Lossless Scaling FrameGen Detailed Guide

[Apathiam]

Edit: Updated the guide to be more instructional and informative.

Before you buy it, you should know that "minimum" requirements are for "upscaling" feature only. Although there is no official requirements for "frame generation" feature, you should at least meet the GPU specs under "recommended" for frame generation to work without issues. These specs are currently on par with gtx1060 and rx580. You can still attempt to use frame generation on older GPUs by following the troubleshooting section below.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR FRAMEGEN

After you buy it you need to follow 3 steps before enabling Lossless Scaling Frame Generation (LSFG) properly.

‎ ‎ 1 ➜ You need to set your game to windowed or borderless windowed mode.

‎ ‎ 2 ➜ You need to limit your frame rate with a third party app or if you have it, through in-game fps limiter. LSFG works best if you limit your frame rate to half, 1/3 or 1/4 of your monitor's max refresh rate. The frame rate limit should be 20-30% below your usual in-game frame rates. It should be a stable frame rate, meaning you shouldn't see frame rate drops. I recommend monitoring this at a low fps area.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎➽ I recommend using Riva Tuner Statistics Server as frame rate limiter. You can create profiles for different games on the app for different limits.

‎ ‎ 3 ➜ You need to disable all other overlays. This includes but not limited to Geforce Experience Highlights, AMD Instant Replay etc. G-sync is supported with latest version, make sure to enable it for windowed mode on Nvidia Control Panel.

Once you are done all you need to do is to press ALT+CTRL+S while on the game screen.

TROUBLESHOOTING

➠ If you see an immediate fps drop when you enable LSFG, this most likely means that your GPU isn't powerful enough to run both LSFG and the game together.

➠ If you meet the recommended specs or close to these specs but still not getting exactly 2x or 3x frame rates, follow the steps below. The order of steps is to make sure you retain best visual quality.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ 1➽ Check your GPU load on task manager (Performance Tab > GPU) or HWiNFO to see the % load.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ 2➽ If it is above 95%, try "enabling performance mode" and start lowering your fps limit in increments of 5 until you reach at least 60% GPU use while in-game. Keep LSFG enabled to monitor the difference.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎3➽ If you are still having issues, try lowering in-game graphics settings to lower GPU usage.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎4➽ If the above doesn't help, try lowering in-game resolution to lower GPU load further. You can compensate for this by using the upscaling feature "Auto" setting. If "Auto" doesn't work for you, you can switch to "Custom". If you are unsure what "scaling factor" you should be using, you can ask ChatGPT "What is the scaling factor from (your in-game resolution) to (your display's max resolution)?"

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ 5➽ If none of these help, it means your GPU is not powerful enough to run both LSFG and the game. You can still try on older less demanding games or try using LSFG for non-gaming applications.

➠ Some systems with 4k screens have unusual performance issues with LSFG. Frame generation will always generate frames in the resolution of your screen and not your in-game resolution. Please try to match your in-game resolution with your screen resolution (by lowering it if you need to) if you have issues.

➠If you are still having issues despite meeting the specifications please create a ticket over on the official Discord of Lossless Scaling on #Support channel and please make sure to include "bug report" on your title.

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW

➠ You can use "frame generation" and "upscaling" feature either seperately or together. If you don't want to use upscaling, you can switch "Scaling Type" to "Off" to disable it. If you want to disable frame generation, you can switch the box under "Frame Generation" tab to "Off".

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ➽ AMD FSR and LS1 are currently the best options for upscaling for games.

➠ If you have in-game options for frame generation or upscaling, these may offer better performance and visual quality.

➠ Using any kind of frame generation adds input lag to your gaming experience. If you have Nvidia GPU, you can use Nvidia Reflex frame rate limiter option on RTSS to reduce input lag greatly. On the app, "Setup" bottom left, scroll down to "Compatibility properties" > "Enable framerate limiter" > "async" to "Nvidia Reflex". For AMD, you can use anti-lag on AMD Adrenalin to reduce input lag.

➠ LSFG will be using a portion of your GPU's power and VRAM. Limiting your fps below what you usually play your games at helps reduce this load to make space for frame generation. LSFG isn't meant to double or triple your frame rates as is.

➠ You can use LSFG (and the upscaling feature) virtually on everything. Some of the popular uses besides gaming are emulators, movies, anime, consoles with capture cards, remoteplay, Geforce Experience etc.

➠ You can use in-game plugins. The most popular of these plugins is ReShade.

