Enhanced Sync

Perhaps the biggest feature addition to Crimson ReLive 17.7.2 is Enhanced Sync (ESync). One of the major goals in PC gaming in the past few years has been to produce consistent and fluid game experiences in combination with minimal input lag. The challenge here is to synchronize the game animation to the display's refresh rate, which is typically fixed at 30 or 60 Hz unless specifically designed to have a variable refresh rate (VRR).

Game animations with changing FPS means having to compromise somewhere, and VSync or Adaptive Sync/FreeSync are solutions to get around this. VSync updates the display with a new, completed frame each time, which effectively caps the game's animation to the display refresh rate and also introduces input lag latency. GSync and Adaptive Sync/FreeSync work with variable-resolution displays to get around this issue and remain the best current solution while adding the need to have specific displays which invariably cost more. A middle ground for fixed refresh rate (FRR) displays that deal with game animation stuttering or tearing without introducing the latency of VSync is thus an extremely useful tool to have, and AMD's implementation is called Enhanced Sync.

Enhanced Sync seemingly has an advantage over NVIDIA's Fast Sync technology in that it works with situations where the game animation runs both above and below the display's refresh rate, which will help in lower-FPS situations for FRR displays. It works in conjunction with FreeSync for VRR displays as well when outside the VRR range, and AMD's internal testing with Overwatch shows impressive reductions in latency with an equally impressive response time. Our limited time testing ESync has been positive as well, to where it worked without a hitch on a global scale using an FRR display, and we definitely recommend Radeon users try it - if not even to leave it on all the time. Do note that ESync supports DX9, DX11, and DX12 titles only for now, so no Vulkan support yet, which is a shame.