panels, they exhibited no off-putting behavior, such as blanking,
pulsing, flickers, ghosting, or any other artifacts.
>> If your panel isn’t, by a remarkable stroke of luck, one of
those 12, that doesn’t mean you can’t use G-Sync with it. Just
prepare for the odd glitch or compatibility issue. Ultimately, it’s
up to you to determine whether you feel the benefits, and weigh
them up against any issues that might creep in.4
ENABLE VARIABLE REFRESH RATE
This step’s about delving into that darkest, most un-user-
friendly of domains in all of PC gaming: your monitor’s
settings menu. And, unfortunately, we’re not talking about
Windows display properties but the real deal: that baffling array
of terse criteria you bring up on your screen by hammering a
random selection of flimsy plastic buttons, placed at the least
easily accessible height and angle possible. Seriously, we’ve got
UEFI BIOSes with full mouse support, but our monitors can’t
handle more than an unresponsive flip-book of settings?
>> Soapbox dismantled. For this step, you simply need to
ensure that your own monitor has variable refresh rate enabled
in its settings menu. Many don’t come out of the box with this
enabled either, so it’s definitely worth checking. Unfortunately,
we can’t guide you through the specific labyrinth of your panel’s
options, but if you’re not out of there in 10 minutes, we’ll call the
police to come and rescue you.5
ENABLE G-SYNC IN NVIDIA CONTROL PANEL
Now comes the relatively easy part. With all your
hardware complying to requirements, all that’s left is to
open up Nvidia Control Panel and turn G-Sync on. You can access
Control Panel by right-clicking the Nvidia icon in your system
tray—you might need to click the arrow first to “show hidden
icons”—or simply by looking for it in Windows Search Bar next
to your Start icon [Image B]. Once you’re in, head to the “Display”
header then “Set up G-Sync.” Now check the “Enable G-Sync
G-Sync Compatible” option, and enter the options you want to
use. Select your monitor in the drag-down menu, then check
“Enable settings for the selected display model” and “Apply
settings.” Congratulations, you’ve turned FreeSync into G-Sync.6
TEST YOUR RESULTS
Is your work over? Forget it. Next you need to ascertain
just how compatible your monitor is with its new-found
G-Sync func tionalit y. The best way to do it is to load a par ticular ly
demanding game, something you’d expect to see reasonable
frame rate variance in, such as Metro Exodus or Battlefield V
[Image C]. Keep an eye out for freezes, flickering, or any other
odd behavior that wasn’t present in your monitor before. If you
do see something odd, there’s not much recourse at this point.
Again, it’s a matter of weighing the pros against the cons, and
deciding whether to keep that G-Sync box checked. There’sCalways the possibility that future driver updates from
Nvidia might improve things, too, so don’t write it off
completely if your panel won’t play ball at this point.7
DO YOU PLAY BETTER WITH OR WITHOUT?
Finally, there’s one more question to face: Maybe
you can play with G-Sync now, but should you?
If you’re a competitive FPS player, you might actually
prefer to leave it disabled. Running games at high frame
rates that go above your monitor’s highest refresh rate
could introduce some input lag, and in some titles,
that’s a game-breaker [Image D]. If the title in question
allows you to set a frame limit, you can minimize that
lag by setting the cap below your refresh rate. Some
players might simply prefer to game at 300fps and go
without G-Sync altogether, though. With margins this
small—and they are small—it comes down to feel. And
if something feels smoother with G-Sync enabled, then
lean into it, and happy headshotting. But if not, don’t feel
like you’re missing out if you prefer the responsiveness
of an unsynched 300fps.DWhy would you even want G-Sync over FreeSync, or even
V-Sync for that matter? Let’s delve into the specifics of how
Nvidia’s frame-pacing solution works. Because monitors
and graphics cards operate at completely different
cadences in a non-G-Sync environment, screen tearing
and stuttering kick in when the graphics card’s render
time is slower than the monitor’s refresh rate. It hands
over incomplete frames for the screen to update itself
with, or simply doesn’t deliver the goods in time and skips
frames. By adding an additional bit of circuitry into the
monitor, G-Sync makes the refresh rate march at the beat
of your GPU’s drum, rather than the other way around. It
means you’re always seeing complete frames on screen,
because your monitor only ever asks your GPU for a new
frame once it’s done rendering it.
This doesn’t magically eradicate any variance from
the frame pacing, but it lessens the severity of the effect.
Watching a game go from 60fps into the low 20s is a jarring
experience without any kind of frame pacing solution, but
assuming your GPU can at least match the screen’s lowest
adaptive refresh rate (usually 48Hz and thus 48fps), you
won’t see stuttering with G-Sync enabled.A G THING
maximumpc.com MAY 2020 MAXIMUM PC 53