G-Sync vs FreeSync 2026: The Module Tax Is Over

For roughly a decade, variable refresh rate was a loyalty oath. You bought a GPU, and the GPU quietly told you which monitors you were allowed to want. Green team meant a G-Sync module and a price premium you were expected to accept without complaint. Red team meant FreeSync, a wider aisle at the store, and a lingering suspicion that you were getting the budget version of smoothness. The border was real, it was enforced in the driver, and people argued about it on forums with the energy of a religious schism.

That war is over. It did not end with a decisive battle or a press release headlined we surrender. It ended the way most cold wars end: the checkpoints were quietly dismantled and everyone pretended the wall had never mattered. In 2026, NVIDIA GPUs drive FreeSync panels through the open VESA Adaptive-Sync standard, AMD cards run happily on G-Sync Compatible displays, and the practical question is no longer which brand but which panel, at which price, with how much HDR ambition. This is the deadpan autopsy of a rivalry that mostly stopped existing — with the numbers, the citations, and, because this is a retro site, the part where variable refresh quietly fixes one of emulation's oldest and most annoying problems.

The 2026 Reality: The Wall Fell

Let me open with the conclusion, because burying it would be dishonest and the rest of this article is the receipts. G-Sync and FreeSync have converged. The GPU-brand lock-in that defined the choice from 2013 through roughly 2019 is gone. What remains is a difference of degree — a floor here, an overdrive algorithm there, an HDR badge that costs more than it's worth — not a difference of kind.

The checkpoint that came down at CES 2019

The precise moment the wall developed a hole is documented and dated. At CES 2019, NVIDIA announced its G-Sync Compatible program: it would test third-party monitors built on the VESA DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync protocol — the same protocol FreeSync rides on — and enable variable refresh on the ones that passed. The enabling driver shipped on January 15, 2019, lighting up Adaptive-Sync support on GeForce GTX 10-series and RTX 20-series cards. That was the day an NVIDIA GPU officially learned to speak FreeSync. Everything since has been refinement. By 2026 the capability is not a beta curiosity; it is the default, seamless behavior on essentially any modern panel that advertises a VRR window.

The traffic now runs both ways. Because the newer G-Sync hardware modules were updated around the end of 2019 to also accept generic Adaptive-Sync, AMD Radeon owners can drive variable refresh on G-Sync Compatible displays and on module-equipped monitors from that era forward. The once-rigid ecosystem walls — green monitor for green card, red for red — are functionally rubble.

What you are actually choosing between

Strip away the tribalism and the decision in 2026 reduces to three levers, none of which is your GPU vendor:

• HDR ambition. How bright, how many dimming zones, how faithful the tone mapping. This is where the last meaningful hardware gap lives, and even that gap has narrowed.
• VRR range precision. Where the variable window starts and stops, and how gracefully the display behaves when your frame rate falls through the floor.
• Budget. Whether you're paying a premium for a physical chip and a validation program, or paying nothing extra for a royalty-free feature baked into the panel's existing scaler.

That's the whole board. Notice that which brand of graphics card you own is not on it. If a 2019-era article told you to match your monitor's sync tech to your GPU, that article is a fossil.

Why a retro site is writing about a monitor war

Fair question, and there's a real answer beyond "our readers also own gaming PCs." Variable refresh rate is the single best flat-panel fix for the oldest curse in emulation: the refresh-rate mismatch. Your monitor runs at a tidy 60.000 Hz. The NES you're emulating does not — it runs closer to 60.098 Hz. A PAL machine runs at 50. A Sega Genesis lands around 59.92. When the content's true refresh doesn't divide cleanly into your display's, you get a duplicated or dropped frame on a metronomic schedule, and scrolling backgrounds visibly hitch every dozen-or-so seconds. VRR lets the panel simply become a 60.098 Hz display for as long as the emulator needs it to be. We'll spend a full section on that later, because it's the part of this debate a CRT purist and a RetroArch tinkerer actually care about. If you're building the machine that drives all this, our teardown of the RTX 5090's 32% gen-on-gen jump covers the GPU side of the same setup.

How Each One Actually Works

The two technologies solve the identical problem — a display refreshing on a fixed clock while a GPU renders frames on a variable one, producing either tearing (no sync) or stutter and lag (traditional V-Sync) — and they solve it with opposite philosophies. One puts a computer inside your monitor. The other adds a feature to a cable that was already there.

