Nvidia
Gaming consoles have done a lot in the past decade to push a lot of pixels very quickly across screens. But one piece of hardware has always led to complications: the eyeball. Nvidia is targeting the last leg of the visual quality spectrum with its latest G-Sync offering, Pulsar.
Motion blur, when not caused by slow shifts of LCD pixels, results from “the persistence of the image on the retina, as our eyes track movement on the screen,” as Nvidia explains. Previous improvements in display technology, such as variable rate refresh, Very low motion blur, and Variable Overdrive helped solve the causes of this hardware shortage. However, the eyes and object permanence can only be manipulated by the illumination of the screen backlight.
However, you can't just set this light to flash. Variable flashing frequencies cause flickering, and timing the flashing according to the screen's refresh rate – also tied to the graphics card's output – was difficult. Nvidia says it's solved this problem with G-Sync Pulsar technology, where it uses a “new algorithm” to “synergize” variable refresh smoothing and pulse monitoring. The result is that pixels transition from one color to another at a rate that reduces motion blur and pixel ghosting.
Nvidia also claims that Pulsar can help overcome visual discomfort caused by some powerful impacts, as the feature “intelligently controls the brightness and duration of the pulse.”
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The featureless axis labels make my brain hurt, but I think this chart indicates that the G-Sync Pulsar is doing the job of precisely timing the screen's pixels to refresh at 360Hz.
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Same thing, but this time at 200 Hz.
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And again, this time at 100 Hz. Changing pixels so quickly is weird, isn't it?
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To accommodate this “radical rethinking of display technology,” the display will need Nvidia's own embedded chips. There aren't any yet, but the Asus ROG Swift PG27 Series G-Sync and its 360Hz refresh rate are coming “later this year.” There is no price for this monitor available yet.
It's hard to verify what this looks and feels like without getting hands-on time. PC Gamer checked out Pulsar At CES this week and I confirmed that it's easier to read the name of the guy you're going to shoot while you're bombing left and right at an incredibly high refresh rate. Nvidia also provided video captured at 1,000 frames per second for those who are curious.
Nvidia's demo of G-Sync Pulsar, using Counter-Strike 2 shot at 1,000 frames per second, on a 360Hz display, with Pulsar on and off, running at 1/24 speed.
Pulsar signals Nvidia's desire to once again create an exclusive G-Sync display feature designed to encourage Nvidia's overall presence on modern gaming PCs. It's a move that has sometimes backfired for the company before. The company bowed to market pressure in 2019 and enabled G-Sync in several variable refresh rate monitors supported by VESA DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync technology (better known for its use in AMD's FreeSync monitors). G-Sync monitors typically sold for hundreds of dollars more than their FreeSync counterparts, and while they had some technically exclusive extra features, the higher price points likely hurt Nvidia's appeal when gamers were looking at the full cost of a new or upgraded system .
There won't be any cross-standard compatibility with G-Sync Pulsar, which will only be offered on displays badged as G-Sync Ultimate, thus supporting Pulsar more specifically. There's always a chance that another group could develop their own synchronous flashing technology that could work across GPUs, but nothing has happened yet.
In frame rate-related news, Nvidia also announced this week that its game streaming service GeForce Now will offer G-Sync capabilities to those who subscribe to an Ultimate or Priority membership and play on capable displays. Nvidia claims that, combined with its Reflex offering on GeForce Now, the two “make cloud gaming experiences nearly indistinguishable from on-premises experiences.” I will stress here that those are Nvidia's words, not the author's.