AMD's FSR 3 Frame Generation Analyzed

[Music] welcome back to Hardware on box today we're taking a look at amd's FSR 3 technology which had a surprise debut last week in fores spoken and Immortals of avum there's a lot to cover in this video including a discussion on frame pacing image quality and latency so without further Ado let's get started after a word from today's video sponsor today's video is sponsored by Asus and their excellent Rog Swift o pg27 aqm gaming monitor in our testing we found the pg27 aqm to be the best 27 in 1440p 240Hz OLED monitor on the market not only does it feature the excellent black levels Lightning Fast Response times and perix or local dimming that we've come to love from OLED but it's also the brightest model for HDR gaming with this panel that we've seen yet this is a truly excellent display that delivers speed and motion Clarity for multiplayer gaming as well as stunning HDR visuals for single player gaming all in the one package to learn more about the Asus pg27 aqm click the link in the description below so Fidelity effect super resolution 3 is amd's answer to nvidia's deal S3 which back in 2022 introduced frame generation support for RTX 40 series graphics cards the idea here being that between each normally rendered frame frame generation creates an interpolated frame to improve the apparent smoothness of the game's presentation FSR 3 introduced uses frame generation Tech that's pretty similar to dss3 frame generation in its functionality and goals with AMD now finally willing to release the tech after announcing it on November 3 2022 just under 11 months ago the main difference between FSR 3 frame generation and D S3 frame generation at a surface level is compatibility D S3 as I said is exclusive to nvidia's RTX 40 series graphics cards with Nvidia believing that only the new Ada love La architecture has the optical flow accelerator performance necessary to drive frame generation FSR 3 on the other hand is available for all graphics cards with official support for amd's RX 5000 series and nvidia's RTX 20 series and above AMD are effectively claiming that they have an optical flow frame interpolation system that is performant enough to not require specific Hardware accelerators which certainly disrupts the GPU features race provided it actually works well as of today we have two games with FSR 3 frame generation support for spoken and models of avum enabling the feature is a simple as turning on FSR 3 upscaling and then turning frame generation on in the game settings unlike with dlss frame generation FSR 3 frame generation requires the use of FSR 3 upscaling so you are tied to FSR if you want to access amd's frame gen Tech and cannot enable it with Native rendering or dlss upscaling with that said FSR 3 also introduces a new native AA mode that applies the temporal anti-aliasing and sharpening component of FSR without upscaling for those after better image quality than what FSR usually brings while FSR 3's game integration is as simple as a toggle unfortunately it's not a technology that just works and this is where we need to start talking about FSR 3's frame pacing and configuration FSR 3 Works differently depending on whether you are using variable refresh rate a k v technology or not it also works differently depending on whether you are gaming with vsync on or off the exact configuration you are using drastically Alters the final FSR 3 output quality and the way it Paces frames to your display so let's break it all down right now all vsync off configurations INF for spoken and models of AVM are fundamentally broken with FSR 3 frame generation enabled frames are not being pasted correctly with feyc disabled leading to either a blurry or or juty presentation or some combination of both issues this means that in a vsync off State FSR 3 really provides no benefit whatsoever while it does increase the frame rate number you'll see in an FPS counter the actual visual presentation is no different from using FSR 3 off and in some cases can be worse here is an example of how vsync off with FSR 3 frame generation is pacing frames to the display you'll have to excuse the lowquality slow motion footage here I don't have a particularly great 1,00 FPS camera both configurations here are running at approximately 100 FPS with feyn off on a variable refresh rate display however we don't seem to be getting a true 100 FPS output with frame generation enabled instead relative to natively rendered 100 FPS frame generation appears to be outputting frames at a much lower rate I believe with feyn off that FSR 3 is not properly pacing or displaying half of the frames to the point where it makes little to no difference compared to not using frame generation and simply playing at a lower frame rate AMD tells us that vsync off in both launch titles is using an old method for handling frame generation vsync off older than the version described on their GPU open website where it suggests that vsync off should work just fine I have no idea why an old version of FSR 3 would be used