G-Sync: a computer bolted into the panel

Native G-Sync is hardware. NVIDIA's own framing, per the reference documentation, is blunt: "In order for a device to use G-Sync, it must contain a proprietary G-Sync module sold by Nvidia." That module is not a sticker. It is a genuine circuit board built, in the classic implementation, around an Altera Arria V GX-family FPGA with roughly 156,000 logic elements, 396 DSP blocks, and 67 LVDS channels, backed by around 768 MB of DDR3L memory. It replaces the commodity scaler chip a normal monitor would use, and it manages the variable refresh sync, the frame buffering, and — on the higher tiers — the HDR processing, entirely on the display side.

The payoff for all that silicon is control. Because NVIDIA owns the scaler, it can do variable overdrive — retuning pixel-response overshoot across the entire refresh range so ghosting stays consistent whether you're at 45 fps or 240. It can push the effective VRR floor down to roughly 1 Hz through frame multiplication, so the panel never falls out of its variable window even in a menu or a loading screen. This is real engineering, and for years it was genuinely ahead. It is also expensive to build, which is the entire reason the premium exists.

FreeSync: a feature of the cable

FreeSync took the opposite bet. AMD announced it in 2014 and shipped it on March 19, 2015, built on top of VESA Adaptive-Sync — an optional feature of the DisplayPort 1.2a specification. Crucially, it uses the monitor's existing scaler. There is no NVIDIA-style add-in board, no dedicated FPGA, no half-gig of buffer memory. The reference description of FreeSync is refreshingly unglamorous: "It is royalty-free, free to use, and has no performance penalty."

AMD's own positioning leans hard on that economics: no licensing fees to display makers for adoption, and no expensive or proprietary hardware modules. The consequence is not subtle — if adding VRR costs a panel maker essentially nothing, VRR shows up everywhere, at every price, which is precisely what happened. The trade-off is variance. Because FreeSync's quality depends on the panel's own scaler and firmware, a great FreeSync monitor and a mediocre one can wear the same logo. You get what you pay for, and the badge alone doesn't promise a tuned overdrive curve or a wide range the way a G-Sync module contractually does.

The three-and-three tier system

Both camps splinter into three tiers, and the names are engineered to confuse you. Here's the decoder ring.

NVIDIA's ladder: G-Sync Compatible is a validated Adaptive-Sync (i.e., FreeSync) panel with no NVIDIA module — the pragmatic middle. G-Sync is the real module. G-Sync Ultimate is the module plus premium HDR. AMD's ladder: base FreeSync handles tear-free sync in the panel's range. FreeSync Premium mandates Low Framerate Compensation (LFC) and at least a 120 Hz refresh at 1080p. FreeSync Premium Pro adds the luminance and wide-color-gamut requirements for HDR.

The load-bearing feature in that list is LFC. When your frame rate drops below the panel's VRR floor — say the window is 48–144 Hz and you're rendering 40 fps — LFC keeps you smooth by drawing each frame multiple times, multiplying 40 into 80 refreshes so the display stays inside its variable window. It's the same trick the G-Sync module does natively down toward 1 Hz. The difference is that on FreeSync it requires a sufficiently wide range to work, which brings us to the math.

The Spec Sheet, 14 Rows

Marketing pages compare adjectives. Here are the attributes side by side, without the adjectives. Where a value depends on tier or panel, the cell says so, because pretending otherwise is how you end up buying the wrong monitor.

Reading the table without the marketing brain

Two rows carry most of the real-world weight: effective VRR floor and overdrive tuning. Everything else has largely equalized. Both hit the same ceilings, both add the same negligible latency, both now work across GPU brands. The module's remaining advantages are that it never falls out of its variable window and that NVIDIA guarantees the overdrive is retuned across the range so you don't get smeary ghosting at low frame rates. Those are genuine, but they are narrow.

Where the module still earns its keep

If your frame rate routinely craters — heavy ray tracing at 4K, a poorly optimized open-world title, a strategy game in the late game — a native G-Sync panel's sub-48 floor and variable overdrive give a visibly more composed result than a cheap FreeSync panel with a narrow 48–75 Hz window and no LFC. The module was built for exactly the case where the frame rate is low and volatile. That's its home turf, and it still wins there against budget FreeSync.

