What's the deal with fake frames (frame gen)?

Posted by kid_ghostly@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 127 comments

I admit my naivety on this subject as someone who hasn't used it as i have an older card. But why is it a bad thing? If the performance uplift is there and it's *indistinguishable* from "real" frames, I feel like I wouldn't care. Performance is performance, I'm not too concerned with how it's achieved. I do understand the shady nature of comparing benchmarks of new cards using it to old cards not using it, but still. Is the hate for frame gen due to their being a noticeable quality/smoothness/ responsiveness drop? I'm looking for education on the subject before my next upgrade in the next year or so.

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127 Comments

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CruffTheMagicDragon@reddit

Frame gen is so dumb. Either you have a nice high frame rate and don’t need it or you don’t, enable frame gen and take a performance hit to “pretend” you have a higher frame rate

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nvidiot@reddit

Frame gen is a good tech, but nVidia has been touting it like as if it's a "real frame, real performance", hiding real raw performance of the card. The worst would be how nVidia openly said how 5070 = 4090 performance, while not mentioning that this is due to MFG tech, not raw performance. So people are hating it on it because nVidia (and gaming companies by proxy) are relying on it as a crutch and how they use these "fake frames" as a "real performance". Also, ironically, for frame gen tech to work well, raw performance is important too. Your baseline FPS should be at least 60 FPS to use this tech. Running frame gen when your raw performance can't hit 60 FPS will make the game experience laggy and weird. Check Gamer's Nexus's 5070 review video -- he shows how when a card (5070) can't hit the needed minimum FPS, it just becomes unplayable even with frame gen.

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Field_Sweeper@reddit

it's no different than just displaying the same frame more than once to fit in the gap of waiting on a new frame to render. The only visual difference is the appearance of movement vs a stutter like effect of the same image being displayed more than once. Since it's all data being created out of thin air, it's essentially useless, just to have a higher number in the frame count. I mean, if you had more counterfeit money do you really have more money? The dif to that analogy here is that those are frames... money, that can't be spent lol. You may as well make the frame a completely random set of color pixels except for the fact that would be visually jarring. Without it, you get the same fps you would without, with the exception of what is counting the frames being shown... If you count only rendered frames it will be the same. ie... it's a scam tbh.

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pacoLL3@reddit

>The worst would be how nVidia openly said how 5070 = 4090 performance, while not mentioning that this is due to MFG tech, not raw performance. This is a blatend lie yet the top comment here. Teils you all you need to know how atrociously bad reddit is. Not only did they say it's due to AI during the key note speach, it was openly communicated on the charts shown at their website. This place is the worst.

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NearbySheepherder987@reddit

Fanboy detected, they write it in a small Grey Text on black Background and still use noncomparable Charts as comparison intending to confuse the customer so they buy the "great new card" while its Essentially the worst 70 Performance in generations

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Character-Storm-3145@reddit

This right here. So many redditors act like experts on a topic yet it's easy to see with comments like the top one that they will often pull things out of their ass and lie

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kid_ghostly@reddit (OP)

Ok that makes a lot more sense. If there's an actual quality issue that's what I wanted to know.

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Extension-Badger-958@reddit

Also the fact that the performance of the 5070 did not equal the 4090 by any means. They straight up lied through their teeth. A lot of the big pc youtube channels released videos about this already like Gamers Nexus, Jays2cents, and Linus

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Ancient-Builder3646@reddit

Yeah, we should call it Framegate. Using software getting artificial results, sounds quit similar like VW diesel gate.

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Vivid_Promise9611@reddit

I think it’s worth mentioning that “fake frames” and upscaling does not look as good as native. Though I have heard many make that claim, nvidia has never claimed that. But dssl 4 is a big improvement and I’m excited to see where the tech goes. Not something I want right now. What really pisses us off is games are starting to require it and you can just tell they are not the quality they used to be. Its too cartoonish and roundish and blocky for me, though which isn’t always apparent

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Current-Row1444@reddit

Games have started to require it for a few years now. Look at Last Remnant 2. Also it's DLSS

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Vivid_Promise9611@reddit

Detecting nvidia fan boy

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Current-Row1444@reddit

LoL this is truly funny as I despise Nvidia. My system is also all AMD

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Vivid_Promise9611@reddit

Oh lol my bad

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thechaosofreason@reddit

It raises the bar for entry into pc gaming as well; you can use framegen on a nice 600 dollar card but it will suck balls. On a 1200-2000 dollar card it feels like cheating. So that's horseshit when games are made around the tech.

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SweetAlex99@reddit

Fake frames don't accept input. Only real frames rect to player inputs.

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NavySeal2k@reddit

You can overanalyze everything and find flaws or like me use it in quality mode and enjoy some extra frames and with freesync it looks great. Sure you loose some milliseconds inputlag but I am not playing competitive but mostly coop like Helldivers or deep rock galactic and with a 6800xt and a 3440x1440 monitor I am glad about every uplift in fps 😋

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trichtertus@reddit

To add to the comment. Frame gen itself needs GPU performance, therefore if you are getting 60 FPS without it, you might get 50 or less natively with it on and another 50 generated frames. This will introduce artifacts and might increase input lag. So now you are trading the downsides of frame gen with essentially an FPS boost from 60 to 100. Of course that is smoother but is it really worth it to get almost buggy like behavior sometimes for that small of a smoothness boost?