to launch the technology if a fix for vsync off is known and implemented in newer code but here we are FSR 3 frame generation also doesn't work properly with any variable refresh rate configuration when gaming inside your monitor's refresh rate range normally when gaming with vrr enabled your frame rate and monitor's refresh rate are synced to reduce jutter and Screen tearing from any mismatch FSR 3 breaks this functionality so when frame generation is enabled variable refresh no longer works even if it's still enabled when we view slow motion footage we can confirm that this is the case without frame generation a 100 FPS output is consistently paced to the display with frame generation enabled the monitor's refresh rate counter remains mostly at its maximum in this case 160 HZ with the occasional dip to a lower refresh rate so the 100 FPS output is not synchronized with the refresh rate this causes frame pacing jutter and as some frames are being shown on screen for a longer time than in a VR state it can also lead to increased blur in some situations however when we compare this to dss3 we can see that nvidia's frame generation technology is correctly an accurately pacing frames and working just fine with variable refresh rates as you would expect for a 100 FPS output on a 160 HZ Monitor and this is true whether you have an Nvidia or AMD GPU here is some footage from the radon RX 7900 xdx running with and without frame generation at a similar frame rate as you can see the native ly rendered 80fps output is more consistently being delivered to the monitor whereas the frame generation output is juty it's also true if you use a frame cap inside your monitor's maximum refresh rate native rendering with a 120 FPS cap will switch your vrr capable monitor to run at 120 htz with FSR 3 frame generation capping to 120 FPS will still make your monitor run at the maximum refresh rate in this case 160 HZ which is a mismatch that causes jutter even though the frame time output graph appears smoother the only time we saw correct frame pricing was when the frame generation was able to max out the monitor's refresh rate in practice this limits the benefit of FSR 3 frame generation the larger the Gap in output frame rate and monitor frame rate the more juty and unpleasant the FSR 3 experience is while this does work better than vsync off and the actual number of delivered frames is higher than not using frame generation depending on how low the frame rate is FSR 3 can actually feel less smooth which defeats the purpose of a technology that is designed to increase the smoothness of the visual presentation these issues are minimized at higher frame rates and at a closer Gap to your monitor's max refresh rate in my configuration for example anything above 130 FPS on my 160 HZ monitor felt quite good and looked clearer than not using frame generation and therefore playing at a lower frame rate the ideal experience occurs when running at the max refresh rate but just a little under that still worked pretty well I found a small Improvement when disabling variable refresh rates and running my configuration at a fixed refresh instead with vsync on my monitor's refresh rate became less erratic which helped Pace frames a little better but ultimately if you are running FSR 3 below your monitor's max refresh rate in this sort of State there is still a chance of jutter as we know is the case for all fixed refresh rate gaming like this the same applies as previously where anything above 13 30 FPS on my 160 HZ monitor felt pretty good but anything below that and especially below 100 FPS the jutter was very noticeable and not ideal now AMD tells us that FSR 3 was designed for use with Fe sync on with the goal of maxing out your monitor's refresh rate they also told us that they had frame pacing working correctly with variable refresh rates in their Labs something I wasn't able to replicate on either Nvidia or AMD gpus my experience seems to align with some other testing I've seen from plac like Daniel Owen on YouTube and Tech PowerUp but I have seen other anecdotal reports of smooth output from FSR 3 frame generation so not a 100% sure what is going on there with such a strong focus on vsync on gaming and maxing out your refresh rate I think AMD hasn't tested variable refresh rate configurations adequately enough and hasn't optimized the experience for what I would say is the most common configuration VR Gaming as we would recommend everyone use variable refresh rate technology especially as pretty much every gaming monitor sold in the past 5 to 7 years supports it having to disable vrr or tune settings to max out your monitor's refresh rate feels like an old school approach in a world with widespread variable refresh sometimes with very high Max refreshes like 240 HZ or even 540 HZ these days it also quite obviously doesn't run as well as DS S3 which in its current state supports variable refresh rates vsync on and vsync off all as you would expect with DSS frame generation you can pretty much use any configuration you like turn