LG 2020 OLED TVs + G-Sync = Living Room Gaming Nirvana

Back in September, LG started to roll out support for NVIDIA’s G-Sync on select OLED televisions. But at CES 2020, LG not only extended that support for additional televisions, but also made it work at a maximum of 240Hz, welcome to living-room gaming nirvana.

We visited LG Electronics in Silicon Valley just before it rolled out support for G-Sync, and the demo was very convincing, showing excellent fluidity (at 60Hz) and superb color quality.

All twelve new 2020 LG OLED TVs presented at CES natively support G-Sync, and given the quality of LG’s OLED panels, they could arguably claim the title of Best Gaming monitors regardless of their TV status.

If you are unfamiliar with G-Sync, it is a technology that NVIDIA introduced back in 2013, which is designed to make games appear smooth and fluid even when the rendering speed is inconsistent.

In video games, the rendering speed can vary if there are more characters, buildings, or explosions on the screen, and that can lead to framerate hiccups and visual tearing, both of which disturb the gaming experience. Learn more here.

At its fundamental level, G-Sync means that the GPU and Display can communicate and synchronize display and rendering refreshes, eliminating hiccups and visual tearing. That’s what the new LG TVs support.

NVIDIA’s G-Sync has even higher specs and more strenuous tests that “pro” gaming monitors like the ASUS ROG Switch 360 can match, but the details are for another article, way outside the scope of this one.

Some observers complained that you needed an NVIDIA GPU to make G-Sync run, and while that’s true, the good news is that the 2020 LG televisions also support AMD’s FreeSync, a competing technology that offers the same basic benefits described above. When you start adding more stringent features, NVIDIA tends to have an advantage, and that’s why they can command a higher price.

The other benefit of being Freesync compatible is that game consoles hardware mostly comes from AMD because the cost/performance ratio is excellent, and people expect this trend to continue with the next-generation consoles.

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Gaming, Home
Tags: 4K, 4K TV, CES, CES 2020, Gaming Monitors, LG