News World DF Weekly: AMD's AFMF 2 driver frame generation update is worth a look

This week we have another jam-packed edition of DF Direct, with our latest thoughts on Star Wars Outlaws, impressions of Nobody Wants To Die and the Visions of Mana demo, and a look at how ray tracing will be introduced to the next wave of EA Sports titles. The focus of this article, however, is the release of a new technical preview for AMD's Fluid Motion Frames technology – AFMF 2. This is the Radeon team's second attempt at driver-level frame generation, and if you get a chance, I highly recommend checking it out.

First of all, let's get any caveats out of the way: driver-level frame generation can never match the quality of frame generation from Nvidia DLSS 3 or AMD's FSR 3 alternative. These technologies are deeply integrated into game engines, allowing for much higher fidelity in the generated frames. AFMF is essentially FSR 3 without the extra information the game gives away, so basically works similarly to Smooth Motion Interpolation in TVs. The game frame is rendered, then another is held, and then AFMF interpolates an “intermediate frame” to be inserted between the two.

Since AFMF can only work with screen area information, it has to make a lot of guesswork in a very short amount of time, so more artifacts and errors will occur. However, similar to other frame generation techniques, the generated frames effectively create strobe effects between standard rendered frames. The higher the base frame rate, the faster the strobe effect and the less noticeable the artifacts are. AMD usually states that 60 fps is a good base frame rate for FSR 3, so it stands to reason that AFMF needs a higher base FPS level to better hide its shortcomings.

• 0:00:00 Introduction
• 0:02:01 News 01: Gameplay preview for Star Wars Outlaws!
• 0:14:31 News 02: Nobody Wants To Die impresses
• 0:23:05 News 03: EA Sports titles receive RTGI
• 0:38:55 News 04: PS VR2 drastically reduced
• 0:47:47 News 05: Visions of Mana demo released
• 0:55:47 News 06: ROG Ally X in the benchmark test!
• 1:03:40 News 07: AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2 introduced
• 1:17:45 News 08: Destiny 3 not in development
• 1:25:51 Supporter Q1: Could you compare in-home streaming services like Steam Link?
• 1:33:01 Backer Question 2: Where is the ray tracing update for Minecraft console?
• 1:38:56 Backer Question 3: Could upcoming consoles feature more bespoke hardware?
• 1:46:42 Supporter Q4: Do developers deserve criticism for not optimizing their games, or are more demanding titles simply a consequence of the advancement of graphics?
• 1:54:37 Supporter Q5: Why was x86 not adopted for earlier consoles?
• 1:58:27 Supporter Question 6: Could Microsoft release its backwards compatible Xbox titles on PC?
• 2:03:29 Supporter Question 7: Is the display of the M4 iPad Pro good enough for Oliver?

The reality, however, is that an acceptable base frame rate varies depending on the content you're feeding the image-generating technology and the user's perception. I was OK with the FSR 3 implementation in the console versions of Immortals of Aveum, where the frame rate was often in the mid-40s. And even with AFMF 2, Hellblade is a slower game, so that same mid-40s base frame rate worked well enough to boost the frame rate to the high 80s and early 90s. In my testing with an LG CX OLED display with variable refresh rate support, capping the base frame rate at a maximum of 57-59 fps kept me within the VRR window and the results were fine. I was able to play Control at 1440p and upscale to 4K at medium settings with all RT features enabled and the experience was fine.

Due to its driver-level status, AFMF's framerate gain factor can only be accurately measured via AMD's own software-based framerate counter, Adrenalin. However, there's nothing wrong with running a standard FPS counter at the same time, which basically gives you the base framerate before AFMF does its work. This is an interesting way to get a real-time view of the FPS boost you're getting.

We've already looked at AFMF in version 1.0 and while we were aware of its limitations, we could see the potential. Overall, however, we found it hard to recommend it because the effect is disabled in scenes with fast motion – where artifacts might be most visible – causing the frame rate to swing between two extremes. In my testing with a Radeon RX 7900 GRE, this is not the case with AFMF 2.0. Yes, artifacts are more noticeable, but it's better than simply turning the effect off.

AMD has made many other changes and improvements. Improved quality in frame generation is achieved at 1440p or higher. There's a performance mode that lowers quality but ensures a smoother ride with integrated graphics, making it good for gaming handhelds – particularly the Asus ROG Ally with its variable refresh rate display. With AFMF 2, AMD also claims input lag has been improved compared to the first iteration – and it even offers multi-GPU support, offloading frame generation to an integrated graphics solution and allowing a discrete GPU to focus solely on the game. Radeon Chill can be used to limit the output framerate – good for VRR displays that would otherwise experience screen tearing outside the VRR window (I used my Riva Tuner's FPS limiter in my testing and it worked fine, but Radeon Chill should give better results since AMD would have worked directly on its integration).

I'm also impressed that AMD has expanded support by integrating OpenGL and Vulkan API, in addition to existing support for DX11 and DX12. This is great, but I'd like to see it expanded even further – as Alex's recent post on frame generation with lossless scaling showed, being able to apply frame generation to very old games definitely has its advantages.

So how far have we come with AMD Fluid Motion Frames? We first saw a demo for AFMF 1 at Gamescom almost a year ago, and the demo we saw wasn't bad. The idea of ​​driver-level frame generation sounded like a bad idea – and that first iteration had some issues – but ultimately, as a value-added feature where the user has nothing to lose by trying it out, we couldn't help but praise AMD for giving its users more options. AFMF 2 can't completely fix the inherent limitations of the technology, but this second iteration is definitely worth a look if you have a high refresh rate display. And yes, it's good enough that I hope Nvidia follows suit with a driver-level solution of its own. Driver-level frame generation has its issues, but the more options PC users have, the better.