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Meatslinger@reddit

There’s that too. Fast-moving elements can produce a “ghost” effect because the frame interpolation (a fast AI model) hallucinates part of the image that shouldn’t actually be there. This can manifest as smearing between frames or a “shadow” of an expected piece of geometry that is then corrected. [The middle of this video](https://youtu.be/5OLq9-L4_lo?t=1m35s) shows it well with scenes from a few different games. Personally, I’ve noticed some particularly dark games will get heavier artifacting than bright ones. Note, the video was about DLSS3, not 4, but also consider that generating 3 frames for every 1 now means 3x more “hallucination” unless the AI is guessing perfectly all the time (and it doesn’t).

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Bluedot55@reddit

So there's two things you gain by going up in fps. One is smoothness- if the camera only moves like 8 degrees instead of 16 in one frame, it looks smoother and everyone is happier, and it's easier to make precise movements because you can see when you look somewhere without it skipping over it. The other in latency. If you have twice the frame rate, there's less time between what you see and what you can do. So if someone pops into view and you'll get a new frame saying that 30ms later, that's not as great as if you got it 5ms later. Or if you turn the camera to look, it's better if it responds quickly instead of if it feels delayed and laggy. Frame gen helps the first one for smoothness, because it is essentially drawing an average frame between two frames. So if the camera was turning 16 degrees per frame, now it feels like 8. But it makes the second one worse instead of better. You still are getting new updates from the game at the same rate, but you need to delay what's actually being shown by a frame so you have a frame of future data to know what comes next. So the typical pairing of input latency getting better as fps goes up is instead backwards here. This really hurts because they fps numbers that many games seem to expect you to use frame gen from are already at pretty bad input latency, so while it makes smoothness passable, it winds up taking latency from bad to terrible

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thatissomeBS@reddit

I just don't understand why anyone would want the work being done for fake frames to not be done on real frames instead. Like, put that effort and research into upscaling, where you still get real, interactive frames. DLSS and FSR are both way better than any frame gen will ever be. The only time I could see it being worth it is turning 120fps into 240fps, but I'd still just rather have upscaling turn 120fps to 150 or 165fps than frame gen to 240fps. My favorite usage of the software and driver stuff is Radeon Boost. When you're trotting around slowly you run at screen resolution, but when the game gets more intensive they switch to upscaling to keep the frames. It allows you to stop and enjoy great detail, while also maintaining frames when you need them.

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DuckOnBike@reddit

Once you hit that reasonable baseline FPS (60+), the effect can be really impressive. If you have like a 240 hz monitor, you can jump from a baseline of 60-80 fps, up to 200+ and it really does look amazing. I’m sure pixel peeping can identify visual issues, but I haven’t seen any IRL gameplay. So IMO, it is a great tech for the 5080 and 5090. Jury is out on how often it will be useful for high end games on the 5070, especially at high resolution.

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totallynotmikey@reddit

I'd like to throw my hat in the ring and say it's a pretty great experience on the 5070ti too, especially in a game like MH Wilds right now, where the game stutters like hell due to a botched Gsync implementation and poor optimization. FG x2 and especially FG x3 on a 60 fps baseline, which I capped for stability, feels really good in a game you play with a controller mostly. The only artifacts I notice is with text at the end of story chapters, where the whole screen dims and glowing text appears; swinging the camera around quickly causes slight ghosting on DLSS 4 Quality, at least at 1440p. I mostly turn it into a joke on the Discord VC, anyway. I've always been one to slam down graphics settings to get higher refresh rate gameplay. Hell, I just came from a 2080 super, so I'm more than used to it in games like Marvel Rivals. Maybe due to that I'm slightly bias given the huge performance leap I've made, but I do think FG, when used PROPERLY, is some really great tech so far, and this is the worse state it's going to be in.

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Pheonix1025@reddit

I’ve used it with a 4070 on my 240Hz monitor, and turning down settings to get to 120fps for an upscaled 240fps looks really delightful

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Massive-Exercise4474@reddit

Aka the annoying pop up in monster Hunter wilds because they know the game isn't optimized.

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grahamulax@reddit

Ah I didn’t know why but I have a 4090 and mh wilds is a beast to play. I don’t use dlss and play with everyone on max at 3440x1440 and 1.5 render scale. I get good frames but not 60 natively stable, but as a vet of low fps gaming (lol) I don’t mind on this game at all. With frame gen on something was weird. I couldn’t explain it but everything seemed muddier or like interpolated at some points. It’s fantastic and works great, but for this game specifically I turned off dlss and frame gen. It’s one sharp looking game, tho uses like 15gb vram. It’s nuts. Turning it off was the clear winner though. It’s a beautiful game to get immersed in and even tho I have a 175hz monitor and could see a huge leap, I juuuuuuust don’t ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ! But anyways, like you said - baseline of 60 or it’s …. Weird. Now I know officially though so thank you!

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Pythonmsh@reddit

Im pretty happy with fg on my 5090. I have it enabled on stalker 2 and it looks great. I can’t notice a difference with it on or off.. that or im too blind to notice.

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Staninator@reddit

That's because you have already likely hit the 60fps threshold that makes MFG viable. Or maybe this was a humble brag about your 5090?

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Pythonmsh@reddit

Not my main intention. I kept toggling it on and off to see if id notice anything lol

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mad597@reddit

I like the option when needed, I have used it a few times on my 5080 to smooth things out while maxing out Quality settings. I would not want to 100% rely on it for playable framerates but it is cool tech that can be useful and is a nice tool to extent the life of GPU's

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WhoIsEnvy@reddit

Idc what anyone says, framegen is fire. Period. It's only an issue when it's literally a requirement (monster hunter)... That's the real issue for me and most logical people... If a developer creates a game that's so unoptimized that you literally NEED framegen just to have a playable experience, then that's pathetic and lazy...period... Framegen should be a want, not a need... Other than that, it's fire...same deal with upscaling...

