 This is a very special technology preview and while I will be doing an unboxing, the monitor inside this box is an ASUS VG248-QE that has been modified to have its scaler replaced by an Nvidia G-Sync module. It is not a finished product and therefore we won't be evaluating the merits of this monitor specifically, but rather the technology in general. So without getting too technical and boring here, let's talk about what G-Sync is and why we need it. A graphics card renders each frame of your game as fast as it possibly can, then makes it available to your monitor. Monitors typically by contrast operate on fixed refresh intervals. They will grab whatever is available to them at the exact time that they are ready to refresh. In a perfect world, the video card would render exactly one frame just before the monitor was ready for each refresh and we'd see beautiful, smooth animation. The problem is that different frames in games can be rendered in different amounts of time. Looking at the floor for example is much less demanding than looking at a suddenly exploding vehicle. That means that in the real world, the frame rate output by your graphics card doesn't match the refresh rate of your monitor. V-Sync or vertical sync forces the graphics card to wait around for the monitor to be ready before it sends a rendered frame. With frames being delivered at even intervals, animation appears much smoother even if the frame rate isn't that great. See 24 frame per second movies as an example. This is great until something demanding comes on screen and the frame rate drops below the refresh rate of the monitor. In most cases, this will be 60 hertz. When that happens, one image will stay on screen for two whole monitor refreshes. This is perceived as a stutter in the animation. On top of that, V-Sync also introduces additional input lag, meaning that the delay between when you move your mouse and when the image on screen reflects your movement is increased. Some game engines handle this better than others, but for example, I just plain couldn't play Left 4 Dead with V-Sync on. It was just too laggy. So why not just turn V-Sync off? Well, then we end up with a visual anomaly called tearing. The GPU outputs a frame as soon as it's done, but if the monitor is in the middle of drawing an image on the screen already, we'll end up with multiple different frames on the screen at the same time. This manifests as vertical objects being out of alignment. In extreme examples like this one, you can actually see more than two frames on screen at the same time. In practice, this is extremely distracting to look at, but I, like many gamers out there, have simply learned to suck it up because I'd rather get screen updates as soon as they're available and have it look stupid rather than be looking at something pretty on my screen that happened a frame ago. Now on to this guy, G-Sync. It allows your monitor to wait for your graphics card to be ready to deliver a new frame and update itself at that exact moment. This eliminates the lag and stuttering associated with V-Sync on and low frame rates, and it eliminates the tearing associated with V-Sync off and high frame rates because we never need to output multiple frames to the screen during a single refresh. All right, so it sounds magical. What do I need? You'll need a G-Sync compatible graphics card, a GTX 650 Ti booster higher, has to be Kepler based until Maxwell launches next year. You'll need a G-Sync monitor like this one with the G-Sync module built in, although there may be some upgrades available for this particular model later on, depending what happens. You'll also need a DisplayPort connection on your graphics card, a DisplayPort cable, and you'll need to use the DisplayPort input on your monitor. All right, Linus, so you're asking for a pretty big investment here. Show me what it can do. Well, that's a problem. I can't really show you because in order to experience the smoothness of G-Sync, every part of the chain needs to support it. If I were to use a capture card or take a high speed video of G-Sync running, my capture card or camera would operate at exactly 60 FPS. Then it would be played back on your 60 hertz monitor, and you'd be able to see that there's no tearing, but you'd see frame doubling during performance dips as if we were just recording gameplay with regular V-Sync on. I could just record footage of games running with no tearing, but that's only part of the experience. You have to try it to really understand it. I'm hoping to work with NVIDIA to do a live meetup where viewers can come and try G-Sync for themselves, but I think that's still a little ways off. Speaking of understanding G-Sync, there are some misconceptions about the technology that I would like to clear up, things you don't even have to be there in person to understand. So number one is that other than this particular model, which has a G-Sync module DIY upgrade coming, aftermarket modding of monitors to add the functionality is extremely improbable. It would require extensive modifications to the monitor's internals. Someone figures it out, great, but I wouldn't count on it. Number two, ASUS does not have any kind