Is there anyway to make Frame Gen smoother?

[Mister Shan]

Whenever I use frame gen, it looks like a fake higher frame rate but also looks a little choppy and there is this weird smearing on the edges of the frame. When I use frame gen with FSR 3.0 it looks alot smoother. Is anyone else having a similar experience. My GPU is 3090.

[Gizzmoe]

The edge-smearing is normal, the lower the input fps, the more framegen artifacts there are. Regarding the choppiness, try keeping the GPU usage at 85% or less, use a framerate cap.

[Mister Shan]

Originally posted by Gizzmoe:

The edge-smearing is normal, the lower the input fps, the more framegen artifacts there are. Regarding the choppiness, try keeping the GPU usage at 85% or less, use a framerate cap.

Why do none of these issues seem to exist with the FSR 3.0 frame gen? I do cap the frame rate to half my the HZ of my screen. So for 240hz I do 119. My GPU usage is the full 98 percent. How do you cap something like that? Won't I get worse performance?

[Gizzmoe]

Find a framerate cap that gives you 85% GPU load. It's never a good idea to run the GPU at full load, even when you don't use a framegen.

[Space Detective]

Originally posted by Mister Shan:

My GPU usage is the full 98 percent.

Yeah, that won't do.
Lower video settings in the game, use a lower framerate cap, lower the resolution scale slider in LS, try the Performance mode toggle in LS, one or some combination of those until that GPU usage goes down to around 85% max.

[Mister Shan]

Originally posted by Space Detective:

Originally posted by Mister Shan:

My GPU usage is the full 98 percent.

Yeah, that won't do.
Lower video settings in the game, use a lower framerate cap, lower the resolution scale slider in LS, try the Performance mode toggle in LS, one or some combination of those until that GPU usage goes down to around 85% max.

That's insane. Why is that? Then the game won't look good, so what's the point of all this scaling?

[Gizzmoe]

You wanted advice, we gave you advice. Try those things.

[Mister Shan]

Originally posted by Gizzmoe:

You wanted advice, we gave you advice. Try those things.

I get that. Thank you. I am just not getting why it is the way it is. I did notice when i put it on X2, the load goes down to 88-90 percent and it is much smoother.

Plus asking why it is the way it is helps me figure out if it's even worth it to do frame gen. If the trade off is decreased resolution and quality, then what's the point. I also just like to understand how things work.

[Space Detective]

Originally posted by Mister Shan:

That's insane. Why is that?

It eludes me as to why exactly, but GPUs do not like working at max or near-max capacity; even if temps are good and you technically aren't seeing the FPS drop, you're still getting framepacing issues and latency problems that you wouldn't get if you gave the GPU more headroom.

Then the game won't look good, so what's the point of all this scaling?

It's all trade-offs. Full native resolution with maxed settings and a framerate in the thousands is the ideal (well, ignoring coil whine and power consumption anyway, as well as GPU utilization), but odds are unless your system is overpowered for a given game you won't be able to achieve that.
So, you make cuts to resolution, graphics settings, framerate caps, etc based on your system and preferences until you get something you're satisfied with.

The point of scaling and frame gen is to try to make some of those cuts less painful. Have to play at a lower resolution? FSR/LS1 can make it look much more like native res to the point you may not notice the difference. Can't get 120 FPS without dragging settings to a point you're unhappy with? Frame gen lets you get at least the perceived fluidity of 120 FPS if not the other advantages of a high framerate.
The thing is those features aren't necessarily free; while scaling will almost always perform better than native resolution, frame gen can be surprisingly intensive, and using it may necessitate making compromises on it or elsewhere as a result if you lack the GPU headroom.

I get it can be frustrating that you have to leave some headroom for the GPU, but trust me, it's the best move for a smoother experience overall, and even when not using frame gen.

Basically overall, LS is an additional set of options for how you want to optimize your experience, as well as bringing frame gen to games and applications that don't necessarily support it.

[Lilly]

LS feeling "not as smooth/clean" as FSR3.0 Framegen is kinda just due to the nature of a tool like LS.

In-Game FrameGen like FSR just have different tools and material to work with. They run in-engine so they have much lower latency access to the game's output, and can get the output before things like UI are added.

Lossless Scaling is impressive for what it does, but in the end the only material it has to work with is the resulting frame that the game outputs, which is a lot less than other tools.
If it's worth it depends on the game and on your needs, and while in some scenarios LS can get very close, especially if you follow best practices (like capping to ~85-90% GPU Load so LS has some GPU performance ti work with), it likely won't ever be just as smooth/seamless as native FrameGen just due to the nature of how LS is implemented.

[Mister Shan]

Originally posted by Space Detective:

Originally posted by Mister Shan:

That's insane. Why is that?

It eludes me as to why exactly, but GPUs do not like working at max or near-max capacity; even if temps are good and you technically aren't seeing the FPS drop, you're still getting framepacing issues and latency problems that you wouldn't get if you gave the GPU more headroom.

Then the game won't look good, so what's the point of all this scaling?

