Frame generation: a primer on why many people who have tried it out like it.

It has all the benefits of higher framerate, such as motion clarity and smoother animations, at the cost of a small amount of input lag. It's great for getting past cpu bottlenecks and/or filling out your monitor's high refresh rate. Combined with required Reflex support on Nvidia, the ml framegen works very well.

I use it on my 4080 mobile notebook even in multiplayer like bf6 because I can't feel the latency difference with my base framerate of 90. This gets me to the smoothness and high motion clarity of around 170fps on my 240hz screen. 5xxx cards can get higher framegen multiples; I only have 2x due to being on a 4xxx chip.

Yes, there are some cases it doesn't work well in (particularly, you want 60-70fps before using it, but it also isn't perfect in every game, though it works well in most). However, it's generally a great way to get better overall image quality and performance. There are rare generally invisible artifacts but even when they're visible, it's only there for a fraction of a second and isn't intrusive.

I'd say it's probably best as a "filler" to act as almost a counterpart to adaptive sync to keep your refresh rate high, and I mean 200+ FPS high.


Nvidia showed off 30FPS gameplay saying that this unlocks a 5070 to 4090 performance, when that sets a VERY bad expectation. People who tried to use frame gen to turn sub 10 FPS gameplay into 30FPS gameplay would have an absolutely abysmal experience.

In reality it's something that makes good performance better, not make poor performance good.

Yeah it's not a performance boost, that's the thing, and where the "lying part" is. It's essentially just another graphic setting you can enable to massively improve motion clarity and fluidity, but actual performance is worse because of the cost of it (if CPU bound, the only cost is latency, otherwise it also costs real frames).

But we do often have games nowadays that already run well enough (60+ fps is fine for most people, especially single player or non competitive multiplayer), frame gen is of course a very nice addition there, I use it a lot. In summer, I've even used it on less demanding games as a way to reduce power draw to survive the hottest days without AC Works really well on modern GPUs that have become so efficient.

But if a game runs bad, frame gen won't make it run better, that is what really needs to be understood. It can make it look better... maybe? At low framerates the visual artifacts from FG are atrocious however, along with the latency. At some point even a controller player on a slow TV will notice, if we're talking 30fps base framerate...

Yeah not a fan… not particularly useful with a high base frame and atrocious with a low one. I don’t mind it as a feature you have the option of turning on or off but I feel like it’ll be a race to the bottom as far as shitty game optimization is concerned.

I'd love to be able to play with it more even though I loath the prospect of any more input latency.

It seems like the technology is used to take advantage of the same people who got upset at letterboxing in the old days of widescreen media, but read the Q3 timedemo benchmarks and wondered why 300fps didn't look as smooth as they thought it would on their 75hz CRT.

It depends on the game, but I typically like it. I'm only pushing things from around 70-80fps to 100-120fps, though. It offers that little nudge to get to the smoothness I really want.

Just a while ago I was visiting my friend, continuing our campaign of boardgame Agemonia, and then he showed me his new gaming rig (with 5090, I am jealous) and Arc Raiders game which he is hooked in. He is not that well versed with technology but I did see his framerate, well over 200fps in 4k. I did tell him to go to the graphics settings and turn off the Frame Generation and also turn down the DLSS from DLAA to Quality or Balanced to make up for the "lost FPS". Thankfully this game also allows you to keep Nvidia Reflex on even if FG is not. He noticed instantly how much more responsive the game is. I explained to him what these technologies were, Frame Generation being bit of a cheat to boost FPS numbers but that comes with a clear cost. Useful for games where speed and responsiveness isn't mandatory but if they are then you are better of without it.

In his case, his gaming experience in Arc Raiders improved when that shit was turned off. It was just because he did not know any better. He was a prime example of people Nvidia preys on with their marketing. He even realised that himself, he had watched some reviews of the card and of course he had seen the videos hyping up the MFG and now realised it was all bullshit... No matter, he still has the best GPU on the market and the game looked glorious and ran fast even without FG.