on frame generation toggle in the game and experience properly pasted interpolated frames with FSR 3 frame generation you'll have to ensure your output frame rate is high enough probably disable variable refresh rates and make sure vsync is on that's too much fiddling around when the direct alternative and competitor technology effectively just works now let's talk about the actual quality of FSR 3 frame generation when used in an ideal configuration such as maxing out your monitor's refresh rate the quality of interpolated SL generated frames is probably the biggest strength of FSR 3 and one aspect that AMD have largely gotten right the biggest win for FSR 3 frame generation is how FSR handles UI elements DS S3 struggles with this and while it has improved since launch there are still titles that don't have perfect handling of UI elements often featuring garbled distracting awful UI in motion this was by far the most noticeable artifact from nvidia's frame generation with FSR 3 I didn't spot any UI issues testing for spoken or Immortals of avium both games with FSR 3 frame generation handle the UI flawlessly no garbling no distracting issues which eliminates the biggest artifact scene from this technology even in a title like a models of AVM which generally has good UI rendering from both FSR 3 and dss3 FSR 3 has the edge when when we look at this semi-transparent UI element for example FSR 3 better handles interpolation behind the transparency in motion compared to deal S3 this is because FSR 3 has a mode for game developers that fully decouples the UI loop from the frame generation loop I suspect this is how most games will handle the UI with FSR 3 although AMD did mention there is an option game developers can use to put the UI through the interpolation pass something I hope is not used If it creates significant artifacting like with Ds S3 frame generation it's hard to spot any artifacts from the FSR 3 generated frames themselves when the final output frame rate is in the 100 to 120 FPS range or higher which typically corresponds to a native 60 FPS render rate or higher while the issues are evident when slowing down the footage and inspecting frame by frame having these lower quality frames interspersed with high quality frames significantly reduces their visibility and how noticeable these artifacts are the higher the frame rate the shorter each of these frames is being shown and again pretty much identically to dss3 FSR 3 frame generation falls apart when used at a low native render rate especially when taking 30 to 40 FPS and turning it to 60 to 70 FPS this is not a recommended use case for frame generation it just doesn't work well here at all artifacts in motion are quite noticeable in my opinion and this substantially reduces visual quality having a relatively high output frame rate really is key to ensuring all frame generation Tech works well when more closely assessing the quality of FSR 3 generated frames I would say their quality is not quite as good as dss3 generated frames although in practice at a high enough frame rate it's very difficult to tell the difference typical pain points for frame generation are any fine details like wires or in this imortals of AVM example chains when slowed right down you can see that every second frame has garbled chain detail for both dealers s and FSR frame generation although dlss ends up less garbled transparency effects trip up frame generation with FSR 3 again looking a bit blurrier in its generated frames for this magical white effect fast complex motion can cause interpolation issues as well when changing your weapon in AVM both DS S3 and FSR 3 produce a lot of garbling as each frame struggles to deal with a rapid changes in motion however on close inspection the level of garbling is greater on the FSR 3 side though really neither technology could be described as generating high quality frames in this situation in many other situations you'll see similar output from dss3 and FSR 3 frame generation at least based on the current sample of one that we have for example simple motion like camera pans or translation generally works well with both Technologies relying on motion vectors to deliver the same level of detail as in real frames more complex textures and elements like foliage can have issues during simple motion but but I didn't see a clear winner for this between DSS and FSR I suspect like a lot of other implementations of DSs and FSR that these quality battles will vary from game to game while artifacts can be hard to spot with a high enough frame rate it's pretty clear across both FSR 3 games that generated frames are not equivalent to normally rendered frames in quality using either DSS or FSR without frame generation ensures the least amount of artifacting but with frame generation on it's rare to get the perfect generated frame when enabling FSR 3 you'll have to accept that the resulting image quality from each frame is reduced to improve the smoothness of the presentation with a lower quality output compared to rendering the game