Gadgetory

welcome back to hard Ron box feeling a bit sick this week but that's not going to stop me from making content for you guys last week I explained everything you need to know about free sync to AMD's flagship monitor technology for the next generation of high-end HDR gaming displays well in today's video I'll be giving my impressions of actually using one of these monitors for some gaming and whether it's worth buying a free sink to monitor right now the monitor I've been using to test for eating - is the Samsung c49 1890 a stupidly wide 49 inch double 1080p display with a total resolution of 3840 by 1080 it's curved with an 1800 hour curvature uses VA technology and it's certified for display HDR 600 that means it sports up to 600 nits of peak brightness covers at least 90% of the DCI p3 gamut and has basic local dimming now while this panel doesn't support the full display HDR 1000 with a thousand nits of peak brightness for the optimal HDR experience the Samsung chg 90 does provide more than just an entry-level HDR experience there are plenty of supposedly HDR capable panels that cannot push their brightness about 400 nits and do not support a wider than srgb gama but samsung's latest quantum dot monitors at least do provide higher brightness and a wider gamut than basic SDR displays unfortunately the CH g 90 does not support free sync - out of the box despite this feature being advertised on their website instead to get free sync to working I needed to download and install a firmware update for the monitor which isn't a great experience from a premium panel considering this display was released well after AMD announced routing 2 at the start of 2017 it really shouldn't require a firmware updates to support the technology there will likely be many cases where people purchase this monitor they're hooking up to their PC without performing any firmware updates and just assume freesync 2 is working as intended the fact you might need to upgrade the firmware is not well advertised on samsung's website it's hidden in a footnote at the bottom of the page and upgrading a monitors firmware isn't exactly a common practice if you by a supported Samsung quantum monitor make sure it's running the latest firmware that supports free sync - if it is running the right firmware the information tab in the on-screen display will show a free sync - logo and AMD's graphics driver and software utility exacerbate this issue with free sync to display firmware while Radeon Settings does indicate when your GPU is hooked up to a free sync display it does not distinguish between free sync and free sync - there is no way to tell within Radeon settings or any part of Windows that your system is attached to a free sync to display so there's no way to check if loosing to is working whether your monitor actually supports racing - or whether your monitor has free sync to enabled in fact there was no change to the way Randi on settings' indicated fruit sing support after i upgraded my monitor to the free sync through supporting firmware and indicator in Radeon settings that lets you know when you are connected to a free sync to monitor would go a long way to ending this sort of confusion particularly when some monitors require a firmware update to enable this feature sad is freezing to actually work and how do you set up well provided free sync is enabled in Radeon settings and in the monitors on the screen display and both are enabled by default it should be ready to go there is no magic toggle to get everything working and no real configuration options instead the key features are either permanently enabled like low latency and low framerate compensation or ready to be used when required like HDR using the HDR capabilities of free sync to does require you to enable HDR when you want to use it in the case of Windows 10 desktop applications this means going into the settings menu heading into the display settings and enabling HDR and WCG this which is the Windows desktop environment to an HDR environment and any apps that support HDR can pass their HDR map data straight to the monitor through HDR 10 for standard SDR apps which currently are most Windows apps we news 10 attempts at OMAP the SDR colors and brightness to HDR as it can automatically switch modes on the fly while Windows 10 has been improving its HDR support with each major windows update it's still not at a point where SDR is mapped correctly to HDR with HDR and WCG enabled SDI apps look washed out brightness is lacking some apps like chrome are straight-up broken in the HDR mode there is this slider within windows for changing the base brightness for SDR content however with my Samsung Tess Mara the maximum supported brightness for SDR in this mode is around 119 s which is well below the monitors maximum 315 it's when HDR and WCG are disabled now 119 it's of brightness is probably fine for a lot of users but it's a bit strange that the slider does not correspond to the full brightness range of the monitor it's also a different controller that displays on the screen brightness control if the - brightness is set to less than a hundred you get less than 119 it's when displaying SDR content if this all sounds confusing to you that's because it is in fact the whole Windows desktop extra implementation is a bit of a mess and if you can believe it earlier versions of Windows 10 were even worse in this department this is the case with not just free sync to monitors but all HTML hooked up to Windows 10 pcs at the moment my advice is to disable HDI WCG when using the Windows 10 desktop and only enable it when do you want to run an HDR app because that way you get the best SDR experience in the vast majority of apps that currently don't support HDR so how about games surely this is the area where free sync to Myers and HDR really shines right well it depends I tried a range of games that currently support HDR windows and I was largely disappointed with the results HJ implementations differ from game to game it seems that right now a lot of game developers have no