MaZa said:

Just a while ago I was visiting my friend, continuing our campaign of boardgame Agemonia, and then he showed me his new gaming rig (with 5090, I am jealous) and Arc Raiders game which he is hooked in. He is not that well versed with technology but I did see his framerate, well over 200fps in 4k. I did tell him to go to the graphics settings and turn off the Frame Generation and also turn down the DLSS from DLAA to Quality or Balanced to make up for the "lost FPS". Thankfully this game also allows you to keep Nvidia Reflex on even if FG is not. He noticed instantly how much more responsive the game is. I explained to him what these technologies were, Frame Generation being bit of a cheat to boost FPS numbers but that comes with a clear cost. Useful for games where speed and responsiveness isn't mandatory but if they are then you are better of without it.

In his case, his gaming experience in Arc Raiders improved when that shit was turned off. It was just because he did not know any better. He was a prime example of people Nvidia preys on with their marketing. He even realised that himself, he had watched some reviews of the card and of course he had seen the videos hyping up the MFG and now realised it was all bullshit... No matter, he still has the best GPU on the market and the game looked glorious and ran fast even without FG.

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What was his base framerate? As I said, it doesn't work well until you have 70ish base framerate, so if he had over 200 with 4x multi framegen, that means he was probably at 50 or less . So, of course it would feel sluggish at that. If I were him, I'd try dlss q and 2-3x framegen. It would probably be a better overall result even further.

I haven't really seen much VRR flicker ever since I got first OLED monitor but with FG my OLEDs visibly flicker - also indicating uneven frame delivery.
Input lag rather than decreasing increases using FG. Reflex can be used without FG BTW.
Perceptually it is even worse because with given frame rate I expect certain responsiveness.
Then you get artifacts which you otherwise don't get.
And these fake frames don't quite look correct anyways. Don't feel like how games feel with higher frame rate.

Lastly I don't see any point.
Maybe not most desirable visual effect but lower frame rate has more 'cinematic' look to it (note: even 60fps will feel more cinematic compared to 120fps) which isn't entirely bad. Certainly it doesn't look out of place on many 3d games.
If I don't get any benefit from higher frame rate and instead get higher latency, issues and artifacts then I don't see any point.

GoldenTiger said:

I can't feel the latency difference with my base framerate of 90

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Ok so your perception is terrible...
...is it really worth making separate thread about?

I don't know about that, I get far less VRR flicker with FG on. Like, that's literally my solution to it. On 120hz WOLED, I use FG to combat VRR flicker & near back gamma shift (60fps looks bad in darker games), and it does that job perfectly. Even on a 4090 I get great pacing, and supposedly 5000 cards do it even better.

It works great in Grounded 2. I get around 30-40 FPS with my 4090 at 4k EPIC settings but jumps to an avg of 60 or so with it turned on. It gives a much better experience than not having it on. I am not noticing any extra latency with it on. This is the only game I've used it on though. The graphics in the game, especially the lighting are amazing.

Frame gen gives added smoothness, but at a cost. I usually prefer it off as there is almost always some visual artifacts, that are noticeable when you are used to playing the game with frame gen off. Also not a fan of increasing the latency of the games either. It feels like choosing between smother rendering, but with some artifacts and worse mouse input lag.

I am more sensitive to input latency than framerate. I can live with around 55-60 fps average in most SP games and for multiplayer I want the lowest latency so I just turn down settings. Frame gen is usable from a base framerate of around 50 fps, but I usually do some tweaking to get the FPS to around 60, rather than use frame gen.

Will be interesting to see how their updated model performs and if it can get rid of the worst artifacts. DLSS has some artifacts, but they are usually very hard to notice and it also improves parts of the visuals, when compared to TAA. Another benefit of DLSS is that the higher framerate actually improves input latency in most scenarios. DLSS 4.5 allows for upscaling from lower resolutions with much less degradation than prior models so I generally just go to a lower rendering res, rather than using FG.

