I upgraded to a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and currently use an RTX 2070 SUPER with an AOC AGON AG271QG, a 1440p 165 Hz monitor built around G-Sync. I'm considering switching to an AMD RX 9070 XT, but I'm unsure whether the monitor will work with the new GPU and whether I would lose adaptive sync such as FreeSync. Would the monitor simply run at a fixed refresh rate, and would that matter much in competitive shooters or games like Escape from Tarkov?
2 Answers
For competitive shooters, many players disable sync anyway and run settings that produce more frames than the monitor’s 165 Hz refresh rate. In that situation, losing VRR may not be a major issue, as long as you can tolerate some tearing. For a game like Tarkov, though, frame rates can fluctuate more, so G-Sync or FreeSync can make gameplay look smoother when performance falls below the monitor’s refresh rate.
The monitor should still display an image with the AMD card, but this older model uses a dedicated G-Sync module and generally does not support FreeSync or Adaptive-Sync. That means you would likely be limited to a fixed refresh rate with the RX 9070 XT, rather than getting variable refresh-rate benefits.
That makes sense—Tarkov probably benefits more from VRR than esports titles because the frame rate is less consistent.