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Tboe013@reddit

Yea I’m pretty happy with frame gen on my 9070xt, I don’t notice any input lag or anything really that bothers me

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Emotional_Isopod_126@reddit

I'm ok with frame gen but only under specific context and conditions. 1. Games that already run at consistent 60fps preferably native, DLAA or AMD AA or the respective upscalers quality or performance preset 2. Non competitive games 3. Games that use controller, you don't feel input lag as much as compared to keyboard. Framegen is actually very useful for handhelds, where graphical power is limited due to power draw requirements for battery uptime and APUs aren't that powerful. Their screens are also small 7-8" which makes any artifacts, blur or smear not so obvious.

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AMSolar@reddit

Mainly to enhance experience we need lower latency and better picture quality. This is where extra frames traditionally helped. So more frames and higher resolution frames - better. Now picture alterations and enhancing via DLSS reduces resolution and potentially loses some fine 1 pixel details but it works fine because 1 pixel details don't matter. So you can have 4k picture generated from 1080p frame and you getting almost 4k quality for 1080p performance. That is a very nice trade, because the only thing you lose is a single pixel details which we can't really notice anyways. And higher performance means we're getting more frames and lower latency. Which allows us to better see sub second events and react to them. Like in shooters your accuracy goes up with more frames even if you couldn't perceive the difference consciously. But generated frames take away you're frames and reduce your latency dramatically. For example if your game is running at 60fps and you turn frame generation and you get 100 fake fps. But in the process your latency gets worse than even original 60fps. I can't help but see this trade as a lose-lose scenario. I'd rather play at 60fps with better latency than 100 fps fake frames that plays like 40fps. And what do you get for it?

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kodaxmax@reddit

Put simply anything algorithmically generated is going to be lower quality then a frame rendered by the engine and PC architecture. Much like upscaling and compressed media. Imagine if every second frame of a bluray was the quality of netflix of the equivelant resolution. A common example you can try, is to put an image in any editing program(photopea is free) and see what happens when you try to make the image larger/higher resolution. Essentially the program tries to algorithimaclly gnerate the additonal pixels added and makes compunding mistakes. Fram gen obviously isn't resizing anything, but the principle is the same, it's generating pixels based on an existing image. As for whether it's noticable, that really differs by person. Much like the average non game wouldn't tell the difference between 15 and 30 FPS for example, most people don't notice the quality drop. Additonally many consider the quality drop worthwhile for the additonal framerate. But in reality it would be more efficent to simply drop their resolution or other graphics settings. An additonal issue is input latency. Many games like elden ring and monster hunter expect the player to precise within 3 or 4 frames. But with framegen it could take 4 or more frames before you get a real frame that accurately represents what your seeing.

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Party-Astronaut6724@reddit

The more fake frames, the less frames that take your input into account, so while they make it smoother they dont make it more responsive. MFG at low framerate does not save it. Played cyberpunk and absolutely maxed everything and got 40 fps with frame gen, but it felt like 15. Image is smoother but not gameplay and it matters. So performance is for sure not equivalent if you compare with mfg vs single fg, like in the nvidia charts.

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Patient_Spare_2478@reddit

You just need a good starting fps.. if you are getting 40 fps with frame gen then you need to turn down some settings to begin with. With a base fps of 60, putting multi frame gen x4 on I get over 240fps and it feels amazing, the latency isn’t noticeable at all

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Party-Astronaut6724@reddit

Yeah that's pretty much what I was getting at for op, that latency will still match the real frames and not the fake frames. I'm pretty aware that frame gen is good tech after 60-80ish base framerate. I just gave him an example of how fake frames and real frames differ. I depend on it for cyberpunk as even with a 4080s, 3440x1440 with rtx sends me in the 60s lol

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BilboShaggins429@reddit

Try playing a game at 15fps and you'll take back that statement

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kid_ghostly@reddit (OP)

Yeah, no point in a higher theoretical frame rate if it doesn't feel higher.

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ThatOnePerson@reddit

There is a way to make fake frames that takes into account your input. It's widespread in VR, because otherwise lag makes you motion sick. Nvidia are implementing it with their Reflex 2, but no games support it yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8piCZz0p-Y shows it off

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Skeleflex871@reddit

Except motion smoothing/ASW in VR is considered pretty crap and it’s mostly used as a crutch, the standalone headsets need it because they cannot output max resolution with stable frame rate. The issues with warping a frame like that is your camera motion will feel smoother, but any action in-game, such as interacting with a prop or shooting a gun will still feel like slower. It’s why in more active VR games you see people disliking it, it prevents motion sickness but it feels like your movements are tracked slower and more sluggish. I believed it was mentioned in a recent DF Direct, but Reflex 2 works by warping a “real frame” with input data, and right now there’s no way to warp a frame thats interpolated, so Reflex 2 does not solve (or work) with frame generation in its current form. I’m sure NVIDIA will work it out somehow in a couple years but even then I cannot imagine FG + Reflex 2 feeling better or anywhere near artifact-ridden as traditionally rendered frames.

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GenghisFrog@reddit

I don’t get why some people get so religious about it. Rendering has always been full of hacks and tricks to make things faster, smoother, and look better. This is just another version of that.

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CompCOTG@reddit

It's ass because if your real frames aren't good, then the frame gen sucks.

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Aggressive_Toe_978@reddit

You can interact with genuine frames, you tell your character to jump and during those genuine frames he jumps. You can't do this with fake frames. If you tell your character to jump you won't see it start until the next genuine frame. The ai is just looking at the frames super quick and guessing pretty accurately at what is happening but gameplay isn't affected until genuine frames.