I can't notice any increase in latency at all with Nvidia Reflex enabled, even in online FPS shooters. I consider FG to be an absolute game changer in an era where the cost of PC hardware is going through the roof, especially outside the USA.

For me, it depends on the game, some look better than others. Two that I've tried recently are Hitman 3 and Satisfactory. Hitman 3 initially had some odd flickering issues that looked like VRR flicker. Hower putting a framerate cap fixed those. It now looks great. It lets me have RT turned on, and still get frame rates in the 150-200+ range which are nice and smooth. Satisfactory is unusable. Any bright lights in the game flicker pretty rapidly, makes it totally unusable. It isn't a VRR flicker, it is literally the lights themselves. Might have to do with the HDR mod I'm using but either way, can't play like that.

For games I played longer ago we can take Cyberpunk and Hogwarts Legacy. Cyberpunk it is pretty mandatory for full path tracing and a good frame rate. Even with upscaling, there are still times it is getting in to the 40s which is doable but looks pretty choppy. Framegen fixed it nicely and looked great. I really didn't notice any issues and it made the game look very smooth despite being insanely cranked. Hogwarts Legacy I was thinking the same thing. It has ray tracing and RR and it hits pretty hard so maybe use it there. Nope. All kinds of artifacting with the HUD which is just distracting as hell in gameplay. Better to just turn off RT (particularly since it has some other issues in that game) than to deal with.

It's not a magic "game go moar faster" technology, but it can work real well, particularly on high FPS monitors. On a 60Hz monitor I'd argue it is pretty worthless. You don't really want to run a base 30fps rate, I'd rather run at 40 with no FG than 60 with it. For a 120Hz monitor it is useful but more situationally. If the game is struggling to go above 60, I'd look at it. Cap your fps and use it. However if the game can get much past 60, particularly to 80 or 90, then no take the native frames and the increase in responsiveness rather than aa few more generated frames. On a 240Hz monitor it is more generally useful. Not a lot of new games are going to run anywhere near that max, and plenty don't even get around 120. If your game is below 120 all the time, turn it on. Take the extra fluidity, unless it has visual issues in that game. Also the higher the input framerate the less issues you tend to have.

This will only be more true with even higher refresh monitors. You are going to have a real hard time finding games that can render at 500fps, even at 1440p with visuals turned way down. So turning it on to get the nice fluid motion that monitor can have is a real consideration.

It's not that complicated; 240+ Hz displays are very common now and FG is just meant to make use of these displays and it works well for that. On many newer games and future games, you're not going to get 240+ FPS or even half that even on a 5090 or future flagships without DLSS upscalling and/or frame generation.

I really enjoy it on the games I've tried it out on so far on my 5080. Swapping back and forth the input lag is not perceptable to me if the base framerate is 50+ already. Digital Foundry recently pointed out that in some of the games they tested the input lag is actually lower with Reflex and 4x MFG on vs Reflex off with no FG, so non-Nvidia hardware is going to have more input lag at a given frame rate vs Nvidia's MFG with Reflex.

Yea, but you can use Reflex without FG too (and should).

Comparing FG+Reflex vs no FG+no Reflex is a marketing trick, not real world scenario. You always want Reflex when it is available.

AMD and Intel have some latency reduction tech too, though I have no idea how rare or common it is in actual products, but that's another can of worm. However with nvidia commanding 90% of the market, the reality is the vast majority of gamers do have Reflex, which even works on old GPUs like Pascal and Maxwell.

XoR_ said:

I haven't really seen much VRR flicker ever since I got first OLED monitor but with FG my OLEDs visibly flicker - also indicating uneven frame delivery.

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Reflex has been busted in more than a few games, on release. And some of them haven't really had it fixed, either.