It's all trade-offs. Full native resolution with maxed settings and a framerate in the thousands is the ideal (well, ignoring coil whine and power consumption anyway, as well as GPU utilization), but odds are unless your system is overpowered for a given game you won't be able to achieve that.
So, you make cuts to resolution, graphics settings, framerate caps, etc based on your system and preferences until you get something you're satisfied with.

The point of scaling and frame gen is to try to make some of those cuts less painful. Have to play at a lower resolution? FSR/LS1 can make it look much more like native res to the point you may not notice the difference. Can't get 120 FPS without dragging settings to a point you're unhappy with? Frame gen lets you get at least the perceived fluidity of 120 FPS if not the other advantages of a high framerate.
The thing is those features aren't necessarily free; while scaling will almost always perform better than native resolution, frame gen can be surprisingly intensive, and using it may necessitate making compromises on it or elsewhere as a result if you lack the GPU headroom.

I get it can be frustrating that you have to leave some headroom for the GPU, but trust me, it's the best move for a smoother experience overall, and even when not using frame gen.

Basically overall, LS is an additional set of options for how you want to optimize your experience, as well as bringing frame gen to games and applications that don't necessarily support it.

I got my GPU to stay at 85-90 percent by lowering DLSS to perf mode. However, even when I go to X3 the smearing happens even with the same GPU load. I guess X2 is the more stable one? Also the input lag seems way better at this setting! IS that in my head?

[Space Detective]

Originally posted by Mister Shan:

I got my GPU to stay at 85-90 percent by lowering DLSS to perf mode. However, even when I go to X3 the smearing happens even with the same GPU load. I guess X2 is the more stable one?

As the person above says, LSFG isn't perfect. Even proper AMD/Nvidia frame gen has flaws.
Using lower multipliers is recommended to avoid artifacting, yes, but using a higher native framerate is best; it's why you keep seeing 60 FPS recommended as a minimum.

Also the input lag seems way better at this setting! IS that in my head?

At 2X, as opposed to 3X? Well, 3X would be putting more stress on the GPU, so it may not be.
Though there's no inherent latency differences between the different multipliers AFAIK, it's just a matter of how much work your GPU has to do. In fact, if you have the headroom, I think the higher multipliers might be perceptively better since they generate more in-between frames, letting you see the effect of a button press start happening earlier than at a lower multiplier. Not an expert, though.

[DMZ]

Originally posted by Gizzmoe:

Find a framerate cap that gives you 85% GPU load. It's never a good idea to run the GPU at full load, even when you don't use a framegen.

It is a perfectly okay idea to run a GPU at 100%, that is quite literally best case scenario without Framegen, as you are getting max performance from the card, and they are all, and I mean all, designed to run at 100% from start to end of lifetime.

Please don't spread misinformation.

When you use FG, sure, you need headroom to use FG and should run sub 100% utilization.

[DMZ]

Originally posted by Mister Shan:

Originally posted by Space Detective:

Yeah, that won't do.
Lower video settings in the game, use a lower framerate cap, lower the resolution scale slider in LS, try the Performance mode toggle in LS, one or some combination of those until that GPU usage goes down to around 85% max.

That's insane. Why is that? Then the game won't look good, so what's the point of all this scaling?

The point is that the card needs to do extra work to get those generated frames made, and it only has 100% to work with. If you have 98% load during normal game, you will need to lower that load to give LSFG resources to work with, so that it runs with normal game load +~10-15% LSFG load.

If you have a secondary GPU, LSFG can use that for framegen, also useful.

[Örekys]

I use these settings and with frame gen enabled my games feel very smooth.
Sync mode off (allow tearing), max frame latency 1. g-sync on.
Try to at least have 60 baseline fps before LSFG. Enable reflex or add it to your game if there is a mod (Also there is low latency mode setting in control panel). Try to have under 90% gpu usage by lowering settings. Use rivatuner or nvidia control panel to cap your fps. For example if you have 144hz monitor, and the game is very demanding but you can run the game stable 72fps which is half hz of 144hz. Then cap the fps to 71 then do x2 frame gen = 142 fps. G-sync or freesync works best if you have your fps couple fps under your refresh rate. Also turn on "Optimizations for windowed games in Windows 11" setting which gives you lower frame latency in directX 10 and directX 11 games.

[Space Detective]

Originally posted by DMZ:

It is a perfectly okay idea to run a GPU at 100%, that is quite literally best case scenario without Framegen, as you are getting max performance from the card, and they are all, and I mean all, designed to run at 100% from start to end of lifetime.

Please don't spread misinformation.

Late here, but "don't let your GPU work too hard" is a piece of advice that lines up with issues I've heard people having with settings that're supposed to reduce buffered frames actually increasing latency; before frame generation really became a thing, which makes me inclined to believe that it's pretty good advice.
Do you have like, any sort of evidence that keeping GPU utilization at 85% or lower is totally unnecessary, and that 100% utilization has no problems whatsoever? I'm just inclined to better trust the advice of several people I've seen here than a single person.