NVIDIA rebrands G-SYNC HDR as 'G-SYNC Ultimate'

At its CES 2019 keynote, NVIDIA revealed that it's essentially rebranding G-SYNC HDR displays as G-SYNC Ultimate. It launched the HDR program last year at CES, promising very high standards like G-SYNC variable frame-rate refresh rates at 144 Hz and higher, 1000 nits of brightness and a 95 percent DCI-P3 color gamut. Only a couple of monitors have been certified, including the ASUS ROG Swift PG27UQ and Acer Predator X27.

The company now essentially has three G-SYNC tiers: G-SYNC Ultimate, G-SYNC and "G-SYNC Compatible" for certain qualifying AMD FreeSync monitors. NVIDIA's 65-inch Big Format Gaming Displays (BFGDs), for instance, are G-SYNC Ultimate-compatible displays that happen to be huge. HP recently announced that its $5,000, 65-inch Omen X 65 Emperium would soon ship, and at its CES 2019 keynote, NVIDIA said that other models would follow in February, 2019.

With more G-SYNC-compatible regular and HDR monitors coming, along with G-SYNC compatible models that were originally only certified for AMD's FreeSync, NVIDIA is clearly trying to wrestle more control of the display market. By doing so, it also increases the odds that consumers will select a new GeForce RTX GPU instead of a Radeon model from its chief rival, AMD.