➠ You don't need to use frame rate limiter if you like to use LSFG for non-gaming applications like movies. LSFG will capture the frame rate of whatever is on the screen and will apply the frame generation on top of it. If you like to use it for movies, especially if you are using VLC, make sure to fullscreen by double clicking before enabling LSFG.

EXTRAS

➠ You can read what most options do if you hover over them.

➠ LSFG works like a screen overlay. It captures the top most element on your screen and applies frame generation over it. This is why you need to disable other overlays, if there are other overlays LSFG may capture these instead of the game and this might cause issues. This is also why you need to set your games to windowed mode as fullscreen prevents screen capture.

➠ If you like to use upscaling feature only, overlays are not an issue.

➠ Lossless Scaling doesn't inject any code to games or applications. It works like an overlay, it is no different than capturing your screen with a recording app. It won't trigger anti-cheat unless it is kernel based anti-cheat and the terms explicitly specify Lossless Scaling.

➠ LSFG will produce better visual quality at 2x setting compared to 3x. The frame generation quality will also be better if you can set a higher fps limit as it will increase the amount of frame information.

➠ Although it is recommended you set your fps limit in multiples of your max refresh rate, you can also set it to whatever limit you want as long as it is within a stable frame rate. If you see problems and unable to set the limit to multiples, you can always create a custom resolution through Nvidia Control Panel or AMD Adrenalin that will allow you to set a limit to the multiples.

➠ For use with display cards on consoles, display cards need to have low latency feature like Elagato's instant gameview feature to minimize delay and input lag. If you don't have this feature, you can also use remoteplay. You will need high speed internet to reduce input lag and delay for remoteplay.

➠ If you want to record with OBS or other software, you need to use game capture and pick Lossless Scaling. Initially, this will show the settings screen. Once you enable LSFG on the game screen, it should switch to the screen with frame generation.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ➽ Recording will freeze if you alt-tab to another program. To prevent this, you can enable multi-dispaly mode under "Behavior" section below Frame Generation tab.

➠ Lowering your native frame rates with a limit and using LSFG may result in making your GPU work with less power and consequently work cooler all the while visually having about the same or more frame rate.

[prtmh]

Bravo

[Gizzmoe]

Nice 👍 A short first feedback, try to make it less verbose without skipping the details, people don't like to read that much ;)

"You don't have to limit your fps in these exact multiples. You can still use any fps limit within the limits of your GPU. Eg. 65fps limit on 144hz display is completely fine."

You should explain that this can lead to uneven frame pacing and jittering, in that case use exact multiples.

"3➽ Try enabling LSFG again when around 60% GPU load."

The overhead that is needed is highly dependent on the GPU, framegen setting and resolution. A better advice would be to calibrate the graphics settings while framegen is running with help of Draw FPS and/or RTSS, so you can see the immediate results and don't need to guess.

[Dreambox]

Great guide, but you don't need to disable g-sync / freesync, Lossless Scaling will just disable it by itself when using the framegen. (actually the other way around, G-sync will stop running because it does not work with an overlay, which is what Lossless framegen is)

[Gizzmoe]

Originally posted by Apathiam:

‎‎ ➠ 2x will have better performance than 3x. Eg. 60x2 will have better performance than 40x3.

That's not correct. It's a 50% fps raise from 40 to 60 after all. On my system at 1440p in Witcher 3:
40/120 x3 Performance Mode Off: 50% GPU usage
60/120 x2 Performance Mode Off: 62% GPU usage
60/120 x2 Performance Mode On: 55% GPU usage

[Gizzmoe]

Originally posted by Apathiam:

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ➠ Older GPUs might not have enough power or vram to be able to run LSFG and games at the same time, especially newer titles. If you see an immediate fps drop when you enable LSFG or see ghosting or too much latency try to follow steps below.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ 1➽ Take not of your GPU load on task manager (Performance Tab > GPU) or HWiNFO to see the % load before and after. Keep it enabled.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ 2➽ If above 95%, try enabling "performance mode" and start lowering your fps limits in increments of 5 until you go below 95% GPU use while in-game. Try to do this in a heavy area where you would normally have lower framerates. than usual.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ 3➽ If you are still having issues, try lowering in-game graphics settings to lower GPU usage.

Like it said, that's a bad way to optimize things, a good detailed guide should contain the following basic informatons, reuse them if you like:

Decide which framerate you wanna reach in a certain game, if it's for example 120fps check in your display settings if your monitor supports that resolutions, then set it 120hz., if not, use another hz setting. The correct hz setting and a correct framerate cap is important for frame-pacing and sync reasons.

