What is AMD FreeSync?

If you've ever played a game without V-Sync on a pretty regular or old monitor, you might have seen some ugly lines or tears across the display for seemingly no reason. That's called screen tearing and for many years gamers had to either deal with it or enable laggy V-Sync to fix it. However, that's largely a thing of the past now thanks in no small part to AMD's FreeSync anti-screen tearing technology. It's present on some of the best gaming monitors you can buy, and there are several good reasons for that. Here's everything you need to know.

FreeSync and how it fixes screen tearing

Screen tearing is what happens with the refresh rate of your monitor isn't exactly the same as the framerate of the game you're playing, the movie you're watching, or any other sort of animated content. To the naked eye, it's a really ugly cut across your display that makes it look like it's cut in half, but there's a little more to it than that. What's really happening is that your monitor is showing you two incomplete frames at once.

Here's how it happens. If your monitor refreshes its display or shows you a new image every 10 milliseconds while your game is pumping out a new frame every 6.67 milliseconds, that's obviously a completely different amount of time for each. The game is the first to get a new image completed, but the monitor still has 3.33 milliseconds to go, so the game starts making the next frame. 3.33 milliseconds later, the display is finally ready to show a new image, but it's caught the game in the middle of making a new frame. The end result is that the top half of the screen has half of the latest frame, and the bottom half has the previous frame.

The only real way to get around this is to sync the refresh rate to the framerate (also called variable refresh rate or VRR), and this is exactly what FreeSync does, just like Nvidia's competing G-Sync. However, it can only do this within a certain range of framerates and refresh rates. Obviously, framerates above the refresh rate of a FreeSync monitor will break VRR, but going too low (usually around 30Hz or FPS) will also stop VRR from working. Many monitors come with low framerate compensation (or LFC) to prevent a low framerate from breaking FreeSync, however.

For gamers who want the highest framerate possible in esports titles like Apex Legends, it's hard to utilize FreeSync because of that limit on the refresh rate and framerate. The fastest gaming monitor with FreeSync has a refresh rate of 360Hz, while many fast-paced games demand framerates of 500 FPS or more. Your only real options are to settle for a lower framerate or ditch FreeSync, though thankfully a FreeSync monitor won't force you to cap your framerate, you can just disable FreeSync and use your display as if it didn't have it.

FreeSync also has the distinction of being supported on not just PC, but consoles too. The Xbox One was the first console to add support for FreeSync, and the latest Xbox Series X/S also support it. While the Playstation 4 never got an update that added FreeSync support and probably never will, the Playstation 5 does support it.

The different versions of FreeSync

While FreeSync is ostensibly made by AMD, it's actually based on a standard technology created by VESA (the company behind VESA mounts and DisplayPort) called Adaptive Sync. You might be wondering what AMD is bringing to the table with FreeSync, but the truth is that technologically, FreeSync isn't different at all from Adaptive Sync, nor is it any different from G-Sync Compatible, which is also based on Adaptive Sync. FreeSync is really just a brand that tells you a monitor is made for gaming.

Today, FreeSync comes in three different flavors: FreeSync, FreeSync Premium, and FreeSync Premium Pro. Rather than differing in respect to anti-screen tearing quality, these different variants are essentially certifications for monitors that meet certain requirements by AMD, kind of like how Nvidia will validate certain monitors as G-Sync Compatible if they have certain specifications (and also pay Nvidia). AMD also presumably charges for the FreeSync brand, but it's probably not that much.

In the above table, you can see how each technology differs. To be clear, the features of the higher tiers of FreeSync do not mean lower tiers can never have those features, and this mostly applies to regular FreeSync. FreeSync Premium and Premium Pro were introduced in 2020 and FreeSync was launched in 2015, so there have been lots of FreeSync monitors that on paper would have been Premium or Premium Pro if they had launched later. Additionally, it's possible a monitor might be advertised as regular FreeSync but could meet the minimum specs for higher tiers.

Realistically, FreeSync Premium and Premium Pro are just certifications, kind of like Nintendo's seal of approval, which never prevented bad games from getting released. While AMD's thumbs up makes it more likely a monitor is good, ultimately you should always check with reviewers to see if a monitor is good, whether it has the FreeSync branding or not.

FreeSync compatibility and how to enable it

All versions of FreeSync are compatible with all graphics cards that support Adaptive Sync, which is basically any made within the past decade. However, depending on your GPU the process of enabling FreeSync will differ. Here's how you go about enabling FreeSync for AMD, Nvidia, and Intel cards.

If you own an AMD graphics card, open AMD Software, click the Gaming tab, then click the Display secondary tab, and then find the setting that says AMD FreeSync.

If you own an Nvidia GPU, then open up Nvidia Control Panel, look on the left part of the window, and find where it says Set up G-SYNC. Click on that, then check the box that says Enable G-SYNC, G-SYNC Compatible, and you should have G-Sync enabled. You might get a message that your display is not "validated" if it's not also a G-Sync Compatible monitor, but you can ignore this message.

Owners of Intel GPUs can enable FreeSync by opening up the Windows settings, going to the Display settings, then clicking on Graphics settings, and then finding the option to enable Variable refresh rate. It's also possible to enable it in Intel Graphics Command Center; select Preferences, then Global Settings, and then there should be an option called Adaptive Sync.

One of AMD's few wins against Nvidia

The history of FreeSync and Adaptive Sync is one of the few moments where AMD got to influence the direction of the PC gaming market against Nvidia's wishes. At first, FreeSync wasn't super successful since AMD's GPUs generally weren't very compelling, and also because a few high profile reviews of FreeSync monitors mistakenly attributed poorer quality on the first FreeSync displays to FreeSync itself rather than the panel used. However, today it's pretty clear that FreeSync, Adaptive Sync, and G-Sync Compatible are far more popular than the original G-Sync FPGA-driven solution.

It's really no wonder why FreeSync got so popular: people hate spending more money for no reason. G-Sync monitors were almost always made for higher-end builds and users with big wallets, and the cheapest G-Sync displays were about $300 with specs you'd see on a typical $200 monitor. FreeSync on the other hand commanded no premium and was just better for most people. Ultimately, Nvidia's brand couldn't beat the appeal of saving lots of money and having way more options in the budget and midrange segments.