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NickMalo@reddit

First, nice party ghost profile pic! Second its being used in marketing to misinform consumers that cards are performing much better than they actually are. If it was advertised as a side addition, instead of dressing up the card as “being equal performance to the highest tier card of the last gen”, wed be having a different conversation. It feels very smoke-and-mirrors of these tech companies (Nvidia)

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pacotac@reddit

Personally MFG has been great for me. I have not noticed any visual artifacts or excessive input latency. I think most of the negativity around it is due to Nvidia using it deceptively in their marketing.

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LengthMysterious561@reddit

It isn't indistinguishable from real frames. Both Nvidia and AMD framegen have a LOT of artifacting. You'll see parts of the image break up in motion. It really doesn't look good. A lot of people say you don't get artifacting if you have over 60 fps to begin with but that isn't true.

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LemonOwl_@reddit

It isn't indistinguishable. I've tried it. It's feels the same as the initial fps number but way more blurry and laggy.

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KillEvilThings@reddit

It is NOT indistinguishable, but it is IMO less noticeable if you're using it on native resolution and NOT DLSS/FSR. It also adds a LOT of latency. Like a fuckload. If you have a good CPU nvidia reflex and AMD's equivalent can make up for it a good deal, but not always. Also diminishing returns. 500 FPS when **monitors at those speeds barely exist/aren't even accessible** is a fucking dumb ass thing. 60-120 is huge. 120-165 is noticeable but not game changing. 165-240, even less so. And that's **without** fake frames.

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CanadaSoonFree@reddit

Most just ayyyymd fans trying to bolster themselves.

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hear_my_moo@reddit

I don't like the premise of frame generation and if I can go through my life never having to use it then I'll be happy. I think it's become/becoming a lazy shortcut for hardware software developers to 'claim' high frame rates with unsuitable hardware/software. It doesn't aid the experience unless your frame rates are arguably high enough that frame gen shouldn't really be necessary anyway. It's more BS 'ai' technology dancing around the notion of real progress instead of just sitting down and properly solving design questions for real.

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Atiturozt@reddit

In slow paced games it's a good thing. Since I got the card I played 2 games. In Alan Wake 2 maxed out I get 30 fps. Frame gen makes it 100+ and playable. In Plague Tale 2 I get 100+ fps but sometimes cpu bottleneck kicks in and both gpu usage and fps drops to 60s. Enabling frame gen fixes it. For me. Frame gen is a must have feature.

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JamesGecko@reddit

Note that enabling frame gen at 30 FPS makes the game slower to respond to input. In your example Alan Wake 2 _looks_ nicer but is actually _less_ playable.

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alex9zo@reddit

Gen z showing off 250 fps (22 fps native, upscaled from 480p) on their 1080p60 monitor

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Redericpontx@reddit

2x frame gen is pve games is fine I use it in monster hunter wilds since it's so poorly optimised but give you the equiverlent to 50 ping or a 0.05s input delay. 4x framegen give you the equiverlant of 200ping or a 0.2s input delay so wouldn't recommend in anything real time. Pvp don't touch it at all massive disadvantage. It gets hate because some developers such as capcom with mhw use it as a excuse for poor optimisation and nividia likes to count it as real performance.

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Minimum-Account-1893@reddit

Nvidia got hit with criticism hard for frame gen, even before all the claims. It began with the 40 series, and the accusation of "fake frames, we want raster". Ironically, I've never seen FSR FG or lossless scaling called fake frames, and have actually never heard anything except praise, and even bragging about all the extra performance. Double standards, and tribalism is what most of the noise is. People want so badly to sell AMD GPUs, as if AMD isn't a corporation just like Nvidia. Even if the tables were to turn... the end result would be the same. 2 corporations being corporations. The whole thing is silly.

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Warskull@reddit

Frame gen is good tech, but it is more of a win more tech. They are fake frames so they don't improve response time. This means you want to already have roughly 60 FPS base before turning on frame gen. In addition the higher your base framerate they better framegen is. Higher base frame rates mean the time a fake frame stays on screen is shorter. Nvidia specifically says, aim for 60 before turning it on. Developers are crap at graphics lately and abuse the tech. Monster Hunter Wilds is encouraging users to use frame gen to hit 60 FPS. So that means you are still playing a crappy 30 FPS. Frame gen shines when you have a 200+ Hz monitor and you can use it to push very high framerates to further combat motion blur. There are some very nice 4k 240Hz monitors now and you aren't reaching 240Hz without frame gen. If you can you DLSS to push 80 FPS and then use framegen to triple it then it works pretty well. You'll see opinion change as more people get cards capable of good frame gen and higher refresh rate monitors to support proper use.

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smurfsmasher024@reddit

Im a big fan for it on single player games. It does increase gpu latency, but as long as it sticks bellow 50ms its not noticeable. For online gaming i just use pure rasterization for lower latency. As far as visuals go outside of some light artifacts and the pretty rare screen tear dlss 3 is good, dlss 4 is great. The other thing to consider what dlss support games you want to play have. Not all games support all frame gen or upscales.

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-haven@reddit

Along with the other answers, I simply do not wish for it to become a crutch for game developers to care less about game optimization. It's a great tool on the side but it should never be the default go to option. For instance in the new game Monster Hunter Wilds, the game tells you at first launch when you are setting it up to turn on frame gen.

