What is the VRR and why is it so important that it reaches PS5. Yesterday we brought you the news that Sony is working against the clock to have the long-awaited update ready to equip its console, the PS5, and also several of its high-end Smart TVs with the functionality most desired by players: the VRR. The information came from audiovisual expert Vincent Teohso it seems completely legit.
What is VRR and why is it so important that it reaches PS5
Today we are going to leave you a short guide on what the VRR is, the existing types of VRR (current), differences, virtues and problems. Because yes, there are three types of VRR technology in force, which are the following:
- VRR Standard (HDMI 2.1)
- NVIDIA G Sync
- AMD FreeSync
The truth is, before the arrival of HDMI 2.1these technologies did present notable differences between them, with their pros and cons that we will not go into so as not to make this guide longer, by having a dedicated hardware chip both in the graphics -which had to be compatible- and in the monitor.
The arrival of the HDMI 2.1 standard meant the end of all that and the standardization of VRR technology as long as the TV itself and the console or PC have a real HDMI 2.1 port (40/48 Gbps). It is what is known as VRR Legacythat is, the standard of this generation.
Yes, perhaps our TV, in addition to this one, also supports G-Sync or AMD Freesync technology, but in practice both will use the standardized HDMI 2.1 protocol and since they do not have dedicated chips exclusively, they will be exactly the same as the VRR Legacy. Yes, all three VRRs are exactly the same.
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How VRR technology works
Basically for avoid seeing fps drops (or frames per second, i.e. the number of «images that the console or graph can draw for each second«), jerks, tearing -the screen is “split”- and other undesirable effects, It is necessary that those fps generated by the console match the Hz («number of times the television shows us the images generated by the console, for every second«) to which the TV is set.
And that is the problem, that until the arrival of the VRR, the Hz of the panel were always static. That is, if we put it at 60 Hz, it would always show us 60 times per second what came from the console. And if you get 28 fps? because we would see constant pulls when not coinciding or being a multiple. And so the VRR was born.
With that need in mind, the industry began to work on the old VRR methods that we have mentioned above, such as a way of “forcing” monitors and televisions to modulate their Hz depending on the fps that will come from the console or graphicscoinciding exactly (or being multiples, which would also work).
In this generation, the problem is that the VRR officially only works in the range between 40 and 120 fps/Hz…well, not quite. One of the most important functions of “dedicated” VRRs such as G-Sync or AMD Freesync is the so-called LFC or Low Framerate Compensate. Technically, the normal VRR can only act in a range between 40 and 120 Hz as we tell you.
This means that if in our game there is a point drop in frames to 43, the VRR will act by instantly setting the Hz (refresh) of the television to 43 (or to 86, which is a multiple), causing us not to see that drop. But what happens if the drop is at 34 fps for example, being outside the range of action of the VRR? That’s where LFC technology comes into play.
What LFC technology does, in short, is to show us duplicate frames (it does not create new frames, it simply shows us repeated ones that are already generated by the console). In our previous example, the drop to 34 fps would double the frames to 68, thus entering the VRR operating range and synchronizing at 68 Hz with the panel. This LFC is also built into the VRR of HDMI 2.1, thus being identical to the other two types and working like this, in a real range of 20 to 120 fps/Hz..
Do you have weak points? Sure, though not really too many. The only big weak point of it is the flicker. This annoying defect consists of a flicker generated -normally- in gray scenes or loading menus, due to an overexertion of the pixels of the panel by the VRR. At the moment, there is no solution, although it is likely to be solved in 2022 through hardware on new generation TVs. However, the pros far outweigh the cons and it is truly revolutionary technology for gamers.
