AMD’s FreeSync 2 will bring HDR (high dynamic range) to gaming with a new range of monitors co-developed by Samsung. Other brands will follow soon.
FreeSync 2 monitors harness low-latency, high-brightness pixels, excellent black levels, and a wide colour gamut to display High Dynamic Range (HDR) content. They will support Low Framerate Compensation (LFC) and offer plug-and-play HDR gaming experience for enabled games.
HDR transport formats were designed primarily for movie content displayed on televisions with tone mapping handled by the displays, often leading to higher-than-acceptable latency for PC gaming. AMD’s new API for FreeSync 2 offers a lower-latency alternative that shifts the workload to the pipeline of a Radeon GPU, allowing the game to tone map directly to the display’s target luminance, contrast, and colour space. Radeon FreeSync 2 technology offers over 2x the brightness and colour volume over sRGB.
Scott Herkelman, vice president and general manager of gaming, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD, said, “Gamers have spoken and they’ve made FreeSync the overwhelming choice and definitive industry standard for smooth, stutter-free gaming. FreeSync 2 technology is the first of its kind that combines HDR support with dynamic refresh rate technology, and does it in a seamless, plug-and-play manner that improves gaming quality automatically when the right content is present.”
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Andrew Sivori, vice president, consumer IT marketing at Samsung, said, "Samsung has always embraced FreeSync technology, which is why we partnered with AMD from the beginning. We know gamers deserve the absolute best in smooth gaming experiences, and we're thrilled to see AMD further improving on that technology. FreeSync 2 combines the richest, highest quality pixels provided by HDR, with the stutter-free, tear-free gaming FreeSync is known for. We're excited to collaborate with AMD to implement FreeSync 2 technology in Samsung display products soon."
FreeSync and FreeSync 2 technologies will co-exist to offer a wide variety of advanced displays to gamers. All FreeSync-compatible Radeon GPUs will support FreeSync 2 technology, including the Radeon RX series GPUs based on the Polaris architecture which also supports DisplayPort HBR3 and enables UltraHD resolution beyond 60Hz. Multiple display vendors are actively evaluating several upcoming products for FreeSync 2 qualification.
You can read more about FreeSync 2 here. Below is a representation of the difference between Freesync (centre section) and Freesync 2 (bottom bar).