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-Xserco-@reddit

Frame gen as a bonus - Excellent Under delivering on basic stuff such as... actual performance... actually REASONABLE Vram uplifts... better BUS... ANYTHING. - Trash Nvidia is lying about MSRP, charging nearly 1K for sub standard uplifts in GPU quality and performance. Claiming that 5070=4090. Being sloppy on safety tests and even quality assurance. And then going "but the AI though 🥵". Meanwhile Nvidia gives you 16GB vram and goes "yeah it's whatevs" and Intel 12GB. It's not about AI or fake frames stuff, it's about the lack luster everything else. May aswell buy a PS5 if things keep up like this.

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Nihlathak_@reddit

I’d be happy to take double the fake frames of an already high framerate. Modern games (considering the bad optimisation going on) is hard to run at 144fps ultra, but if I could get it to 60-80 and fake the rest to hit 144 then that would be Nice. The 5070 on the other hand seems to be «well, if you get 30 fps we can give you 90». Framerate has diminishing returns, so it’s more important that we have the first 60 as real and fill in the gaps for 120, rather than having the first 30 and generering 90.

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SneakySnk@reddit

The problem with generated frames comes mostly from latency. It is absolutely horrible to use, although it might look fine visually. For example, Aiming on stalker 2 was impossible for me with frame gen, although it looked waay smoother (and visually far worse). It really isn't the same as a real frame, and Nvidia is marketing it as it being the same performance, when it really isn't it makes game feel so unresponsive. It's not a bad tech when you need more FPS, like on lower ends cards, but it really shouldn't be a thing on high end IMO, it's like running the game at lower resolution just to get playable FPS, something I'm willing to do on my steam deck, but not on my $600+ GPU.

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pacoLL3@reddit

>It is absolutely horrible to use, although it might look fine visually. Most quality YouTube outlets like Digital Foundry say the exact opposite. Frame gen provides impressive results in certain games and settings. >It's not a bad tech when you need more FPS, like on lower ends cards, Again, the complete opposite is true. Framegen works best if the game is already running fine but you want to reach higher refreshrates of like 144Hz in demanding games.

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SneakySnk@reddit

Seems like some of points need more explanation. > It is absolutely horrible to use, although it might look fine visually With this I don't mean that it is flawless, but with a quick glance a lot of people won't notice the difference (although with a side by side or just playing for a few minutes it is obvious) > It's not bad tech when you need more FPS *I* don't see the point in using it when you have good enough frame rate already, I really notice the artifacts it produces, it severely affects the graphics quality for me. I'd rather have 80 good looking frames, than 200 shitty ones, same applies for XeSS, FSR3, and general TAA. The only time I saw decent results with frame gen, was a few months ago with Elden ring on my steam deck, used a frame gen mod to get to stable 60FPS, and it was fine, while looking horrible, but 60 FPS while on my work trip without a PC, Probably helps that Elden ring is kinda heavy/clunky feeling already. So I mostly see it being useful when you can't reach stable 60 FPS, when you want to trade visual quality for frame rate. I'm not talking about where it technically works the best, because I've tried it and it was really bad,

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ThatOnePerson@reddit

> Again, the complete opposite is true. Both can be true: Framegen can work best if the game is already running at a high framerate, **and** lower end cards that run games terrible can be made more bearable with framegen. You can see this especially in /r/ROGAlly where they love [lossless scaling](https://www.reddit.com/r/ROGAlly/comments/1id4yek/any_one_here_using_lossless_app_in_their_ally_is/)

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sunjay140@reddit

>If the performance uplift is there and it's indistinguishable from "real" frames, I feel like I wouldn't care. It's not indistinguishable. That's the point.

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kid_ghostly@reddit (OP)

Yeah i realized I really meant to emphasize the "if" and not the indistinguishable part. That's what I get for posting at 2am lol. That was what I wasn't sure about, and pretty clearly got my answer here

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Tarean_YiMO@reddit

technically explanations aside, personally, if frame gen and "fake frames" make up more than 25% of the total frames, I can feel noticeable input lag.

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CentrifugalMalaise@reddit

Frame gen is pretty cool. I’ve had good times with it. Even at lower base frame rates. Nvidia’s marketing of frame gen is fucking ass. I think that’s what causes a lot of the negativity.

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AetaCapella@reddit

Upscaling is better, more proven tech with fewer drawbacks. At the moment frame-gen can only make a great card perform Greater, it can't make a Mid-card great. If your card isn't ALREADY hitting 60 FPS then fram-gen results are a mess and janky AF. Which is why them touting the 5070 at 4090 performance was really scummy thing to do. Yes the numbers are there, but actual gameplay is janky AF. ONLY using upscaling on the other hand does wonders (if you have a CPU that can handle increased frame output).

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Piotr_Barcz@reddit

All it is: visual smoothing, nothing more, it's just super advanced motion blur basically but instead of making the image from one frame bleed into the next it just makes a bunch of new ones to put in between to sort of blur the lines but it works like a charm if you're starting at 60 fps.

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misteryk@reddit

>If the performance uplift is there and it's *indistinguishable* from "real" frames, I feel like I wouldn't care That's the whole point, there is HUGE difference. Even if you make 120FPS out of 30FPS the game can only take inputs during those real 30 frames resulting in a massive input lag.

