Open letter yo AMD Staff - FreeSync and my misconceptions

[velnias]

First: let me apologize if this sounds abrasive. That is not my intent. That said, let me just get into it - at first this will seem off-topic, but I will correlate it later in the post and tie it all together. Basically what I want to do is get a message to AMD's marketing team and Dave Bauman. I wasn't aware until recently that he posts here. Maybe he'll see this. And take action.

Basically, I have severe issues with AMD's marketing being outright liars and misleading me time and time again. Again, please bear with me - I've been a faithful ATI and AMD consumer until recently, from the 9700 pro up to 7970 crossfire. That is when I snapped and decided that I had enough with AMD. Let's begin with where AMD has misled me time and time again. I used 5870 crossfire in 2010, which had tearing in eyefinity configurations. I submitted a ticket to AMD and their answer, to fix this problem, was to get a MST hub. Only problem? MST hubs weren't on the market - this was in 2010. So I submitted multiple tickets to them over many months. Their answer? "It's coming really soon, any month now!". Guess what. MST hubs didn't arrive until 2013, and they only arrived in European markets in FALL 2013. It was not available for purchase from 2010-2013, and was never available in the USA, despite AMD telling me that it was coming really soon.

What's funny though is that EVGA, an nvidia vendor, just released a MST hub in December 2013. I think. I find that funny and ironic for some reason.

Despite all of this I still bought a 6970 and 7970CF. Why? I was stupid I guess. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you. 7970 Crossfire. WOW. To this day I cannot believe the level of incompetence that AMD's software team has. How many promises did they make to me? Of which , fewer than 5% of those promises were delivered.

Microstutter and tearing on the 7970 CF configuration. Wow. As if it weren't bad enough that it was an issue on the 5870CF, it was still an issue on the 7970CF. I was promised eyefinity-CF fixes. Only that problem has existed 3+ years. STILL EXISTS on 280x and 79xx or prior cards. But their marketing told me, always, their fixes were imminent. Guess what. They lied to me numerous times. Every time I had an issue, I submitted bug reports to AMD. Guess how many of those issues got fixed? Well you see CF+ eyefinity/dx9 is STILL not fixed. 3 years later. What about the other issues? They fixed Witcher 2 crashing in crossfire. AFTER FIVE MONTHS. They told me to get a MST hub with my 5870s in 2010. Only MST hubs didn't exist until 2013. Yawn. I could go on and on with this forever.

Oh. HD3D? My samsung HD3D compatible monitor? Worthless. HD3D is barely supported and the driver for it HAS TO BE PAID FOR through Tri-Def. I cannot believe this happened. AMD basically gave everyone interested in HD3D the middle finger, although at this point I'm not surprised.

So now you're going to ask me, what's the correlation between this and free-sync? I'll tell you right now. I learned that what AMD's marketing/PR mouthpieces do, and what they SAY, are two different things. Essentially, AMD cannot be trusted. So it was with great amusement that I was greeted with news about AMD's "free" free-sync. I saw the news at Anandtech. I knew something was up. I tell myself, i'll just wait and see what's going on here, because I suspected it was marketing fluff.

Guess what. I was right.

Here are the facts:

1) AMD's freesync demo only worked because their laptops used the eDP interface. eDP is not used in desktop monitors.
2) AMD's freesync requires displayport 1.3. Their GPUs do not support DP 1.3. DP 1.3 is not even finalized yet, and probably won't be until this summer or fall of 2014.
3) AMD's freesync requires a controller in the monitor that is variable refresh aware. This is NO DIFFERENT THAN g-sync which has a module for the SAME REASON. AMD's marketing lied and told you it was free.
4) Based on #3: new monitor is not free. new controller is not free. This ignores the fact that DP 1.3 monitors will not be on market for all of 2014 in all likelihood.
5) Freesync is marketing type designed to take attention away from g-sync.
6) Lastly, g-sync was not announced until it was DONE. nvidia has monitor partners READY. G-sync monitors are ready. The release time frame is set. Nvidia has a plan to get it to market.
7) Meanwhile, AMD's lying, I mean, marketing department has zero monitor partners. They don't have a release time frame. They have no plan to market.



I know better now, though - fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. Until AMD has a fundamental change in their marketing and engineering philosophy, i'll stick with nvidia. I don't like the fact that nvidia is cocky. I don't like the fact that they charge too much. But i'll tell you what. I don't particularly like nvidia at all. Their CEO is a cocky son of a...fill in the blank. But they never lied to me. Never misled me. They've never promised something to consumers that wasn't delivered upon. That's the key difference between AMD and nvidia - delivering on what they say. What AMD says and does are two different things.

