Is G-Sync worth the money?

[Agrajag]

Is anyone using a G-Sync monitor and do you think it's worth the extra cost and lives up to the hype? I recently bought a normal Dell 27" 2650x1440 screen and get really bad tearing when watching videos, let alone playing games, and wish I'd read up about G-Sync a bit sooner.

I have 2 PCs under my desk: one for gaming and one for general use. The gaming PC has been out of action for a few months and I'm going to rebuild/upgrade it now the new Nvidia cards are out. I had to move its 660ti into the general PC just to get a picture on the new monitor!

As I want to play games on my TV as well as at my desk, and will certainly be upgrading to a UHDTV at some point, it looks like I'll have to sell a kidney and buy a GTX 1080 as well as another monitor if I want to future proof my system.

[Metalzoic]

I have a 27" BenQ 144hz, 1ms monitor in my cab and no complaints. No idea what G-Sync (Global-Sync? God-Sync? Gonad-Sync?) is or if I have it though.

[Agrajag]

G-Sync is Nvidia's proprietary system that automatically adjusts the monitor's refresh rate on the fly to match the frame rate of the graphics card, which varies depending on what's happening in a game. It's supposed to prevent screen tearing and stuttering. I'm guessing the G stands for Game. AMD's rival system is called Freesync.

I think you'd know if you had it, because you would have made a decision to buy a more expensive monitor that is specifically compatible with it and then connected it with a Displayport cable.

[Metalzoic]

Ah. I don't use an Nvidia card so definitely don't use it. Never had a single Vsync issue with this current setup though (either with emulators or PC games).

[OneBadVeggie]

From what I understand, G-sync also alleviates GPU having to process the V-Sync, so that extra processing power can go back into game goodness. I have a monitor with G-sync. I've never even notice any screen tearing. It's one of those things, that I bet I've gotten so used to it, that if I went back to gaming on a normal monitor it'd be painful.

 

I saw someone on r/emulation on reddit mention some emulators seem to completely ignore it. I assume it'd probably be ones without any V-Sync options or something.

 

[Agrajag]

Having done a bit more research, and pondered whether I can justify buying a 4K monitor as well, I've reminded myself that there's no such thing as "future proof" where computers are concerned.  The next version of Displayport (1.4) will support 4K at higher than 60Hz, so we can look forward to another upgrade of graphics cards, monitors and TVs in a year or so!

 

I guess I'll just buy what's available now at a price I can afford, safe in the knowledge that I'll find another use for it in the future.  One can never have too many spare PC components that are worth hanging onto because they might come in handy one day...

[Metalzoic]

I take mine to the gravel pit and shoot them.