NVIDIA Launches GeForce Game Ready 417.71 WHQL Drivers Supporting AMD FreeSync Monitors
Earlier this month at CES, NVIDIA announced new hardware including mobile versions of the GeForce RTX family and the desktop-oriented GeForce RTX 2060. Although it didn't garner nearly as much attention, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang announced that GeForce graphics cards would soon support non-G-SYNC, adaptive sync monitors.
Up until this point, GeForce cards have only supported NVIDIA's own proprietary adaptive sync monitors, i.e. G-SYNC. However, NVIDIA has been validating AMD FreeSync-compatible monitors for use on its graphics hardware. When first announced, Huang said that 12 of the hundreds of FreeSync monitors on that market had been validated for proper operation on its GeForce hardware.
Huang promised that drivers enabling FreeSync monitor support would arrive on January 15thand true to his word, the GeForce Game Ready 417.71 WHQL Drivers have been released. NVIDIA describes its support for what it calls “G-SYNC compatible” displays, writing:
NVIDIA G-SYNC can now be used to activate the VRR features of G-SYNC Compatible displays. G-SYNC Compatible displays have been validated by NVIDIA to not show pulsing, flickering, or other artifacts during VRR gaming. See https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/g-sync-monitors/specs/ for the list of GSYNC Compatible displays. G-SYNC on G-SYNC Compatible displays is supported only with NVIDIA Pascal and later GPU architectures. Only single displays are currently supported; multiple monitors can be connected but no more than one display should have G-SYNC enabled.
NVIDIA just can't bring itself to write the term FreeSync, but we get it -- it's a competitive thing. What that being said, although there are just a dozen FreeSync monitors that have been properly validated by NVIDIA, you can still hook up any FreeSync monitor to a Pascal- or Turing-based GeForce card and enable the option within the GeForce control panel. However, NVIDIA wars that "it may work, it may work partly, or it may not work at all."
You can download the new GeForce Game Ready 417.71 WHQL Drivers right here.