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Cake_and_Coffee_@reddit

So far i been using it to constantly hit my monitors refresh rate, feels great example: when i get an average of \~140 fps with dips down to 100( the beauty pf modern games) i turn on framegen and get constant 165 with straight as an arrow frametime graph (nvidia's frame gen) I also tried looseless scaling MFG in souls games and you both start to notice the visual glitches after a while and the input lag is there of course Messed up my parrying muscle memory

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Sushiki@reddit

Frame gen usually comes with or is paired with things that mean artifacting (minor), ghosting, motion blur and motion clarity loss. It's also usually only good at 4k, as the above is mostly noticeable at 1080p. So a tech that was originally advertised as helping old pcs play newer games is now a tech forced on older pcs that makes games look worse than stuff from 5 to 10 years ago while encouraging people to have to spend an arm and a leg to go the 4k route, becoming an absolute contradiction of the original marketing. It also screws over a small part of the gaming community that every year slowly grows, those who suffer motion sickness, as motion blur is a known trigger from some. While the tech, and things like taa, have their uses, devs are going all in on it while not using the tech properly and using frame gen to replace optimisation. They are also forcing it, especially in unreal 5 games, which isn't good. Visit subs like /r/fucktaa to learn more about it bro.

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Clever_Angel_PL@reddit

worth noting that, while standing still, they may looks as good as real frames, but start flicking your mouse like in fps game or roll in an RPG and your character gets extra legs and your sword gets a second blade

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husky_hawk@reddit

It’s not at all “indistinguishable.” The 1% lows are abysmal and I couldn’t stand it after 20 minutes. Disabled it and prefer to play at lower true FPS.

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dulun18@reddit

fake frame is how they can charge you a premium for barely any improvement.. 3 fake frames for 1 actual frame.. how about i give them 3 fake dollars for 1 actual dollar ? it's a fair trade imo this is why i see no point in upgrading for 3-5 years..

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kid_ghostly@reddit (OP)

Yeah. If I had a 3080 or better I'd probably stay put for another generation or two. But I have a 3060 TI, and 8gb of VRAM isn't gonna cut it pretty soon. I'm on 1440p, and I can still run most of the games I want to play just fine. But that's not gonna be the case for much longer.

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janoDX@reddit

If you have a 3080 or better just go for Lossless Scaling and play the games that way. It's funny how a $6-7 app on steam can create Frame Gen with ease and for every game and you only need a good card with at least 8GB or more.

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Sturmx@reddit

Lossless scaling isn't really a good comparison. It's good for video but pretty terrible for gaming. If it's all you know then sure by all means. But it feels significantly worse than even the 40 series frame gen.

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Same_Salamander_5710@reddit

I second lossless scaling as well. For me, I play with a laptop i7 (1165g7, 4 cores, but with 6700xt as an eGPU) which sometimes isn't enough to get more than stuttery 60 fps in some games (Metro Exodus EE DLC comes to mind). With losslessscaling operating primarily at the GPU side, I can limit fps to about 45-50 fps and double it with frame gen, essentially giving me smooth motion that would otherwise not be possible with my CPU. So yeah, it can be used to overcome CPU bottleneck, provided you can still achieve a base ~45+ fps. Even for games that technically can play at base 90 fps, LS frame gen @45x2 can help give a smoother gameplay if the game by default has frame pacing issues (The Outer Worlds for me; also maybe due to weak cpu). Note: I have a 100 Hz monitor, that's why the examples are all with ~50 fps. And now LS has adaptive frame gen, where you can select a target fps, and LS dynamically adds frame gen to hit your target even if your base fps fluctuated. This wouldn't work well if you have a single GPU and the fps drops are due to 100% GPU load, but for non-GPU bottleneck scenarios, or for general videos, or if you're using a dual GPU system to run LS, this is amazing.

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markcorrigans_boiler@reddit

Nvidia's frame gen tech absolutely wipes the floor with AMDs, therefore this sub hates it. If AMD had it and Nvidia didn't, you can guarantee it would be hailed as a huge breakthrough and everyone would be getting damp just thinking about.

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pacoLL3@reddit

Wish i could upvote you twice. We can literally see it with FSR. Suddenly upscaling is great and super important for reddit. Before we knew FSR4 was good, reddit was hating on DLSS.

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hardrock527@reddit

Take your favorite beverage and double it by adding water. Sure there's more of it but is it really more enjoyable? Some people say yes because it's more filling while others will say it's not as flavorful.

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pacoLL3@reddit

This is not how frame gen works whatsoever.

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Milam1996@reddit

Frames that are generated are like dead images. You can see them but you don’t feel them they aren’t responsive. Actual frames are alive and respond to your input. Now if you have 200 real frames a 200 dead frames you still have the responsiveness of 200fps but if you’re frame generating to 60fps and only 20 frames are real then the game is still going to be clunky, even though it says 60fps. The real actual issue is the marketing. Advertising a 5070 as the same as a 4090 is basically fraud. Imagine if you went to buy a Ferrari and then it’s a 1.2L engine from a smart car and they’ve just put Ferrari body parts on it.

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Desperate-Minimum-82@reddit

It's a future tech being sold to us now What I mean is that in the future, frame gen will be better then normal rendering, when the latency issues can be improved and the visual quality is not really noticeably different The problem is Nvidia is trying to sell us this tech and pretend it's already at that point when in reality we still have at least another few generations to go

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kid_ghostly@reddit (OP)

Interesting. Kinda how they shoved hardware ray tracing down our throats before it was really a playable feature in the 20 series.

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ThatOnePerson@reddit

> Kinda how they shoved hardware ray tracing down our throats before it was really a playable feature in the 20 series. That's a chicken and egg problem though. If there's no ray tracing hardware, no one is going to make games for it.

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Desperate-Minimum-82@reddit

yea similar there and just like with the 20 series with RT, it feels like frame gen is the only improvement Nvidia is making with the 50 and 40 series

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Elliove@reddit

Apparenly, some people just refuse to eat artificial synthetic frames created by the GPU, as opposed to natural frames created by evolution and found in the wild.