idea how to correctly tone map their games for HDR the worst of the lot at EAS games Mass Effect Andromeda zhj implementation was famously shamed when HG our monitors were first shown off but the curse of poor HDR continues into battlefield 1 and the newest Star Wars Battlefront 2 both games exhibit washed out colors in the HDR mode that looks far worse than the SDR presentation compounded by a general dark tone to the image and weak use of HDR spectacular bright highlights in all three of es newer games that support HDR there is no reason whatsoever to enable HDR as it looks so much better in this and an SDR mode I'm not sure why these games look so bad because reports seemed to suggest EA titles also look bad on TVs with better hgr support and also on consoles I think there is something fundamentally broken with the way EA's frostbite engine manages HDR and I hope it can be resolved for upcoming games hitman is one of the older games to support HDR and it too does not manage hjr well while the presentation isn't as washed out as with EA's titles colors are still dull and the image in general is too dark with little if any use of impressive highlights the idea of HJ is to add to the color gamut and increase the range of brightness is used but in hitman it just seems like everything has become darker and less intense again this is a game if you play in the SDR mode Assassin's Creed origins has an interesting HJ implementation as it allows you to modify the brightness ranges to match the exact specifications of your display I'm torn as to whether the game looks better in the HDR or SDR modes HDR appears to have better highlights and a wide range of colors during the day but suffers from a strange lack of depth at night which oddly makes night scenes feel less like they are actually at night the SDR mode looks better during these night periods and is perhaps slightly behind the HDR presentation during the day on a display with full array local dimming which I believe this Samsung monitor does not have I think Assassin's Creed origins will look better but it's not the best HJ implementation I've seen the best game for HDR by far is Far Cry 5 MD tells me this is the first game that will support free sync to SG PU side tone mapping in the coming weeks although right now the game does not support this HDR pipeline instead as with most HDR games Far Cry 5 uses HDR 10 that is passed on to the display for further tone mapping unlike most other games though Far Cry 5s hgr 10 is actually quite good the color gamut is clearly expanded to reduce more vivid colors and we're not getting the same washed-out look as many other HDR titles bright highlights truly are brighter in the HDR mode with great dynamic range and in general this is one of the few tiles that look substantially better in the HDR mode so nice work Ubisoft Middle Earth shadow of war is another game with a decent HR implementation when HDR is enabled this game utilizes a noticeably wider range of colors and highlights are brighter again there is no issue with dark colors or a washed out presentation which allows the HDR mode to improve on the SDR presentation in basically every way how you enable HJ in these games though isn't always the same most of the titles have a built-in HDR switch that overrides the windows HDR and WCG setting so you can leave the desktop as SDA and merely enable Hg in the games you want to play in the HDR mode hitman is an interesting case where it has an HDR switch in the game settings but will display a black screen if the windows actually a switch is also enabled shadow of War though has no HDR switch at all instead to throw into the windows HDR and WCG setting which is annoying as you have to switch between HDR and SDR manually to get the optimal HDR experience in the game but a decent SDR experience on the desktop while the HDR experience in a lot of games right now is pretty bad and actually a lot worse than the basic SDR presentation I think there is reason to be optimistic about the future of HDR gaming on PC some more recent games like Far Cry 5 and shadow of war have pretty decent HDR implementations right now which improve upon the SDR mode in noticeable ways while many of the games they're poor HDR implementations are somewhat older as the HDR ecosystem matures we should see more Far Cry fires and fewer Mass Effect and dramatists in terms of the HJ implementation we're also not at the stage where any games use free sync to use GPU side tone mapping as I mentioned before far cry 5 will be the first to do so in coming weeks with AMD claiming more games scheduled for release later this year will include free sync to support right out of the box you'll be interesting to see how GPU side tone mapping turns out but it definitely has the scope to improve the HJ implementation for PC games however as it stands right now I see little reason to buy a free sync to monitor until more games include decent HDR it's just to hit or miss and mostly misses to be worth a significant investment into a first generation precinct to HDR monitor this isn't the sort of technology to become an early adopter in at the moment as in the year we should have a wider range of HDR monitors to choose from potentially with better support for HDR through higher brightness levels full array local dimming and wider gamut by then we should also have a better look at the HDR game ecosystem hopefully with more games that support decent HJ implementations that's not to say you should avoid these Samsung quantum dots racing 2 monitors in fact they're pretty good as far as gaming monitors go just don't buy them specifically for their HDR capabilities or you might find yourself a bit disappointed right now that's it for this look at freesync 2 an HDR gaming right now I'm hoping to revisit this topic soon once we have g-sync hgl on the market and more HDR modernist to look at so subscribe to ensure you don't miss that content consider supporting us on patreon I'm gonna go have a rest and recover from this horrible flu and I'll catch you in the next one you