AMD has just revealed its first major update to its driver-level frame generation tech, dubbed AFMF 2. AFMF, or AMD Fluid Motion Frames, is a driver-level implementation that allows games to utilize frame generation without first-party implementation from developers, like NVIDIA’s DLSS 3.
AFMF 2: Up To 78% FPS Uplift
The technical preview driver is now available only for Ryzen AI 300 series processors, meaning you’ll need to own laptops with either the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 or the Ryzen AI 9 365 to get the first taste of this upgrade. According to AMD, AFMF 2 gets a speed boost and further cuts down on latency, while borderless fullscreen support has been improved, as well as OpenGL and Vulkan API support.
With AMD already announcing that Ryzen Z2 is set to launch early next year (which likely is a derivative of Ryzen AI 300 chips), the inclusion of AFMF 2 could be a quick way to gain significant performance, or cut down on power draw if a set performance target has been defined. Users who want to give the new driver a test drive can click on this text.
AMD demonstrated the performance improvement using its Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chip, which shows substantial FPS uplift in various games (though the 78% figure quoted from Cyberpunk wasn’t shown in this chart for some reason). Aside from AFMF 2, the chipmaker also mentioned something called VGM – the explainer of which is right below this paragraph.
Variable Graphics Memory
Besides AFMF 2, AMD has also announced a new feature called Variable Graphics Memory, or VGM for short. This is the first-party implementation of the virtual graphics memory (vRAM, not to be confused with VRAM) that we have seen from the ASUS Zenbook S 16, where users can manually allocate a chunk of system RAM to be exclusively used by the onboard graphics (though a reboot is required to apply changes).
The chipmaker’s implementation allows up to 75% of the system RAM to be drawn to the iGPU, though AMD has made it clear that vRAM should not be confused with shared VRAM, which is what used in existing processors (in my case, my laptop runs the Ryzen 9 5900HX and 32GB of RAM – roughly 16GB is assigned as shared VRAM for the processor’s Vega-based Radeon Graphics).
Given that most systems can manage the VRAM for iGPUs just fine today, what is this setting designed for? The answer is certain games will outright refuse to run if it detects insufficient RAM, since onboard graphics uses 512MB of dedicated memory by default – VGM acts as an override to let the games think there are more VRAM available. AMD noted that certain games with “a lot of memory turnover” can also see a small performance boost, by removing the overflow from the default 512MB memory allocation.
Pokdepinion: VGM is certainly useful given that onboard graphics these days are powerful enough to run AAA titles, so removing this technical barrier is a nice addition.
