DLSS 3-style freebie frames up for grabs
FSR 3, AMD’s framerate-roiding answer toDLSS 3 frame generation, is ready to roll in its first supporting games. Great! Except these are currently limited to tedious magic shootersForspokenandImmortals of Aveum, which is less great.
Regardless, this could be a major moment for basically any moderngraphics cardthat isn’t an Nvidia RTX 40 series model. FSR 3’s Fluid Motion Frames system works in a broadly similar manner to DLSS 3, piecing together whole new frames outside of the usual GPU rendering pipeline and slipping them onto your screen between the ‘real’ frames. The result (in theory – I’ll be trying FSR 3 out in depth next week) is higher FPS with no extra strain on your PC, and unlike Nvidia’s frame generation, it doesn’t need any specialist hardware to work. Therefore older cards, as well as recent AMD GPUs like theRX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT, could get a new lease of life in games that support it.
That’s on top of the usual FSR upscaling, which is a performance helper in its own right. All in all, FSR 3 looks like a handy set of tools for older and/or non-Nvidia PCs, and AMD even claim that its latency reduction measures make upscaled and frame-generated games react even faster than they would at an untouched native resolution. That’s very interesting indeed, given the main drawback of Nvidia’s AI-based frame gen is a rise in input lag.
We’ll see, which for me means returning to at least one world of wisecracking sorcerers. Future FSR 3 games remain undated, but we know the likes ofCyberpunk 2077,Like a Dragon: Infinite WealthandWarhammer 40000: Space Marine IIare all down to clown. AMD have also just announced thatEVE OnlineandPax Deiwill be getting it patched in, too.
While that leaves the total games count at a mere 14, owners of Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards can also try out a driver-level version of Fluid Motion Frames that opens up the technology to a more well-stocked library. In addition to launching FSR 3, AMD havereleased a preview buildof their AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition software, including an early version of Fluid Motion Frames that can work with games that lack full FSR 3 support. Again, I haven’t tested this yet, but if you’ve got a compatible GPU you can have a go right now – big names likeStarfield,The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, andHitman 3are among the readied games.
FSR 3 arrives mere days afterDLSS 3.5, the latest version of its Nvidia rival. The latter adds a nifty “Ray Reconstruction” feature that improves both visuals and performance in path-traced games, though between the lack of supporting games and the sheer graphics power needed for path tracing in the first place, it is something of a luxury add-on. Hopefully FSR 3, with its platform agnosticism, will benefit more players.