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k-tech_97@reddit

It's a weird subject. Basically, framegen looks mostly good, that is, nvidias framegen looks good. But there is a caveat. Your input still runs on native framegen. So unless you can get a good base framerate, framegen will feel reeeeaally bad. Nvidia marketing is very misleading as well. They show in their slides how they boost frames from less than 30fps to over 120fps. But playing a game like this would not be fun at all. Also, if your base frame is too low, then the AI, which guesses frames, starts making mistakes due to not having enough real data, which results in artifacts. For example, in cp 2077, street lights start to be very blurry and look wrong. So all in all it is only viable for people with very high refresh rate monitors who can already get 90+ fps and who want to fill out their crazy 240hz monitor refresh rate

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matiegaming@reddit

Definitely overexagerated

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Regret_NL@reddit

My only experience with framegen was in Stalker 2 and honestly I hated it. While yay the fps counter shows more fps, it feels like thrash while playing.

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tahaan@reddit

The frames may be fake, but there is something else here. A lot of people confuse high frame rates with good playability and claims that 200fps is better than 100fps. The reason it seems this way actually isn't the frames per second itself. When your CPU is able to keep up with the high frames, it is generally also able to keep up with everything else that happens in the world. In short it translates into responsiveness, or what people sometimes describe as input latency. Fake frames move some work from the render thread to the GPU. This frees up the cpu to do more work on the main thread. And as a result, the game is possibly more responsive. Games are supposed to be multi-threaded, and the main thread and render threads are in fact separate threads, but there is a high degree of syncronisation between them, i.e these two threads are often waiting for each other. The render thread needs to get the udpated world status from the main thread in order to process the next frame. So if the GPU can guess the next frame (using ML/AI/whatever) then you can get the high frames that marketing and misinformation taught people they need. But at the same time the GPU while processing the next frame generation is seen as "busy", meaning the render thread doesn't have to generate a frame update, meaning that in effect it doesn't need to pause the main thread for an update. TL:DR To some degree the extra work on the GPU frees up the render thread, which eases the sync-load on the main thread, which can translate into a more responsive game without compromsing the number of frames you see.

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tubular1845@reddit

Frame gen isn't performance. You don't get the reduced input lag and better responsiveness that comes with higher framerates, you actually get increased input lag. It also has artifacts and errors. You just get smoother gameplay without any of the advantages that comes with getting natural performance normally.

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firedrakes@reddit

dirty secret is consumer tech cant handle games in native ,high fps,no real high rez assets etc. they manf realize consumer would not be willing to pay for cost to make it. so they started fake everything now. at the 360 era of gaming. be it console or pc.

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Radromity@reddit

Frame gen increases FPS but adds latency, making games look smoother but feel less responsive. Great for single-player, not ideal for competitive play

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popop143@reddit

"Real" frames are frames made through the game's engine. "Fake" frames are frames inferred by the GPU depending on what the game gave as a real frame and the GPU inserts these fake frames in between real frames to basically boost the number of frames that's outputted. Problem with it is that adds latency on what you input to the game to when you see it on the monitor. There's also cases of artifacting when sometimes the GPU makes wrong assumptions so the frame inserted is somewhat disconnected to the next frame. AI helped with being better at the inference of what the frames should be resulting in Nvidia's MFG (multi frame generation) where the GPU basically inserts THREE frames in between two real frames, basically making it almost 4x FPS (almost because the process still takes some performance). People don't really like it because most people play competitive games (just check the Steam Charts and basically DotA and Counterstrike have the most players) and the additional input latency is more detrimental than the more "smooth" framegen experience.

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cubine@reddit

Using it to go from 60 to 120 or 72 to 144 is generally fine, because it still feels fairly responsive even with the minor latency hit. Any lower and the combination of low base frame rate PLUS the added frame gen latency feels pretty terrible. So basically it can make good base performance look better but it won’t fix bad base performance.

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I_Stay_Home@reddit

Not needed in many games but it makes some much more playable by smoothing out rough edges and inconsistencies, Starfield for example.

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kid_ghostly@reddit (OP)

Stanfield needs a lot more than frame gen to fix it imo.

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I_Stay_Home@reddit

I didn't it say fixes it. You should read the comment imo. Edit: Nobody cares about edits, just edit.

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time-lord@reddit

One thing I haven't seen anyone mention yet, is that frame gen means that the GPU (and drivers) are creating the image, not the game. So _your_ 100fps will look different than your friends' 100 fps using a different driver version, or your other friends' 100 fps using a newer AMD card. If games are an art, framegen is like wearing blue light filtering glasses to see the Mona Lisa. It may make you more comfortable, but from a purist point of view it's by definition wrong.

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Choconolait@reddit

Artifacting is super noticeable at the time, but this is getting improved after updates, so it will become less of the problem in the future. The problem that is systemically unfixable is, however, input latency and responsiveness problem. Usually, higher the FPS, higher the responsiveness. But since your input is only represented in native frames, it is not the case in FG. That is, if you are playing games in native 60 fps / 120 fps after FG, you are still getting responsiveness of 60 fps even though you are getting smoothness of 120 fps. In this example of 60 -> 120 fps, you would still be able to enjoy the game unless you are playing competitive game where every ms matters. But in the situation where you are unable to natively run the game in playable fps, FG can not "improve performance" by making the game playable. In other words, you need to be able to run games in playable state without FG for FG to work, but if the game was already playable in the first place, do you really need FG? FG is more of an alternative to motion blurs. It's a feature that improves smoothness with marginal performance hit, but doesn't help with responsiveness of the game.

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OHMEGA_SEVEN@reddit

Frame gen under 60 produces noticeable artifactifng. There's to camps of people: those that prioritize framerates and those the prioritize visual fidelity.

