macOS 12.0 Monterey now supports monitors with variable refresh rate / FreeSync. If you have a compatible monitor give it a try in Displays settings then change Refresh Rate to Variable. You may need to turn FreeSync on in your monitor settings first and you must use DisplayPort, HDMI does not support it. Enjoy!
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So… no real issues with Monterey, then?
I turned on freesync but have confirmed it literally does nothing. no behavior difference from 11.x
Still only fixed refresh rates in display settings on an AMD card connected to freesync monitor on display port
Still no refresh rate matching in any applications. monitor confirms refresh rate locked at 120 regardless of fps of game/app that has vsync enabled (which should hand off to metal for handling)
Also apples documentation doesn’t specifically mention freesync, just varaible refresh rate which is used by their proRes displays in macbook pro. even googling doesn’t confirm freesync just speculation, but not a single apple doc mentioning it.
All those articles that copied and pasted same assumption after WWDC, had no confirmation and you won’t find any article after june that says macOS supports freesync (because pretty sure it doesn’t)
Too bad you can’t get it working. I had to turn on 4k 144Hz settings and FreeSync setting in my monitor to get Variable to show up in Displays settings. It of course wont work if you can’t select Variable refresh rate in Display settings. I can confirm that once I selected Variable refresh rate it works in WoW using the display’s frame rate counter.
Edit: For reference the Ars Technica review titled: macOS 12 Monterey: The Ars Technica review, has details on how to set it up. I can’t link here so that’s best I can reference.
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I wonder if having a second display that’s NOT freesync compatible causes it to be unavailable. like macOS won’t enable it for just one display even though they each have their own refresh rate options.
Nope, disabling second monitor doesn’t fix. Something is definitely wrong with apple spec, they aren’t following it to a T.
Freesync works no problem in windows boot. I even read the article you mentioned. All it says is to have an up to date AMD gpu (pretty sure an 6900XT is up to date), a display port 1.2 connected monitor and freesync enabled. It’s a display port 1.4 monitor and freesync is enabled.
macOS still can’t detect it.
what’s more annoying, mac os 12 still didn’t fix the annoying bug where every reboot it sets desktop pictures to default when using more than one display (because it assigns them new unique display Id every boot instead of remembering them) That’s been broken since big sur.
Sounds like a bug in Apple’s implementation unfortunately. This is the first version, hopefully they fix it in a future release.
Here’s the section of the Ars Technica review on Adaptive Sync.
One thing they mention is that Intels integrated GPUs didn’t support Freesync until fairly recently. So if you’re running on a Mac that has both an Intel GPU and an AMD discrete GPU, you might not see the variable refresh rate when it’s using the Intel GPU.
But yeah, it’s a .0 release. I think I’ll wait for 12.1.