Another problem is that some games work better with a render queue. Activating reflex forces Nvidia's "Ultra" low latency setting to axe the render queue (and then Reflex takes over handling frame delivery).
For those games, when the engine's render queue is cut out from these features, you start seeing pretty big swings in the 1% lows. And that can cause flickering on OLEDs and some other monitors.

For me Indiana Jones with PT combined with Frame Gen is the best gaming experience. Very Nice! On Doom, no PT and no FG is best for me mainly due to lag. Having. 240hz OLED made a big difference on using FG, 120 hz it was virtually pointless.

I would prefer Nvidia to just give us native BFI.
Simple solution for OLEDs that would improve motion clarity the same as FG but without any processing lag.
Of course some monitors have BFI but this due to technical reasons is much much worse where it comes to lag compared to what GPU driven BFI could be.
Especially on faster monitors GPU doing BFI could be used to really dial in duty cycle.

Of course OLED monitors could implement strobing in much better lag-less way but GPU driven BFI would still have some advantages and most notably latency.
More importantly someone like Nvidia adding BFI should be absolutely trivial thing to do.

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BTW. IMHO GPU makers should treat displaying games on monitors just like they treat VR
In VR we already had reprojection with FG ages ago. Read FG where next frame was estimated and not interploated.
This tech looked more like lossless scaling's frame generation than DLSS FG but it was fast. It had to be otherwise people would feel sick.

Lag on display creates the same sensation in me - feeling sick.
It is just not as impactful and is more passable.

Reflex 2 is a lot closer to the VR reprojection tech than what we had till now. Sadly nvidia seems to be having troubles with it, it's been a year and no news. But that will cut down latency massively and make games feel a lot better to play.

When it's needed it doesn't work because of input lag, when it works it's not needed because the base FPS is already enough for a smooth experience. Instead of snakeoil tech like this just give me raw performance please.

Fake Frames Marketing

Wonderful.

haste said:

It works great in Grounded 2. I get around 30-40 FPS with my 4090 at 4k EPIC settings but jumps to an avg of 60 or so with it turned on. It gives a much better experience than not having it on. I am not noticing any extra latency with it on. This is the only game I've used it on though. The graphics in the game, especially the lighting are amazing.

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You’re absolutely getting added latency. And was a base fps of 30-40, FG is utter garbage.

WilyKit said:

You’re absolutely getting added latency. And was a base fps of 30-40, FG is utter garbage.

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It's not a twitch action game... The added smoothness is clearly preferable in his opinion to the small input latency increase with FG and reflex compared to no FG or reflex. You do realize, of course, that many find it acceptable to play at that latency, since that's why consoles run full time... right?

M76 said:

When it's needed it doesn't work because of input lag, when it works it's not needed because the base FPS is already enough for a smooth experience. Instead of snakeoil tech like this just give me raw performance please.

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It's good for when you're hovering around 60-80 FPS but you have a high refresh rate monitor. I can definitely tell the difference between 60 FPS and 120 FPS.

But no, it's not a magic bullet that will make 30 FPS playable (unless you really, really don't care about massive input lag).

GoldenTiger said:

It's not a twitch action game... The added smoothness is clearly preferable in his opinion to the small input latency increase with FG and reflex compared to no FG or reflex.

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This is something I do not get about the "fake frames" people that want everyone to hate frame gen. Why can someone not like it and find it useful? It seems like every time there's a new technology some people are complete stick-in-the-muds about it. Nobody is allowed to like it, use it, want it, etc. It is bad and should be shunned, etc.

For those that get all worked up about latency, few things to keep in mind:

1) Not everyone is playing a competitive twitch shooter. In fact MOST people aren't. Lots of people enjoy games that aren't super latency sensitive. This idea that all anyone is playing CS:GO and tryharding on the ladder is silly.

