New driver release enables Nvidia G-Sync for some laptops

By Brad Bourque May 31, 2015

nvidia announces gsync for laptops g sync card — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Nvidia’s G-Sync technology has made waves for drastically improving tearing and clipping issues on high-end machines, but its downfall is requiring a hardware component to make monitors compatible – until now. Nvidia has announced that it’s bringing the power of G-Sync to laptops, and it will just require a driver update on compatible machines to bring them into the fold.

Tearing has long been a problem with high-end machines. When the monitor and the graphics card refresh at different rates, causing two different frames to appear on the screen at once, usually one on top with a line in the middle and the other below.

G-Sync lets the monitor and video card talk so they can agree when to render and display a frame in synchronization, which entirely eliminates tearing. Normally, a hardware G-Sync chip has 768MB of DDR3 memory to store each frame info, so it can compare it to the next frame, which brings with it a number of useful side-effects. In laptops, though, Nvidia has found a way to do without.

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There are still some bugs to work out. G-Sync isn’t designed for low-end systems. If your computer can’t keep the framerate high, you may experience some lag as the system tries to keep the monitor in sync with the graphics card. We’ve witnessed screen flickering issues with past G-Sync monitors, though the problem was mostly restricted to loading screens.

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Brad Bourque is a native Portlander, devout nerd, and craft beer enthusiast. He studied creative writing at Willamette…

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