of exclusivity on G-Sync in 2014. I'm not really sure where this came from. Number three, G-Sync will work on any panel size, TVs, monitors, you name it. It's a matter of time before we even start to see it on VR devices and phones and whatnot, like kind of mobile devices and stuff like that. Number four, G-Sync will work with light boost compatible monitors or with non-light boost compatible monitors. At this time, G-Sync and the low persistence mode that folks have been running on light boost monitors don't work at the same time, but that may change in the future. Number five, G-Sync will work on 60 hertz, 120 hertz, or whatever hertz panels. The fixed refresh rate of the monitor simply becomes the maximum refresh rate. Number five, or six, not sure. G-Sync will work with any panel resolution. The sample here is 1080p, but there's no reason G-Sync couldn't work at 1440p or even 4K. I've also had quite a few folks ask about G-Sync on AMD, and there are many conflicting reports, but all I really have to say right now is that there's no real evidence that Nvidia is planning to provide a license to AMD in any way, shape, or form. Last one is what about SLI and surround? SLI will work just fine in G-Sync. The MasterCard that is plugged into your display will dictate what refresh rate the monitor should run at, and as for surround, at this time, it should be just fine if you have three matching monitors, although there may be some driver reconfiguration that may enable you to have G-Sync here and not G-Sync there, but that's kind of up in the air at the moment. So you've got most of the information now. Let's take a look at why I believe this will be extremely hard for Nvidia to sell. One day, we're going to look back at non-G-Sync monitors and we're going to laugh. Going back to tearing, stuttering, and lag will feel like ancient technology, but with that said, G-Sync is going to be a tough sell for Nvidia because we're all used to living without it. Let's look at another recent paradigm-shifting change in PC hardware, solid-state drives. At least with an SSD, you can benchmark them versus a hard drive and show people the numbers, but even then, many insisted, well, I don't mind waiting another two seconds, blah, blah, blah, it's expensive, who cares? But ask yourself this, if you've gone SSD in the last couple of years, in fact, leave a comment on the video and tell me about this, how hard is it when you have to go back and use a hard drive based system now, particularly when it's not on a fresh OS and you have to do some real work on it? That is how we're all going to feel about G-Sync in a while. So I'd actually like to take a moment here to let Luke give his thoughts on G-Sync so you can hear more than just my opinion. The fact that we had one in-house and we were able to try it was awesome. When I finally got my hands on G-Sync, the first thing I did was grab a copy of Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag and run around the Abstergo hallways because in those hallways, I found some of the worst tearing I've ever seen. And I noticed with G-Sync, no tearing, also no mouse input lag, which is a big thing because with G-Sync, you're not compromising anything for the awesomeness of G-Sync. And I find that to be the biggest deal with G-Sync. I don't think a bunch of people are going to run out and get this, but I think in the future it's going to be really nice because you can get all the awesomeness of these technologies, but you don't have to sacrifice lag, which is a big reason why a lot of people don't run it. So let's be clear, guys. This is just a tech preview. It's not a full review, but there are still some conclusions that we can draw. So having tried it myself outside of Nvidia's conference controlled environment and having talked to Luke about it off camera, I think our feelings about it are fairly similar. I don't think everyone will or even necessarily should rush out and buy all the necessary components on the day they're available and completely replace perfectly good hardware. Some of the hardcore guys will, and that's cool. You're going to have a better gaming experience, but I think that the more likely scenario is that the next time you're at a natural upgrade point for your monitor or your graphics card, you're going to want to carefully consider G-Sync capability when you're making your purchasing decision. At this point, another very important conclusion is that I cannot recommend, while I can't recommend a monitor to buy, I can recommend what not to buy. Don't buy anything until quarter one next year when we have a clearer idea of what will or what won't be available with G-Sync, because the most important thing here is to make sure that you're making an educated decision. And right now, we just don't quite know enough. So stay tuned, guys. We're going to definitely have more content on this. We're going to be covering it at CES. We're going to be covering it once there's retail availability of the proper finished hardware. And as always, guys, like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, leave a comment to let me know how you felt about it. And as always, don't forget to subscribe.