NVIDIA is going all-in on AI generated pixels and frames when it comes to games, whether you like it or not – but a big caveat is that Frame Generation is limited to RTX 40 series, while Multi Frame Generation is locked to the latest RTX 50 cards. Is the limitation down to hardware? Possibly, but NVIDIA hasn’t ruled out the idea of backporting them into older RTX cards.
Frame Gen For RTX 30 & RTX 20 Cards?
During an interview with Digital Foundry, NVIDIA VP of Applied Deep Learning Research, Bryan Catanzaro, has discussed the idea of expanding Frame Gen support to unsupported RTX GPUs, namely the RTX 30 series (Ampere) and RTX 20 series (Turing). In his words:
I think this is primarily a question of optimization and also engineering and then the ultimate user experience. We’re launching this Frame Generation – the best Multi Frame Generation technology – with the [RTX] 50 Series, and we’ll see what we’re able to squeeze out of older hardware in the future.
Bryan Catanzaro, VP of Applied Deep Learning Research, NVIDIA
So, Ampere and Turing GPU owners rejoice? Hold your horses. Officially, the reason Frame Gen works on the newer cards but not the old ones comes down to hardware capabilities. Tensor cores play a big part in creating those AI pixels, and RTX 40 series cards in particular features Optical Flow Accelerator that helps with this process, which older cards lack.
That said, with the new upscaling models now relying on the new transformer model and negates the optical flow accelerator altogether, there is a chance some cards (particularly the high-end ones) in the RTX 30 series can eventually be capable of doing Frame Generation. It’s worth noting that AMD already offers its equivalent in the form of FSR 3 which works on any modern GPU, though its upscaling quality is not quite as good as Team Green’s solution.
Pokdepinion: Let’s see if it happens.