With all due respect, Dave, please fire 80% of your marketing staff and replace that budget with engineers for both software and hardware. IMO, your software engineers are incompetent. I could name so many driver issues that I had with 5870 CF and 7970CF. It truly was pathetic. Meanwhile, you have stealth marketers at Anandtech who "hide" undercover and try to sell AMD cards. One is an admitted AMD employee, who uses the handle "sushiwarrior". This is yet another tasteless marketing grab, in addition to the AMD "influencer" program which has a top 100 AMD shill ranking board which ranks AMD shills according to how much they've deceived various users across forums. Anandtech being a prime example of just that - tons of AMD shills everywhere. Can't get an honest conversation in, because i'll just be told a lie from some AMD shill. You can google "AMD influencer" to see this stuff, it's quite hilarious. Does nvidia do the same thing? Probably, but I haven't seen egregious examples of nvidia shills trying to sell me crap in internet forums. Whereas with AMD it's quite obvious.

Please ditch your entire marketing department. Like I said. Replace that budget with hardware and software engineers that can deliver products instead of marketing lies. Free-sync isn't free since new monitor isn't free, and variable refresh aware control board isn't free. Let's face it. Free-sync probably won't happen in 2014 either. Thats my opinion, but please prove me wrong.

 

[velnias]

Once again. Obviously I have been frustrated as a long time ATI/AMD consumer and that shows here, but that isn't my main intent. I just want to get this message to someone that can make a difference. Someone with influence. Maybe Dave B. is that person. I truly don't mean any disrespect. But, keep in mind, expressing these thoughts to a huge corporation is not an easy thing to do as there are so many middle-men involved that basically do not care.

I want AMD to be what ATI once was back in the day. I loved ATI back during the 9700 pro days. Because they delivered every time without marketing fluff. Didn't have bugs that lasted for years that i'm aware of, I certainly did not have problems.

IMO. Your marketing team needs a serious re-evaluation. Your software engineers need more people. Your hardware engineers, I won't say too much on that as the hardware is always great. I will point out that the reference 290X design left a lot to be desired in terms of noise, so perhaps that is something that should have been out more thoroughly.

So that's my piece. To me it is a broken trust issue. Like the girlfriend that you find out cheated on you. Do you ever trust her again? Probably not. AMD through having ongoing issues like this, and having deceptive marketing, that creates trust issues between your corporation and consumers. I hope you can take this message and do something constructive about it. Make AMD into the greatness that ATI was during the 9700 era.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Please distinguish between a technology demonstration and "Marketing". 'Project FreeSync' (as this is the codename) demo's were conducted by Raja Koduri, Corporate Vice President of Visual Computing Engineering, because it was a technology discussion.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Wow that's a lot of text. I read the title. Who cares what they call it? If you write a letter that long over every piece of misleading marketing I can't imagine you have a lot of free time.

 

[velnias]

Please distinguish between a technology demonstration and "Marketing". 'Project FreeSync' (as this is the codename) demo's were conducted by Raja Koduri, Corporate Vice President of Visual Computing Engineering, because it was a technology discussion.

I see. Well. Perhaps that should have been made more clear from the outset. Numerous websites reported on this technology demonstration and gave users the impression that a free g-sync alternative was on the horizon and would be coming soon. I don't think that is the case. At least, not in the same time frame as g-sync.

I still have an issue with the term "free-sync". If your term free-sync indicates free, then G-sync is free as well. The term is disingenuous, IMO, as free-sync requires a variable refresh aware control board in a monitor just as g-sync does. So using that line of though, if free-sync is "free" then g-sync is free. Obviously that is not the case for either technology. They both require costs in the same areas - a new monitor with a variable refresh control board. How is that free? The entire term was derived most likely by a marketer, and it isn't based on truth. Just IMO.

 

[Gipsel]

Okay.

Here are the facts:

1) AMD's freesync demo only worked because their laptops used the eDP interface. eDP is not used in desktop monitors.

The freesync demo worked, because the panel in that notebook could handle variable vblank intervals. That is not mandatory, also not with eDP. Desktop monitors can support it in a similar way.

2) AMD's freesync requires displayport 1.3. Their GPUs do not support DP 1.3. DP 1.3 is not even finalized yet, and probably won't be until this summer or fall of 2014.

