Look what we found in NVIDIA's Top Secret Gaming Monitor Lab #Helpful Post

and videos original g-sync technology

has largely kept the promises that it

made five years ago of eliminating

tearing input lag and stutter in

high-end gaming displays but the how of

this technology is something that

they've kept under wraps until now which

is what makes today's video really

really special because Nvidia sponsored

our trip down to Santa Clara today where

we will be the first non Nvidia

personnel to ever see one of their

g-sync optical labs so let's go find out

how you make a gaming monitor shall we

now NVIDIA doesn't actually manufacture

display panels that work is best left to

the experts at Samsung LG Display au

Optronics and the like but inside this

cage behind me is a sample of every

g-sync

monitor that has ever been built and the

thing is there's far more to creating a

great finished gaming display than just

taking whatever panel those guys hand

you slapping it into an enclosure and

calling it a day in fact while the

situation has improved a lot especially

on the desktop

Nvidia still fails over 50% of the

laptop displays that get sensitive for

validation so each one of these assuming

that they don't immediately fail the

more basic checks will get subjected to

over 300 tests some of which take hours

or even multiple days to run so I feel

kind of bad for the text who drew the

short straw for our visit today and had

to shut down you see the issue and

actually the reason that the walls are

all painted black in here is that with

our filming lights on they can't run any

real tests because the results will be

invalid so we're gonna try to get out of

their way real quick here on this bench

then is our first real test here so it's

a pretty simple one on the surface but

it's one that will weed out a surprising

number of variable refresh rate displays

so our GPU here runs a benchmark with

extreme swings in the framerate

which is designed to expose weaknesses

in the t-con or timing controller which

is the part of the panel that takes the

output from the scaler and translates it

into something that the actual drivers

of the TFT matrix can understand now the

results of these failures are usually

quite obvious because if a t-con

experiences a firmware problem for

example causing an overflow condition

it's go to emergency response is

early to blink out parts of the panel or

even the entire thing temporarily to

prevent it from being damaged

apparently they actually had one of

those come through here just the other

day but that doesn't mean that running

these tests is simple for one thing

these kinds of problems can be weird

edge cases I mean that's why the

manufacturer didn't notice them so they

can take a long time to manifest which

is why they run for up to 48 hours

before assigning a pass and for another

just hooking a source up to a bear

notebook LCD is it ordeal and a half so

of course you need a mobile GPU in order

to validate mobile displays but using an

standard desktop test bench would save

you a lot of time so check out this

Frankenstein creation I've actually got

another one right here so this according

to the folks here is a curing mobile GPU

but soldered on to a development board

with just like this cooler just plugs

straight into 12-volt power just friends

at full speed all the time that's why

these things are so loud and then it's

just bristling with diagnostic readouts

and and sort of measurement points and

then there's then there's the really

cool stuff so this right here is our DVI

output or something that's on a daughter

board for some reason and on the back

here this is really cool so these

interfaces back here are designed for

all of the different implementations of

embedded DisplayPort that you might see

from the various panel manufacturers so

they make their own daughter board PCBs

here so they can adapt this weird

development card to run any display that

they want on to our next test though one

of the hardest parts of creating a

variable refresh rate display is

preventing flickering but the thing is

not everyone perceives flicker the same

and even if a flicker isn't visible to

the eye it can still cause fatigue and

headaches so that is where

this test comes in now it doesn't look

like much but the lab techs here can

change this boring gray screen to output

any refresh rate they want then they use

this client instruments k10 a a basic

luminance meter to measure the amplitude

and decibels of any changes in the

output brightness then that is of course

assuming that the panel makes it this

far they use this special box of NVIDIA

zone creation - kind of like a like a

doctor check in your like heartbeat or

something check all the different areas

of the panel to see which one is the

worst and then ensure that even that is

still within spec rounding out panel

selection is a whole battery of other

tests color reproduction color gamut

absolute luminance native contrast ratio

pixel response times your pretty much

name it then we can move into this room

once a panel is validated it can move on

to stage 2 actual display development at

this point things get a lot pickier so

this forty to fifty thousand dollar XY

positioning jib is precise to one tenth

of a millimeter so what they do is they

light up the display so the one that

we're looking at right here is a g-sync

ultimate unit with HDR ten support add

up to 1000 nits peak brightness and then

they take measurements across the entire

surface to ensure that it's uniform it's

pretty frickin intense except that is

just scratching the surface so this

display also features 384 zone full

array back lighting and handling that

evenly is really freakin tricky

in this test nvidia is evaluating each

of the individual LEDs that makes up the

backlight array not just off and at full

force

but at its various steps in between

because you guys gotta understand

they need to account not just for the

drive level of each one of these zones

but even the neighboring light bleed

from other zones around them and then

making matters worse the whole thing has

