Nvidia Stays Lowkey About Lowering G-Sync Ultimate HDR Specification

Nvidia has sneakily lowered its top G-Sync Ultimate HDR specification, according to Twitter.

This report seems unsurprising, thanks to G-sync’s performance across platforms. The latest tweak to make the G-Sync broader has become messy and complicated. It doesn’t seem promising based on how it’s marketed, at the very least. Let’s have a look in detail.

According to screenshots shared by Twitter user PC Monitors, Nvidia has quietly downgraded the HDR requirements for its G-Sync Ultimate definition from VESA Display HDR 1000 to just ‘lifelike HDR’.

According to Wayback Machine’s records on Nvidia web pages, the previous, most advanced version of G-Sync Ultimate specification required VESA display HDR 1000 certification with “over” 1000 nits of brightness performance.

However, according to the screenshots shared by PC Monitors on Twitter, it can be seen that the HDR requirement for G-Sync Ultimate has been changed from “Best HDR 1000 nits” (in November 2020) to merely “Lifelike HDR” (current web page)

Moreover, Nvidia’s marketing material comes out as vague and unplanned. It stipulates that the Ultimate tier requires the ‘top Nvidia G-Sync’ processors, G-Sync modules or boards, being used in G-Sync monitors.

This is not the case for bottom ‘G-Sync’ tier monitors that do not use Nvidia processors though. There’s no mention for falling in the middle ‘G-Sync’ tier. For instance, the Alienware 38 curved AW3821 DW gaming monitor. This piece of hardware is rated at 600 nits and comes with the G-Sync Ultimate Tag.

It appears that Nvidia decided to lower the HDR requirement to enable the creation of monitors by G-Sync Ultimate. However, that creation is in coherence with the module and not HDR 1000, for the latter is a pretty heavy requirement.

Stay put for Nvidia’s response!