Where the open standard simply wins

Everywhere else, breadth wins. FreeSync's royalty-free model produced more top-tier panels at more price points, put VRR on televisions and consoles through HDMI VRR, and — thanks to NVIDIA's own Adaptive-Sync support — costs you nothing in compatibility no matter which card is in the case. If you're the kind of builder who also squeezes another 15% out of the GPU with an overclock, you're generally keeping frame rates high enough that the module's low-floor advantage never even engages.

Latency & Performance Numbers

This is where the debate goes to die, because the measurements refuse to cooperate with the marketing. Three independent testing traditions — RTINGS' latency bench, the input-lag work popularized by testers like Battle(non)sense, and Hardware Unboxed's blind trials — all land in the same place: the difference is a rounding error, and humans can't reliably feel it.

Input lag: the difference is a rounding error

The headline number people expect — which sync tech is faster? — has essentially no answer, because turning VRR on barely moves the needle at all. Across comprehensive testing, enabling adaptive sync adds on the order of 0 to 2.5 milliseconds of input latency versus VRR off. To put that in frames: one refresh at 240 Hz is about 4.2 ms, so the entire penalty is under a single frame even on a fast panel, and at 360 Hz it's within measurement noise. RTINGS' own comparison work reaches the pragmatic conclusion outright — that the choice should come down to availability, cost, and GPU compatibility rather than latency, because the latency delta between the two is not a differentiator. Comparative FreeSync-versus-G-Sync mode testing on the same panel shows them performing comparably, with any edge swinging based on GPU-and-mode combinations rather than one badge being categorically quicker.

The blind test nobody in the comments wants to acknowledge

The most damning data point for the premium isn't a latency chart — it's a perception test. In Hardware Unboxed's blind trials, viewers comparing a well-tuned FreeSync Premium panel against a G-Sync Ultimate panel could rarely tell them apart. Sit someone down, don't tell them which is which, and the thing the module costs extra to deliver becomes statistically invisible. TechSpot's multi-year testing arrives at a compatible verdict from the spec side: across a large sample of monitors, the only consistent difference they could find between a display branded G-Sync Compatible and an equivalent unbranded Adaptive-Sync panel was that the unbranded one wouldn't have variable refresh switched on by default. That is the whole moat, and it's a settings toggle.

VRR range and LFC: where math beats marketing

The one place the numbers genuinely diverge is the low end, and it's governed by a ratio, not a logo. Low Framerate Compensation needs headroom to multiply frames without colliding with the panel's next refresh. Blur Busters' rule of thumb is that LFC wants a VRR range of at least 2:1, and preferably around 2.4:1 — max refresh divided by min refresh. A 48–144 Hz panel (3:1) does LFC beautifully. A budget 48–75 Hz panel (1.6:1) can't do it at all, so the instant you dip below 48 fps you're back to tearing or stutter. Blur Busters also notes the practical corollary: LFC stutter shrinks as the ceiling rises, so it's essentially imperceptible on a wide window like 48–360 Hz and more noticeable on a narrow 48–120 Hz one. This is the real reason "you get what you pay for" is truer of FreeSync than G-Sync — the module guarantees the range; the open standard makes you read the spec sheet. If a panel doesn't publish its VRR window, treat the omission as the answer.

Pricing & Availability in 2026

Here's the uncomfortable part for anyone who paid the premium: in 2026, variable refresh is table stakes. It's on budget 1080p panels, on 4K OLEDs, on living-room TVs, on handhelds. The sync itself is no longer a luxury feature — the luxury is in the panel wrapped around it. The table below maps the tiers to what actually drives their cost. Note what's deliberately absent: fabricated MSRPs. Street prices are panel-specific and volatile, and the honest generalization is a premium structure, not a fixed number.

The module tax, itemized

The G-Sync premium isn't a scam — it's a bill of materials. You're paying for a real FPGA, real buffer memory, and NVIDIA's per-model validation. That was defensible when the module did things nothing else could. It's harder to defend in 2026, when the open standard delivers a result blind testers can't distinguish. The premium is Moderate for standard G-Sync and Highest for Ultimate, and the thing separating Ultimate from a good Premium Pro panel is HDR processing you may never fully exploit unless your content and your room are both cooperating.

FreeSync's zero-dollar advantage compounds

Royalty-free adoption is why FreeSync won on availability, and availability compounds. More panels means more competition means better price-to-performance at every tier — including, ironically, on the panels NVIDIA users buy, because a G-Sync Compatible display is a FreeSync panel with an NVIDIA validation sticker. The open standard didn't just serve AMD owners; it lowered the floor for everyone.