got to work perfectly at every

brightness level and every refresh rate

huh

so then once the luminance behavior of

the panel is characterized it's either

fantastic out of the box ready to go or

much more likely it needs some work it's

no bloody wonder that these 4k 144 Hertz

HDR displays got delayed right

speaking of delays in this room also

professionally darkened out don't you

love it when like an engineer is given a

problem and told to solve it quickly I

love this anyway in here is one of them

videos be fgd or big format gaming

displays now the process you're seeing

here is nothing special if you've ever

professionally calibrated a display

before basically a signal generator so

this laptop outputs a known value let's

say white or other more different white

or red or something and then a sensor

like this spectroradiometer checks how

close it is to what it's expecting but

what's different about in videos

approach here is that instead of just

calibrating finished displays during the

development process they're jumping in

to make sure that there are no

underlying issues with the technology

that are gonna crop up while operating

in variable refresh rate mode that can't

be corrected because the thing is many

LCD characteristics change when the

refresh rate changes another fun one to

deal with is overdrive so overdrive

basically works like this you've got a

pixel and you want to take it from level

100 to level 200 which might take it

let's say 8 milliseconds natively well

if that's not good enough for the

performance you want with overdrive we

can tell that pixel I want 250 and

because that's a bigger change it's

gonna reach

our actual desired level of 200 faster

so you're basically giving it a bigger

kick so that you might get there in just

it's four or six milliseconds the trick

though is to not go too high or you'll

get too high of a value overshooting the

intended target now here's the thing at

60 Hertz fixed refresh rate this is

relatively simple so the monitor just

has a lookup table built into it of what

it should shoot for in order to have the

value be correct by the next 16.6

millisecond refresh cycle with variable

refresh rate well it has to compensate

how much of an extra kick it's giving

according to how much more or how much

less time it's gonna have to get to the

actual desired value and even driving

the LEDs and the backlight is a

complicated matter so this is the back

of a jisuk ultimate desktop monitor but

the internal guts here are actually

fundamentally similar to the BFG that we

just saw so at its heart is the powerful

g-sync processor that contains much of G

sinks special sauce then around it is

kind of like the the motherboard of a

monitor so this here is something that

the manufacturer of the monitor would

customize depending on what they want

for display connectors USB hubs built-in

audio that sort of thing then finally

there's a third part here so these are

kind of like the wings that make G sync

HDR fly so these driver eye sees right

here take a digital signal from the

g-sync module scaler for what the

luminance level should be for each of

the 384 LEDs that make up the backlight

here

then they output a given DC voltage to

each of the 16 transistors that drive

the current that actually lights up the

individual LED in each zone just the

right amount but like hold on hold on a

second here a Corsair commander

crow can drive dozens of RGB LEDs per

channel with like four wires what is all

of this for well here's the thing at a

hundred and forty-four Hertz you've got

under seven milliseconds per frame and

you have to both determine and write all

384 of those values each frame and add

up to a thousand its peak brightness so

this is not a trivial task like men I

can imagine the meeting where they

decided to build this thing right now

like all right team so we've never built

a TV before so the plan is to build the

most difficult one lol good luck

everyone and brake which leads us

finally to certification now the third

and final stage might not be that

visually interesting but it's arguably

the most important so this is the point

at which Nvidia receives the first

finished units of each display and goes

through that whole ordeal again to

ensure that nothing got lost in

translation and I have to say going

behind the scenes today gave me a much

deeper appreciation for what NVIDIA has

been doing in the display industry the

eagle-eyed among you for example might

have noticed that one of those backlight

driver boards on this prototype has an

Nvidia silkscreen on it while the other

one has something else that's because as

part of developing g-sync ultimate

Nvidia actually created the reference

design for these driver boards since

nobody had ever done a 384 zone 27 inch

panel before now unfortunately I wasn't

able to show you guys everything that I

saw but what I can say is that my

experience today has shown me

definitively that this is far more than

just a rubber-stamping certification fee

operation so then there are three tiers

of g-sync nap g-sync compatible displays

don't go through anything that you saw

today

Vidia performs for variable refresh rate

tests to ensure that they're suitable

for a basic vr gaming experience then

there's G sync and gsync ultimate where

you're getting the deep collaboration

between your graphics card manufacturer

and your display maker with ultimate

also including support for HDR gaming

which as we've discussed in the past

looks pretty freakin sick so that's it

for today guys massive thank you to you

for watching and to NVIDIA for

sponsoring this video and just

straight-up allowing us a peek behind

the kimono this was absolutely

incredible

if this video sucked you guys know what

to do but if it was awesome get

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we featured in the video description

also down there is our merch store which

has cool shirts like this one and our

community forum which you should totally

join especially if you have any

questions about building a fantastic

gaming rhaegar buying a variable refresh

rate monitor or whatever the case may be