Not true. Support of variable length vblanks is not necessarily tied to DP1.3.

3) AMD's freesync requires a controller in the monitor that is variable refresh aware. This is NO DIFFERENT THAN g-sync which has a module for the SAME REASON. AMD's marketing lied and told you it was free.

You could turn this also around. NVidia just made a lot of marketing fuzz about some relatively simple feature which is specified already for 5 years in the mobile space and try to brand and vendor lock this feature on the desktop (to drive up prices?). The GSync module basically duplicates the monitor's electronics for no sane reason as the variable vblank support can be implemented for no significant incremental cost in the monitor electronics itself.

4) Based on #3: new monitor is not free. new controller is not free. This ignores the fact that DP 1.3 monitors will not be on market for all of 2014 in all likelihood.

There are probably a few compatible monitors (with DP 1.2, not 1.3) already out there. And again, DP 1.3 is not strictly required for that feature.

5) Freesync is marketing type designed to take attention away from g-sync.

Again, you can turn this around as with 3).

6) Lastly, g-sync was not announced until it was DONE. nvidia has monitor partners READY. G-sync monitors are ready. The release time frame is set. Nvidia has a plan to get it to market.

As the upgrade module for that Asus monitor (the only one available today) contains a middle class FPGA (which alone cost more than 800$ if you want to buy it as a consumer) and not an ASIC, this very much appears to be still in the prototype stage, even when it is already marketed to end users. There is no way this is a cost efficient solution right now. Furthermore, when I read it correctly in the pcper test, the module doesn't fit too well in, so it's also not a very polished version.

7) Meanwhile, AMD's lying, I mean, marketing department has zero monitor partners. They don't have a release time frame. They have no plan to market.

And you know this because you work there? You are venting pure assumptions here. And bad ones I would suspect. I would expect that AMD is talking to panel and scaler manufacturers behind the curtain, doing the leg work to convince the people so there will be a somewhat broader uptake of the tech. After all, monitor electronics is not AMD's business. The task is to ensure compatibility of a nice feature between GPUs (which obviously support the tech already) and monitors produced by other companies.

 

[Alexko]

I see. Well. Perhaps that should have been made more clear from the outset. Numerous websites reported on this technology demonstration and gave users the impression that a free g-sync alternative was on the horizon and would be coming soon. I don't think that is the case. At least, not in the same time frame as g-sync.

I still have an issue with the term "free-sync". If your term free-sync indicates free, then G-sync is free as well. The term is disingenuous, IMO, as free-sync requires a variable refresh aware control board in a monitor just as g-sync does. So using that line of though, if free-sync is "free" then g-sync is free. Obviously that is not the case for either technology. They both require costs in the same areas - a new monitor with a variable refresh control board. How is that free? The entire term was derived most likely by a marketer, and it isn't based on truth. Just IMO.

"FreeSync" is free as in "free country" if not "free beer".

At some point in the future, most monitors and graphics cards will support it, and then it will just be free in the sense that it won't require any additional cost. And it's pretty much free in laptops already.

 

[Grall]

OP, I think you're getting unnecessarily hung up on the word "free" in "freesynch", it's not implying that a new monitor is going to be free of charge or anything like that, of course...

 

[DavidGraham]

.
The freesync demo worked, because the panel in that notebook could handle variable vblank intervals. That is not mandatory, also not with eDP. Desktop monitors can support it in a similar way.

Notebooks don't have scalers, or at least they can bypass it, that can't be done on desktops.

The GSync module basically duplicates the monitor's electronics for no sane reason as the variable vblank support can be implemented for no significant incremental cost in the monitor electronics itself.

This is only true with relation to the prototype kits, they are prototypes after all, to be added to existing lackluster monitors. True G.Sync monitors will only have one scaler and that's the G.Sync module.

 

[Gipsel]

Notebooks don't have scalers, or at least they can bypass it, that can't be done on desktops.

Of course it can be done. Why not?

This is only true with relation to the prototype kits, they are prototypes after all, to be added to existing lackluster monitors.

It is done for the currently available (and marketed to consumers) versions. So you agree that they have more or less prototype status and can't be considered as "ready" opposed to what the OP claimed?

 

[Dave Baumann]

Panels ship without scalars frequently - my 30" panel has native 2560x1600 and only subdivision modes of that (i.e. 1280x800) because it doesn't have a scaler. Although in this instance we're not talking about bypassing the scaler, but working with it.