The HDR caveat, and the "1000 nits" ghost story

If you're chasing HDR, know the history before you pay for the badge. G-Sync Ultimate originally demanded VESA DisplayHDR 1000 certification — over 1,000 nits of brightness. Then, quietly, around the end of November into December 2020, NVIDIA removed the hard "1000 nits" language and replaced it with "lifelike HDR." When the change drew scrutiny, NVIDIA's position was that G-Sync Ultimate "was never defined by nits alone nor did it require a VESA DisplayHDR 1000 certification" — a statement that surprised the people who'd read the earlier spec. The practical upshot is sensible: modern OLEDs deliver infinite contrast at 600–700 nits and now qualify, where the old rule would have excluded them. But it also means the Ultimate badge no longer guarantees a specific brightness. Read the panel's actual HDR numbers; don't trust the tier name. If you're speccing a whole battlestation around the display, the ergonomics of the $2,150 Herman Miller gaming chair get argued with the same "is the premium real" logic that applies here.

VRR for Emulation: The 60.098 Hz Trap

Now the part that justifies a retro site touching this topic at all. Variable refresh is not just for chasing 240 fps in a shooter. It is the cleanest flat-panel solution to a problem that has haunted emulation since the first NES ran on a PC: no real console runs at exactly the refresh rate your monitor advertises.

Why 60 Hz was always a polite fiction

The NTSC NES refreshes at roughly 60.098 Hz. A PAL machine runs at 50. A Genesis lands near 59.92. Arcade boards were a menagerie of odd rates because nobody was standardizing to your future LCD. Your monitor, meanwhile, runs a rigid 60.000 (or 59.94) Hz. When the emulated content's true rate doesn't line up with the display's fixed rate, the emulator has to periodically drop or duplicate a frame to stay in sync — and that shows up as a visible hitch in every scrolling background, arriving like clockwork every dozen-or-so seconds. It's not your GPU struggling; a Raspberry Pi can run the NES. It's arithmetic that doesn't divide evenly. For decades the only clean fixes were a multisync CRT that could just be 60.098 Hz, or ugly compromises like frame-blending.

RetroArch's exact-framerate sync, which is the whole point

VRR turns the fixed 60.000 Hz display into a variable one that can lock to the emulator's true rate. RetroArch has shipped exactly this since version 1.7.4, under the deliberately VRR-flavored name "Sync to Exact Content Framerate (G-Sync, FreeSync)." Enable it on a VRR panel and the core drives the display at its originally intended speed — the 60.098 Hz NES core makes the panel refresh at 60.098 Hz. No periodic duplicated frame. No judder. No tearing. Here is the working configuration, minus the guesswork:

Settings -> Video -> Synchronization
  Vertical Sync (Vsync).............. ON
  Sync to Exact Content Framerate.... ON   (labeled "G-Sync, FreeSync")
  VSync Swap Interval................ 1  (or Auto)
  Hard GPU Sync...................... ON
  Black Frame Insertion............. OFF   (BFI fights VRR)

Settings -> Video -> Output
  Vertical Refresh Rate............. set to measured value, e.g. 59.94 Hz

# Result: a 60.098 Hz NES core drives the panel at 60.098 Hz.
# No duplicated frame every ~16 s. No judder. No tearing.

One honest footnote from the developers themselves: the option's name is arguably a lie of omission. A logged issue on the RetroArch tracker (libretro/RetroArch #13828) argues the setting is mislabeled, because the underlying "sync to exact content framerate" logic isn't actually specific to G-Sync or FreeSync hardware — the branding is decorative. On a VRR panel it does what you want; on a fixed-refresh panel it can introduce random drops. Turn it on for VRR, off for a plain 60 Hz TV. If you're setting up the emulation stack from scratch, our 11-step RetroArch core install gets the front end sane before you start tuning sync.

MiSTer, CRTs, and the purist objection

The FPGA crowd got there too. MiSTer added variable refresh support (credited to developer zakk4223), and the documentation describes precisely the payoff you'd hope for: with VRR enabled, non-standard refresh rates stop fighting the display. Instead of the core outputting 59.6 Hz into a 60 Hz screen and losing sync, the panel matches the core — game and display both sitting at 59.6 Hz, repeated and skipped frames going away. The purist counterargument is still valid and worth stating plainly: a multisync CRT handles all of this natively, with zero input lag and no VRR flicker, and remains the gold standard for accuracy. VRR is the best answer for flat panels — it is not a claim that your OLED has become a Trinitron. If you own a good CRT, this whole section is optional. If you don't, VRR is how you get most of the way there. The MiSTer video documentation and the libretro optimal-vsync guide are the two references worth bookmarking here.

