Nvidia G-Sync combined with SLI has a negative impact on gaming performance

It has been about three years since Nvidia introduced its G-Sync technology, which is used in screens to provide a more enjoyable gaming experience. In addition, there is also AMD Freesync, which unlike Nvidia’s technology is an open standard and can be used freely by manufacturers.

Nvidia has previously been clear that G-Sync has no effect on performance, but according to users on the company’s forum, this has changed with the driver with version number 411.63. In some cases, performance losses of over 60 percent are reported when G-Sync is active together with dual graphics cards in SLI.

The site Extremetech has tested this and come to the conclusion that several graphics cards in SLI are probably the culprit in the drama. The test used two Geforce GTX 1080 and a single Geforce GTX 1080 Ti together with an Acer XB280HP, which has a maximum refresh rate of 60 Hz.

The results show that G-Sync does not have the same effect on performance in all games. In Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, for example, a difference of 5 FPS was seen with DirectX 11, while in DirectX 12 there was no difference with G-Sync on and off. Far Cry 5 also shows a performance difference with G-Sync, and this increases the higher the frame rate in the game.

► Discuss Nvidia Geforce in SweClocker’s forum

As the results differ between games, no general conclusion is drawn, but it is speculated that the problem is due to delays when it comes to information from one graphics card to another and then to the screen. Nvidia itself has not yet commented on the problems.