 

[CarstenS]

Mine too (before it died a year ago, a Dell 3007WFP HC), but I was under the impression that this was rather the exception to the rule. Mostly any other panel I've worked or played with does have a scaler.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Freesync = "freely synchronisable" and not "costless feature". There's just a simple misunderstanding in the parsing here as the OP missed the alternative interpretation of the name, perhaps because FreeXXXX is often used in software as a costless application.

In addition, I somewhat take umbrage with using the forum to target a graphics IHV, and if not for the subsequent discussion already existing I'd remove the thread and direct the poster to the official communication channels and forum of AMD. B3D should be used to discuss the technology; the form of the OP should have been open questions about the technology. "What is FreeSync and is it misleading?" or whatever, directed to the whole board.

 

[homerdog]

Headsup, misleading consumers is what marketing departments do. The fact that you were "mislead" into purchasing AMD products means they did their job.

 

[DavidGraham]

It is done for the currently available (and marketed to consumers) versions. So you agree that they have more or less prototype status and can't be considered as "ready" opposed to what the OP claimed?

No, at CES they have monitors announced and ready , so they left the prototype stage already .
http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/01/06/nvidia-g-sync-the-missing-link-for-pc-gaming-nirvana/

I didn't want to say it like this but AMD, on the other hand is acting like they are spreading FUD trying to spoll NVIDIA's parade, they deliberately jumped through 3 different misleading theories as to how this thing works and only spilled the truth after NVIDIA's reply. they have no plans to implement until the DP1.3 is finalized, they have no monitors, no decent demos, no drivers .. nothing.

Of course it can be done. Why not?

Many people on many forums said it can't be done, I was thinking of an external scaler connected to the display bypassing the original scaler and doing variable refresh rates, my request was shot down, so I would be more than happy if that indeed works considering I still own a CRT display to this day.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Mine too (before it died a year ago, a Dell 3007WFP HC), but I was under the impression that this was rather the exception to the rule. Mostly any other panel I've worked or played with does have a scaler.

That depends, you'll find a lot of the IPS panels that are cheaper are doing so by not bothering with a scaler.

 

[CarstenS]

That depends, you'll find a lot of the IPS panels that are cheaper are doing so by not bothering with a scaler.

I'll keep an eye out for this, but as I said I have not seen any of those yet (except my own and the other 1st-gen 30-inch LCDs).

 

[pjbliverpool]

"FreeSync" is free as in "free country" if not "free beer".

At some point in the future, most monitors and graphics cards will support it, and then it will just be free in the sense that it won't require any additional cost. And it's pretty much free in laptops already.

But at this point won't gsync also be free since you wont need a dedicated gsync module?

 

[velnias]

I didn't want to say it like this but AMD, on the other hand is acting like they are spreading FUD trying to spoll NVIDIA's parade, they deliberately jumped through 3 different misleading theories as to how this thing works and only spilled the truth after NVIDIA's reply. they have no plans to implement until the DP1.3 is finalized, they have no monitors, no decent demos, no drivers .. nothing.

Thank you. This sums it up for me. That is why I strongly believe this entire free-sync thing was done to "rain" on nvidia's parade so to speak. They don't have monitors, they don't have DP 1.3, so why bother to show it to the press? OR, if you're going to show it to the press, tell the press the applicable details of time to market and the requirements. AMD did not do this, and that's why it seems so disingenuous.

I have no love for nvidia, in fact I spent many years holding a grudge against them due to their rather inflated pricing. Yet on their part - I will say they didn't show a THING until they had everything lined up - monitor manufacturers, an upgrade program, the variable refresh control board, and a release time frame. As far as I can tell, AMD has none of these things. And they called their implementation "free-sync" as a direct meme of nvidia's "g-sync". Essentially, G-sync is ready to go. Whereas, free-sync? When? What monitor manufacturers? AMD Should have been more CLEAR about this at their tech demo.

Now I more than welcome an alternative. But maybe AMD should spilled more details at their tech demonstration. Every website known to man thought that this meant a g-sync alternative was coming real soon, yet AMD didn't tell them the caveats associated with free-sync. So naturally there will be some kick-back when people learn the details about free-sync that weren't initially provided.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I'll keep an eye out for this, but as I said I have not seen any of those yet (except my own and the other 1st-gen 30-inch LCDs).

Here's one such example:

http://www.tested.com/tech/pcs/449537-korean-monitor-guide/