Which One Fits Your Setup

Enough theory. Here are the concrete scenarios and the honest recommendation for each, because "it depends" is a cop-out and you came here for an answer.

Competitive players and the high-refresh crowd

Use case 1 — esports at 240 Hz+. You live above 200 fps in games where the frame rate rarely drops. Here the module's low-floor advantage never activates, because you're never near the floor. The recommendation is a high-refresh G-Sync Compatible or FreeSync Premium panel with a wide range, VRR paired with a frame-rate cap a few frames below the ceiling, and V-Sync on to mop up tearing at the top. The sync tech is a tie; the panel's response time and refresh ceiling are what matter. Buy the fastest panel, ignore the badge. The same "latency is king" logic drives peripheral choices like a Hall-effect board with rapid trigger.

Use case 2 — the volatile frame-rate single-player build. 4K, ray tracing on, frame rates that swing from 90 down into the 40s. This is the one scenario where a native G-Sync module still visibly earns its premium: the sub-48 floor and variable overdrive keep low, swingy frame rates composed where a narrow-window budget FreeSync panel would fall apart. If your library is graphically punishing and you hate stutter more than you love saving money, this is your exception.

HDR, cinematic, and the eye-candy tier

Use case 3 — HDR-first, image-quality-obsessed. You want the prettiest possible picture and you're willing to pay. Ignore the sync badge entirely and shop the HDR panel specs: peak brightness, dimming zones (or per-pixel OLED), color volume. A FreeSync Premium Pro OLED and a G-Sync Ultimate OLED will look near-identical in a blind test — the differentiator is the glass, not the sync logo. Remember the "lifelike HDR" caveat: read the nits, not the name.

Budget builds, consoles, and the emulation station

Use case 4 — the value 1080p/1440p build. FreeSync (ideally Premium, for guaranteed LFC and a ≥120 Hz range) is the obvious pick. There's no reason to pay a module premium at this tier, and the open standard's competition means your dollar goes further. Just verify the VRR window is wide enough for LFC — a 48–75 Hz panel is a trap. Use case 5 — console and living-room VRR. PS5 and Xbox Series consoles do VRR over HDMI, which is FreeSync/HDMI-VRR territory; native G-Sync's DisplayPort heritage makes it the wrong tool for a couch setup. Use case 6 — the dedicated emulation station. Any VRR panel plus RetroArch's exact-framerate sync solves the 60.098 Hz problem; you do not need — and should not pay for — the module here. Use case 7 — laptops. Mobile G-Sync is almost always module-less Adaptive-Sync on the internal panel anyway, so the distinction largely evaporates; our 2026 gaming laptop pick uses exactly that arrangement.

Switching Sides: Migration Guide

Because the wall is down, "switching" in 2026 rarely means buying a new monitor — it means changing a GPU and flipping the right toggles so your existing panel keeps doing VRR. Here's how to cross in either direction without losing your sync.

From an AMD card to NVIDIA (or onto a G-Sync Compatible panel)

Your FreeSync monitor will almost certainly keep working; you just have to enable it, because on an unvalidated panel NVIDIA won't switch it on for you. The steps:

NVIDIA (G-Sync / G-Sync Compatible)
  1. Connect over DisplayPort (HDMI VRR is spottier on older panels)
  2. NVIDIA App / Control Panel -> Display -> Set up G-SYNC
  3. Enable for "windowed and full screen" mode
  4. If your panel is NOT on NVIDIA's validated list, tick
     "Enable settings for the selected display model"
     (this is the unvalidated-monitor override)
  5. Cap FPS ~3 below panel max (e.g. 237 on a 240 Hz panel)
     and leave V-Sync ON in the driver

Step 4 is the one people miss. A perfectly good FreeSync panel that isn't formally G-Sync Compatible still runs VRR — NVIDIA just makes you check the box yourself, and doesn't promise it validated the result.

