Comment by nmstoker
1 day ago
Sorry, might be obvious to some, but is that rate applied to the whole screen or can certain parts be limited to 1Hz whilst others are at a higher rate?
The ability to vary it seems like it would be valuable as there are significant portions of a screen that remain fairly static for longer periods but equally there are sections that would need to change more often and would thus mess with the ability to stick to a low rate if it's a whole screen all-or-nothing scenario.
From what I understand, the laptop will reduce the refresh rate (of the entire display) to as low as 1Hz if what is being displayed effectively “allows” it.
For example:
- reading an article with intermittent scrolling
- typing with periodic breaks
I think windows has a feature built in on some adaptive refresh rate displays to dynamically shift the frame rate down (to 30, on my screen) or up to the cap, depending on what’s actually happening.
I remember playing with it a bit, and it would dynamically change to a high refresh rate as you moved the mouse, and then drop down as soon as the mouse cursor stopped moving.
I had issues with it sometimes being lower refresh rate even when there was motion on screen, so the frame rate swings were unfortunately noticeable. Motion would get smoother for all content whenever the mouse moved.
1hz is drastically fewer refreshes. I hope they have the “is this content static” measurement actually worked out to a degree where it’s not noticeable.
Who “decides” the frame rate? Does the gpu keep sending data and the monitor checks to determine when pixels change?
Probably the display board, anything else would be subject to OS and GPU driver support and it would never work anywhere.
Got it. Thanks!
Articles have animated ads, though.
On such an article it would not go down to 1Hz. It's checking if the image is changing or not.
2 replies →
It would help making the ad less distracting, in some cases.
Run uBlock Origin and you will have few (and in most cases, none) animated ads.
not with an adblocker
Ad supported content industry: "Gee, we just can't figure out why anyone would use an ad blocker!"
With current LCD controllers but new drivers/firmware you could selectively refresh horizontal stripes of the screen at different rates if you wanted to.
I don't think you could divide vertically though.
Don't think anyone has done this yet. You could be the first.
I believe E-ink displays do this for faster updates for touch interactivity. Updatimg the whole display as the user writes on the touch screen would otherwise be too slow for Eink.
Today it's mostly "all-or-nothing" at the panel level, but under the hood there's already a lot of cleverness trying to approximate the behavior you're describing