DF Weekly: FSR 3 frame generation comes to consoles - and we've tested it

Another week, another episode of DF Direct Weekly (hence the name) and this episode was actually split into two recording sessions. Normal filming occured on Friday morning, but at around 3pm, Ascendant Studios in association with Enduring Games, finally released its AMD FSR 3 frame generation upgrade for Immortals of Aveum. Initial testing from myself and John Linneman confirmed that it’s in, it’s working and it’s well worth talking about, so I put together some data and assets and we added a second part to the Direct. And here it is!

As a proof of concept for console frame generation, Immortals of Aveum is compelling, but let’s first deal with the basic details. Similar to Nvidia DLSS 3 frame-gen, AMD’s take works on buffering up an extra frame, on top of the one last rendered, then inserts an interpolated frame between them. In a best case scenario – basically when you’re CPU-limited with GPU cycles to spare – you’ll double the frame-rate from the host system, so a 60fps game becomes a 120fps game. However, when you’re GPU-limited – as is almost certainly the case with Aveum – gains will be lower.

The plus points are obvious though. In the case of Immortals of Aveum, which tends to run at between 40fps to 60fps, the experience moves beyond the 60fps limit and into HFR (high frame-rate) territory, making the game more compelling for those with 120Hz displays. However, there are minus points. Interpolated frames – particularly those sandwiched between two very different frames – will lack the fidelity of standard frames. Also, the process of buffering up an extra frame adds latency… and that will be the time taken to generate the extra frame along with the time taken to calculate the interpolated frame.