2) Smoother visuals may be more important to someone's enjoyment than lower latency. It is a look vs feel tradeoff and that is something that is going to depend on the person, and the game. It is not wrong to decide that the smoother looking experience is what you want instead of one that is slightly more responsive.

3) Depending on the person, and just how fast a frame rate we are talking about, you may not notice much anyhow. I was playing around with Hitman 3 and I really don't notice the difference. With RT off, the game is a really fast one, usually in the high hundreds and even pushing over 200fps quite a bit. So realistically about as fast/low latency as I am going to have on my system with a 240Hz monitor. With RT reflections on (shadows hit too hard and I don't notice them as much) it drops way down, only maybe 80-110fps. Turn on framegen and usually I'm at 150-200fps (sometimes more). It looks super smooth... and I just don't notice the latency difference. I know it's there, the slower base FPS combined with the generation means there is more latency, but in that game I just don't feel it.

4) Not everyone has super low latency hardware anyhow, which means the difference will be less noticeable. Not everyone is rocking a 1000Hz mouse, a 500Hz monitor with sub millisecond processing and so on. If the hardware itself has 10s of ms of lag, and the game engine ads 10s more... you may not really notice another 10ms from framegen.


It's not a magic technology, but it is also not crap. Any time I have a game where I'm maxing visuals and not reliably staying above 120fps, I'm going to try it and see how it looks. Doesn't always work, as I said my latest obsession is Satisfactory and it causes massive flickering of the lights in the game so totally unusable. No problem, I'll keep it off. But I see no reason not to use it when it works well. Particularly with a game like Cyberpunk 2077. That game really is transformed by path tracing, it looks amazingly different and better. But it hits HARD. So DLSS at balanced or performance and frame gen is a must to give a smooth experience. Though that does come with tradeoffs, they are worth it to me to have those amazing visuals.

GoldenTiger said:

It's not a twitch action game... The added smoothness is clearly preferable in his opinion to the small input latency increase with FG and reflex compared to no FG or reflex. You do realize, of course, that many find it acceptable to play at that latency, since that's why consoles run full time... right?

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He didn't say I find it acceptable to play with added latency, he said there is none. You do realize, of course, the first is personal preference, the 2nd is quite simply a false statement... Right?

EDIT: I will append instead of editing what I originally said because I do now see he said he's not "noticing" any added latency. Which is fine, but mind blowing to notice it being smoother while not noticing the added latency with a 30 fps base frame. For me, I don't even have to look for it, it's far more noticeable than any smoothing effect it has

WilyKit said:

You’re absolutely getting added latency. And was a base fps of 30-40, FG is utter garbage.

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It's the only game I've used it on and I honestly don't notice a difference. It's just a casual game anyway

This reminds me of the CRT days, back then I could always tell if someone had it set to 60 or below. I couldnt stand anything that low and would always try to have mine set at least 100, and lowest I could stand was 80-85. I had friends that had theirs set at 30 or 40 and it would cause me physical pain as I could see the blinking and flashing. They seemed to think it was fine though, and were happy with what it was set at. They didnt notice any difference when I set it higher either.

I honestly think a lot of people can not sense or feel lag, while some people are very sensitive and notice every flaw. I know when I did finally replace my CRT as no cards supported VGA anymore, the LCD I replaced it with always felt a little wrong at 60. I lived with it until samsung came out with their high refresh monitors, and bought one to replace it. Its not the same as my old CRTs I still use, but it feels better than the older LCDs do.

I think a lot of these people saying frame gen is great honestly dont notice anything wrong, just like my old 30hertz CRT friends were. They just dont see or feel anything wrong, and wonder why people are getting so worked up about this great software. Then on the other hand are the super sensitive people that notice every flaw, and it physically bothers them. They do not understand how the other people cant see what they see, and how terrible it looks to them. Then there are the people that fall in various degrees of either group, that only notice small things or can live with it.

I just figured I would throw this out here as it seemed relevant, and maybe get people to understand each other better.

