Intel To Support VESA’s Adaptive-Sync Standard For Variable Refresh Displays

In a Q&A session with Intel’s Chief Graphics Software Architect, David Blythe, The Tech Report obtained some interesting information regarding Intel’s stance on the whole variable refresh display debate. Intel is all for standards-based solutions and is likely to side with VESA’s Adaptive-Sync technology. This is the same tech behind AMD’s FreeSync.

Currently, there is no word on whether or not existing Intel hardware will support Adaptive-Sync, or if an update can be released for its GPUs to take advantage of the growing number of FreeSync monitors. However, it does tell us that Intel is at least interested in the technology, so we don’t need to worry about yet another variable refresh standard.

There is no timetable set yet, either. The most likely situation is that Intel is waiting for things to mature a bit more before committing significant resources, as there are still a number of bugs to work out with current FreeSync implementations (most FreeSync monitors can not reliably sync below 40Hz, where most people would prefer 30 or even 24Hz).

Adaptive/Free-Sync is the software based approach to variable refresh, with NVIDIA’s G-SYNC being hardware based. The technology is about matching the monitor’s refresh rate to the frame rate of the GPU. This is meant to solve two problems; screen-tearing at high frame rates, and micro-stutter at low frame rates.

It’s not completely about games and movies either. Variable refresh offers another vector to save power, and this is likely what Intel is targeting in the long run. If the display only needs to be updated 30 times a second instead of 60, a fair amount of processing power can be saved too (not half, but somewhere around 10-20%).

This doesn’t spell the end for NVIDIA’s G-SYNC either, but it will put pressure on display manufacturers to at least try and figure out how to support both standards… if it’s at all possible.