NVIDIA announces partnership with MediaTek — monitors with G-Sync won’t require a separate chip

Today, NVIDIA announced a partnership with MediaTek that will bring G-Sync technology to the manufacturer’s scaling chips. Monitors with the new chip will not require a separate and expensive NVIDIA G-Sync Ultimate module.

NVIDIA G-Sync technology, like AMD’s FreeSync, allows you to synchronize the monitor’s refresh rate with the game’s frame rate. The monitor and graphics card work in sync to eliminate tearing artifacts and offer a smoother image.

While both technologies offer similar features, AMD FreeSync has always had an important advantage — it does not require additional hardware support. If a monitor manufacturer wants to add support for the full NVIDIA G-Sync feature set, they need to add a separate module, which increases the cost of the display.

Thanks to the partnership with NVIDIA, the MediaTek scaling chip embedded in the monitors will have the full set of G-Sync Ultimate technologies. Such MediaTek chips are popular among monitor manufacturers, so there is a possibility of reducing the cost of the technology for the customer. When G-Sync was introduced more than a decade ago, an additional NVIDIA chip for monitors cost more than $200, increasing the price of the end device accordingly.

In addition, the NVIDIA G-Sync Ultimate gets very hot and requires active cooling. MediaTek will use a special ASIC technology in its upcoming chip — they will be much cooler and won’t require active cooling.

However, it is not known under what conditions MediaTek’s scalable chips will use NVIDIA G-Sync. It is possible that some of the costs will also be passed on to the end user. Nevertheless, we can still hope for the spread of the technology through MediaTek chips.

NVIDIA also notes that the recently announced Pulsar technology, which provides a fourfold increase in motion clarity to reduce blur while preserving details, is also supported in the new MediaTek chips.

The first monitors with them will be Acer Predator XB273U F5, AOC Agon Pro AG276QS2, and Asus ROG Swift PG27AQNR. These are 27″ models with 1440p resolution and 360 Hz refresh rate.

Sources: NVIDIA, Tom’s Hardware