Different people are going to have different tolerances for lag for sure. The level you will notice, or care about, may differ greatly from someone else. Just like any of our senses. Some people have better color sense than others, or better hearing, etc.

Also different people just care more or less about something. CRTs are an interesting example because I noticed flicker largely being gone at 75Hz (I could see it at 60Hz) but an 85Hz or 100Hz signal did look a little better. However, it wasn't something I cared that much about so if a monitor couldn't run it, or if there was another problem (my last CRT got a little fuzzy at 100Hz) I'd trade off for lower scan rate. Though I have to ask, how did your friends set their CRT to 30Hz? I never encountered a computer that would allow a rate so low. You could get interlaced modes on some old monitors, but I never recall seeing 30Hz, ever, in the CRT days.

Though I will say another thing you have to be careful of: Thinking you can perceive a difference because you know there is a difference. We see this in the audio world ALL the time. Someone will swear they can hear a night and day difference between expensive and normal speaker wire yet can only do so when they know which one is being used, they can't do it blend. They believe there's a difference so their brain tells them they can hear it even when there is no difference to be heard. Same can be true with things like lag. While the difference is real there, unlike audio BS, does that mean you can actually notice it? You say "of course" but then you've never really tested it. You haven't run tests to see how much additional lag is required before you perceive it. You could well say "This feels more laggy," because you have been told it is and thus your brain is biased to think that.

MavericK said:

It's good for when you're hovering around 60-80 FPS but you have a high refresh rate monitor. I can definitely tell the difference between 60 FPS and 120 FPS.

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I have a 75Hz monitor, so framegen is about as useless for me as it gets.

MavericK said:

But no, it's not a magic bullet that will make 30 FPS playable (unless you really, really don't care about massive input lag).

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30 FPS is more playable than 60FPS achieved with framegen.

From my experience you need at least 90fps to make 2x still feel comfortable, and either v-sync off or a 240hz + monitor with vsync/gsync. And it's a god send for CPU limited games.

I play almost exclusively Guild Wars 2 which is massively CPU limited. In some big fights no one is getting over 20 fps regardless of cpu or gpu, so this immediately becomes 40fps which makes a very notiable difference, and since the game is feeling so laggy at that point anyway, the input lag doesn't feel noticvably bad. Outside of those moments, I need a good 90 fps which I do on my 144hz TV by using fastsync with g-sync (which you can do btw! ). If I set it to pure v-sync/g-sync, then the game only runs at 72fps (doubling to provide preceived 144fps) but it's just that's just a bit too laggy. 90 fps was the standard for VR and I'd say the same applies with this tech, which means 180hz monitor minimum if you need vsync on.

Yes, there are many variables where FG can be useful or have a downside, sometimes adding artifacts or input lag can be too much for the game. But yes, it's better to have it than not have these "technologies."

What I found is that some things can "add artifacts." Since I'm switching my processor from 9700x > 9800x3D, the AMD 3D V-Cache Performance Optimizer driver in Device Manager cannot be updated and remains at (with an exclamation mark), so while I realize what this "device" is in most games, when I enable Nvidia FG, I get a lot of artifacts around some objects. So, when I figured out what this device was, I had trouble installing/reinstalling its driver (I had to use a third-party program), but everything looked much better with FG enabled after that.
I mention this because it means that some people who have a problem with "something" in Windows will simply say how bad FG is, but in fact they will have another problem.

The only time I used it is with Clair Obscura Expedition 33. That game seems to be optimized rather poorly, although it is a very pretty game.

Everytime i use Frame gen theres extra ghosting... and internal lag so i use it only for sp games.

The irony is that FG is simultaneously Nvidia's best consumer-friendly feature and their best marketing trick. It keeps older cards relevant longer (good for us), but it also lets them sell weaker cards at higher prices because "just turn on FG bro" (good for them). The 5070 at 12 GB basically depends on DLSS + FG to justify its positioning.