Multisync monitor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A multisync monitor is a monitor that can properly synchronise with various horizontal and vertical scan frequencies. ^[1] In contrast, fixed frequency monitors can only synchronise with a specific horizontal and vertical frequency, limiting their flexibility. Multisync monitors became commonplace as modern computer systems began to support an increasing number of display resolutions.

The term multisync can be somewhat ambiguous. By definition, a fully multisynchronous monitor should be able to handle any set of scan frequencies that fall within its design limits, but many monitors which are referred to as multisynchronous only support frequencies which fall within certain predetermined ranges. When such monitors are sent an incompatible video signal, the result may be an unstable image, no image at all, or in some cases even damage to the monitor.

Fixed frequency monitors, and multisynchronous monitors that only support a set of frequences, may upon receiving scan frequencies outside design limits overheat their transformers. This is especially true for vertical scanrate. Some monitors have protection circuits that will block invalid scan frequencies.