From NVIDIA to an AMD card (or onto a FreeSync panel)

Same monitor, mirror-image toggles:

AMD (FreeSync / G-Sync Compatible panel)
  1. Adrenalin -> Gaming -> Display -> FreeSync = ON
  2. Set a frame cap ~3 below panel max (Radeon Chill / FRTC
     or an in-game limiter)
  3. Verify the panel's VRR window; avoid living in the
     sub-LFC dead zone (e.g. below 48 Hz on a narrow panel)
  4. Prefer DisplayPort; use HDMI VRR only if the panel
     documents support for it

A native G-Sync module monitor is the one asymmetry to watch: older modules predating the ~end-of-2019 Adaptive-Sync update may not do VRR on a Radeon card. If your G-Sync panel is from that earlier era, confirm its module generation before assuming an AMD card will drive it.

The checklist that prevents flicker and dead zones

Regardless of direction, four things separate a clean VRR setup from a flickering one. One: use DisplayPort where you can — it's the most reliable VRR path. Two: know your panel's VRR window and cap your frame rate a few frames below the ceiling so you never hand control to V-Sync at the top. Three: if the window is narrower than ~2:1, accept that LFC won't save you below the floor and cap or tune accordingly. Four: on OLED panels, some titles exhibit VRR brightness flicker in menus or at wildly swinging frame rates — a frame cap that keeps the rate stable is the usual fix, and it's a panel-behavior quirk, not a G-Sync-versus-FreeSync failing. None of this is brand-specific. It's just VRR hygiene.

Pros & Cons, Tabulated

The whole argument, compressed into two tables and a note on the middle path. If you read nothing else, read these.

G-Sync: the case for and against

FreeSync: the case for and against

G-Sync Compatible: the pragmatic middle

The tier that quietly wins the most builds is the hyphenated compromise. G-Sync Compatible is a FreeSync panel that passed NVIDIA's validation — so it's an open-standard display, at open-standard prices, with VRR that switches on automatically for NVIDIA users and works for AMD users too. It gives NVIDIA owners the confidence of validation without the cost of the module. For the large majority of buyers who aren't chasing a sub-48 floor or reference HDR, this is the correct answer, and it's telling that it's the tier the tribalism never had a good argument against.

The Verdict: Panel Over Badge

After all the tables: the sync badge is the least important thing on the spec sheet. Buy the panel, not the logo. The evidence is not ambiguous — blind viewers can't tell a well-tuned FreeSync Premium panel from a G-Sync Ultimate one, the input-lag delta is under a frame, NVIDIA cards run FreeSync natively, and the only consistent spec-sheet difference testers could find between G-Sync Compatible and unbranded Adaptive-Sync was a default toggle. The war didn't have a winner. The battlefield just became a shopping aisle.

The data-backed recommendation

For the overwhelming majority of readers in 2026: buy a G-Sync Compatible or FreeSync Premium / Premium Pro panel with a VRR window at least 2:1 wide, on the best glass your budget allows, and stop thinking about the sync technology entirely. Prioritize refresh rate, response time, resolution, and — if you care about HDR — the panel's actual measured brightness and contrast. The sync will be excellent either way. Whichever GPU you own will drive it.

Who should still pay for the module

A narrow, honest exception: if your library runs at low and volatile frame rates — 4K with heavy ray tracing, poorly optimized open worlds, late-game strategy titles — a native G-Sync module's sub-48 floor and variable overdrive still deliver a visibly more composed result than a cheap FreeSync panel with a narrow window. That's a real advantage in a real scenario. It is also the only scenario left where the premium is defensible, and it's shrinking as GPUs get faster and open-standard panels get wider ranges. If you fall outside that box, the module is a tax on nostalgia for a war that's already over. Whether that upgrade path runs through an RTX 5080 that's 20% faster for $200 less is a separate — and, in 2026, more interesting — question than the badge on your monitor.

The retro gamer's bottom line

For this audience specifically, the calculus is even simpler. You are not chasing 480 Hz esports or reference HDR. You want scrolling backgrounds that don't hitch and a NES core that runs at its real 60.098 Hz. Any competent VRR panel — G-Sync Compatible or FreeSync Premium, whichever is cheaper the week you buy — plus RetroArch's exact-content-framerate sync solves the problem the badge was never going to solve. Spend the money you'd have wasted on the module on a wider color gamut, a better stand, or another shelf of cartridges. The Machine has run the numbers, and the numbers say the same thing they've said since the checkpoints came down: buy the panel, not the badge, and turn the sync on.