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speedycringe@reddit

It is a bit overblown, that’s true. But there’s two caveats; 1) performance uplift is at the cost of latency. They aren’t real frames it’s images injected between frames. This means there’s additional latency 2) with additional latency it isn’t a way to brute force fps with software. If you are generating 18 frames per second, and try to inject MFGX8 you have 144 fake images for every “real” image. You’re essentially still at the same laggy feeling, because you’re still only generating 18 frames, it may smoothen it out but the lags and latency will still creep in. It isn’t a perfect solution and in many cases it’s used solely so bigger number = better but doesn’t make *frame time* inherently better. It can smoothen games out but it can also make them dramatically worse. The new frame generation is impressive and in a sense kinda addresses these issues but also exacerbates them as well. A side note: the issue isn’t DLSS but multi-frame gen. DLSS is ai assistance in rendering, DLSS + MFG is where fake frames are put into place. DLSS *traditionally* introduces artifacts and ghosting, again the new DLSS transformer model does a great effort to mitigate and fix this. But DLSS increases frame rate so there’s a trade off. The tl;dr is for single player games where you’re getting around 40fps frame gen can be nice. For multiplayer games latency can kill you. Even if it’s incredibly minor.

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118shadow118@reddit

>my big problem with frame generation is only select AAA games even buy into it. Many of the titles I play don’t have any DLSS integration, period. You can’t sell a GPU on the premise it’s really good if you have games that like its software. It would be like if they only released drivers with no big fixes, just game tweaks, but only for games Nvidia likes. While not as good as built in frame gen, there's also Lossless Scaling. And AMD has its driver-level AFMF frame-gen. Those two work on pretty much any game.

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speedycringe@reddit

Yeah, I theorize Nvidia is going to purchase lossless scaling or license it somehow in the next year or so if they can’t replicate its versatility. That developer is doing something truly incredible. I haven’t used it myself, but I’ve seen its capabilities and for a team that small to make MFG that widely versatile is insane.

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kid_ghostly@reddit (OP)

Thank you. This is very informative. If those inflated FPS numbers come at the cost of crappy latency, then that is absolutely not equivalent performance.

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speedycringe@reddit

Exactly, I think in many cases it can smoothen out the gameplay still. People who shout fake frames into the air need to understand frame generation does have utility and likely will only get better. But it isn’t perfect and it does introduce latency. Definitely not 1:1 with a frame generated directly through GPU rendering. [this video inadvertently shows it](https://youtu.be/g5TVfSStWqk?si=x6NvExeuhcvNnekr), but you can see it’s a test about reflex but with frame generation on there was introduced latency to the system. But it is so fast, it may be imperceptible to the average human eye. So it is overblown a bit, especially for single player games, but it is a thing and it enrages a lot of people.

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kid_ghostly@reddit (OP)

I know Nvidia definitely started the fire with their 5070=4090 claims, and to be fair, the way they've treated consumer for a long time is pure fuckery. So I understand the hate against that type of marketing 100%. The truth seems to lie somewhere in the middle of Nvidia's BS and the pure blind hatred of frame gen

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speedycringe@reddit

Perfect analysis!

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118shadow118@reddit

The paradox of frame-gen is that it's only really usable for those who are already running a pretty decent fps

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118shadow118@reddit

>f you are generating 18 frames per second, and try to inject MFGX8 you have 144 fake images for every “real” image. You’re essentially still at the same laggy feeling, because you’re still only generating 18 frames, it may smoothen it out but the lags and latency will still creep in. It's actually worse than that. Frame-gen itself uses a bit of performance, so if you start with 18 fps, with frame-gen you'd probably be down to like 15 fps base framerate, making the whole latency thing even worse

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speedycringe@reddit

Good point!

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ButterscotchFar1629@reddit

They are all fake frame ffs. Your GPU is literally generating the frames that you see on your screen.

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2uantum@reddit

Pure copium.

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ButterscotchFar1629@reddit

What exactly am I coping with Princess?

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2uantum@reddit

You're a betrayed fanboy.

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ButterscotchFar1629@reddit

Who betrayed me? Hmmm?

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kid_ghostly@reddit (OP)

That's my initial thoughts. If the frames look good I don't care if the GPU is using AI to generate them.

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Blackarm777@reddit

It's okay as long as your FPS without frame gen is at least 60. But I will also say, it causes instability for my system when I use it. When I use frame gen, my PC sometimes will just crash and reboot. Sometimes after hours of playing Cyberpunk, or sometimes instantly like a few weeks ago when I tried switching it on in Marvel Rivals to test it out. I don't have a system crash unless I'm playing a game with Frame Gen on. I've just decided I'm not going to bother using that feature with my 4080S. DLSS with the new Transformer model is good enough for me.

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ScornedSloth@reddit

It is not a performance uplift, but a frame smoothing technology. You wouldn't say that a game performs better if it had 1000 fps but took a whole second between the analog stick moving and the character moving. That's essentially what's happening with frame gen, but it's not a whole second difference. Now, for single player gaming on a high refresh monitor, it may be a better experience for many people, but it's not simply better performance. It works best if you already have a decent framerate (close to 60 fps or better). Much less than that, and the game will feel bad with frame gen on

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kanakalis@reddit

it looks best if you can maintain 60fps to begin with

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2106au@reddit

It has some uses where the base frame-rates are high enough to have a great experience with latency but also low enough where the motion smoothing matters. Pretty niche. Because of this it is pretty understandable that there is backlash where it is over hyped. There is a weird gatekeeping though where some of the PC community are pretty staunch that pure native is all that matters.

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