Nvidia’s G-Sync HDR module adds $500 to monitor pricing

If you thought that the new ASUS 4K 144Hz, G-Sync, HDR display was gorgeous, but still seemed rather expensive at $2,000, you wouldn’t be the only one. Although that feature set is fantastic, does it really need to cost more than most full-size gaming PCs? Yes, it does, in fact, and a major reason why is the G-Sync HDR module Nvidia uses, which alone, costs $500.

Nvidia’s G-Sync has always been the more expensive screen synchronizing technology when compared to AMD’s freely available Freesync. That’s because while Freesync handles things on the PC side of things — albeit with far less of an overhead than the classic V-Sync, G-Sync requires bespoke hardware to do its job. The same goes for HDR, which is why the new PG27UQ from ASUS ends up being so expensive.

That was a lot of “sync” talk, but it’s important to break down just why Nvidia’s solution is so much more expensive. During PCPer’s recent break down of the new ASUS monitor, we learned that the display has an Intel FPGA and 4GB of DDR4-2400 RAM. That’s a hell of a lot more than the original G-Sync module, which packed just 768MB of RAM under the hood.

What’s more surprising though, is that that FGPA is still pretty affordable. PCPer notes that the retail cost of just one of those chips normally is $2,500, so Nvidia is getting them at a sizeable discount to be costed just $500 per.

The biggest kick in the teeth over all this though is that the review suggests that the monitor is just ok. DisplayPort limitations mean color degradation kicks in at high refresh rates at 4K, meaning most are now setting their systems to 120Hz maximum.