Cap your fps to half of your refresh rate either in-game, with the driver or RTSS if you wanna use x2 framegen, or a third for x3, so it's 40/120 for x3 or 60/120 for x2. Simply try out if you prefer x2 or x3. If you use x2 try Performance mode On, it uses less GPU resources and looks good if you have a decent base framerate, for x3 it's best to not use Performance mode.

To see how well LS performs enable the Draw FPS counter in LS and check the numbers in-game. To stay with the 120fps example, if you set your monitor to 120hz and a framecap of 60fps with x2 framegen, a 60/120 framecounter would mean that your system can handle it, the first number is the base framerate, the second the fps you see.

If you only see like 40/80 it means you're GPU-limited (or in some games CPU-limited ), it that case either lower your graphics settings or resolution to reach the desired 60/120. If that doesn't bring the desired results, then use a lower refresh rate, like 100hz, then set the your framecap to either 33fps for x3 or 50 for x2 for that 100hz. Rinse and repeat, until you find the perfect settings for your system and game that you wanna play.

[Apathiam]

This is no guide for every aspect of Lossless Scaling. It is meant as a simple and short guide as possible. Giving every detail would be much much longer. It would be very unnecessary as well.

Frame-pacing is not as important as it is claimed to be. I have used it on 3 different systems so far and the difference between exactly halving fps limit to a custom limit has been almost not noticeable.

There is also absolutely no need to include "enable the draw fps" because it is on by default. How you explain it is only giving all the information mashed together. For people to understand it easier, you need to divide information in simple sections and you shouldn't include more than one aspect on each section, which is what this guide intends to do.

The order the troubleshoot is also going from best visuals to worse. There is really no need to further change that or explain with more details. Actively monitoring definitely helps as you said which is what I changed but further change is unnecessary.

[Gizzmoe]

Originally posted by Apathiam:

It is meant as a simple and short guide as possible.

It's neither short nor simple. Nor is it detailed for the almost 8000 characters it has, and it contains/contained wrong informations.

[Overlord]

Which fps I should lock the game at with 2k 144 Hz monitor? Many of these values 1/2 or 1/3 cant be set in the game. Maybe throuh nvdia control panel.

[Gizzmoe]

Yes, you can also cap the framerate in NVCP, but don't set a global cap, set it for each game individually.

[Apathiam]

It cannot be any shorter without ommiting necessary information, I encourage you to write yourself including every information I included if you believe it can be shorter. Please elaborate on wrong information as well before making accusations. Even before the edit, it never contained a wrong information, edit meant only to shorten the troubleshooting process but changed nothing else.

[Gizzmoe]

Originally posted by Apathiam:

Please elaborate on wrong information as well before making accusations.

That was all pointed out in this thread already, read the posts.

[Apathiam]

Originally posted by Gizzmoe:

Originally posted by Apathiam:

Please elaborate on wrong information as well before making accusations.

That was all pointed out in this thread already, read the posts.

I have. There is nothing wrong with troubleshooting process.

You are also missing out that x2 and x3 performance doesn't just mean the GPU usage. It also means the visual and output quality. You will have worse performance with x2 compared to x3 with same target. Not only there will be less frames to work with but there will also be a lot more latency and artifacting issues. So what I said stands true, you will have better performance with x2 option compared to x3, because LSFG will perform better.

[Gizzmoe]

I know that. Then explain it in your guide, instead of just writing "2x will have better performance than 3x. Eg. 60x2 will have better performance than 40x3.", after all you called it a "detailed guide".

[Apathiam]

Originally posted by Dreambox:

Great guide, but you don't need to disable g-sync / freesync, Lossless Scaling will just disable it by itself when using the framegen. (actually the other way around, G-sync will stop running because it does not work with an overlay, which is what Lossless framegen is)

Glad it's working for you, unfortunately this is not always the case. There have been a number of people I troubleshooted where g-sync did not disable itself and many claimed to have managed to make it working while using LSFG. In the end it was causing random fps fluctiatuons because LSFG was trying to decide whether g-sync frames or in-game frames were the real ones to take it as base for framegen. It was practically the same for freesync and some other apps like AMD Instant View feature or the Geforce Experience's Shadowplay highlight feature.

[Rivaldman]

In my opinion, a guide is the instruction of how to use it, simple, i.e. scenario, settings etc. The very long story is the trouble-shooting and there can be 100 Q&A for LS.

I won't mix up the two.