that determines the effective refresh rate of the monitor; 60 Hz, 120 Hz, etc.  What NVIDIA will now do in the driver and firmware is lengthen or shorten the vBlank signal as desired and will send it when one of two criteria is met.

  1. A new frame has completed rendering and has been copied to the front buffer.  Sending vBlank at this time will tell the screen grab data from the card and display it immediately.
  2. A substantial amount of time has passed and the currently displayed image needs to be refreshed to avoid brightness variation.

In current display timing setups, the submission of the vBlank signal has been completely independent from the rendering pipeline.  The result was varying frame latency and either horizontal tearing or fixed refresh frame rates.  With NVIDIA G-Sync creating an intelligent connection between rendering and frame updating, the display of PC games is fundamentally changed.

Every person that saw the technology, including other media members and even developers like John Carmack, Johan Andersson and Tim Sweeney, came away knowing that this was the future of PC gaming.  (If you didn't see the panel that featured those three developers on stage, you are missing out.)

But it is definitely a complicated technology and I have already seen a lot of confusion about it in our comment threads on PC Perspective.  To help the community get a better grasp and to offer them an opportunity to ask some questions, NVIDIA's Tom Petersen is stopping by our offices on Monday afternoon where he will run through some demonstrations and take questions from the live streaming audience.

Be sure to stop back at PC Perspective on Monday, October 21st at 2pm ET / 11am PT as to discuss G-Sync, how it was developed and the various ramifications the technology will have in PC gaming.  You'll find it all on our PC Perspective Live! page on Monday but you can sign up for our "live stream mailing list" as well to get notified in advance!

NVIDIA G-Sync Live Stream

11am PT / 2pm ET – October 21st

PC Perspective Live! Page

We also want your questions!!  The easiest way to get them answered is to leave them for us here in the comments of this post.  That will give us time to filter through the questions and get the answers you need from Tom.  We'll take questions via the live chat and via Twitter (follow me @ryanshrout) during the event but often time there is a lot of noise to deal with. 

So be sure to join us on Monday afternoon!