natively at the same sort of frame rate but the biggest issue with FSR 3 image quality is not the generated frames themselves it's the quality of FSR upscaling which AMD tells us has only received very minor improvements if any relative to FSR 2.2 this means that in a battle with between FSR 3 and dss3 frame generation dlss typically has noticeably Superior image quality and that's down to dlss having better upscaled image quality which ultimately dictates the quality of the real frames that are both shown and input into the interpolation algorithm so while the difference in generated frame quality isn't all that noticeable at a high frame rate the overall difference in image quality from upscaling certainly is even at a 4K resolution which we used for all image quality comparisons in this video in both the spoken and models of AVM dlss upscaling is superior to FSR upscaling and that impacts the visual presentation for frame generation in particular dlss has Greater Image stability and less shimmering as well as occasionally better fine detail reconstruction in motion even when pitting dlss quality mode up against FSR native AA upscaling DSS quality was better in both titles evaluated it simply has better image stability in motion which is noticeable as both games are heavy on foliage and particle effects while I didn't extensively test this I expect the Gap to widen as it typically does when testing lower render resolutions or lower output resolutions this ends up being the defining difference in image quality between the two techniques as FSR 3 frame generation requires the use of FSR upscaling you are locked into using that upscaling even if a high quality technology is available in a head-to-head battle with dss3 frame generation using dlss upscaling FSR 3 has lower overall image quality because of this even though I was okay with the quality of FSR 3 generated frames until AMD are able to improve the quality of their upscaling component this gap between AMD and Nvidia Tech Will Remain the forced use of FSR upscaling with FSR 3 frame generation also locks out potentially Superior combinations for example Nvidia RTX 30 series owners would have a better experience using DSS upscaling with FSR frame generation as they can't access DSS frame generation but they can use DSS upscaling I can't imagine AMD wants to give Nvidia owners the best experience with FSR frame generation hence why they are locking it to FSR upscaling for feature parity across Radeon and GeForce gpus but this does end up hurting Radeon owners too because at the end of the day a game like for spoken looks better with Native TAA than using FSR upscaling or even the FSR native AA mode having access to Native rendering plus frame generation or dlss plus FSR frame generation or even xcss plus FSR 3 would be ideal lastly let's talk about latency and FPS output performance on a radon RX 7900 XTX FSR 3 was quite effective at increasing the output FPS when using the native AA mode in the scene I tested in a modals of avium I went from 43 to 79 FPS an 83% increase at the same time latency decrease due to am's built-in latency reducing Tech that is applied when frame generation is enabled so with FSR 3 on I ended up seeing a 23 millisecond drop to latency noting that the muzzle flash I was testing in APM isn't instant on Mouse click hence the high overall numbers using quality upscaling instead I saw frame generation increase FPS from 71 to 122 A 72% increase latency in this configuration dropped by 8 milliseconds however the lowest latency mode here was still rendering at a higher native frame rate FSR with performance mode upscaling delivered 91 FPS lower than FSR 3 quality with frame generation but it had around 10 milliseconds less latency one interesting Discovery is that for compatible radon gpus currently anti-ag plus doesn't impact latency to any significant degree with FSR 3 enabled while anti-ag plus does have a big impact for nonf frame gen configurations cutting FSR quality mode latency by 33 milliseconds at the same frame rate this doesn't apply to frame generation AMD confirmed these findings noting that right now anti-ag plus is ineffective in the two FSR 3 launch titles and the driver side feature and its corresponding profiles for these games needs more work to properly detect FSR 3 frame generation output on a GeForce RTX 490 there was really no latency Improvement between frame generation on or off when using FSR 3 quality we saw around 105 milliseconds of latency at 84 FPS in the scene tested and with FR generation that improved to 140 FPS with 108 milliseconds of latency the RTX 4090 didn't benefit quite as much from FSR 3 frame generation as the RX 7900 xdx though the margins between them in terms of percentage uplift weren't massive a lot of amd's marketing is focused on FSR 3 providing both a higher frame rate and lower latency than native rendering which is the same claims that Nvidia makes for dss3 frame generation however what we've seen is that the majority of this latency benefit is also from apply just regular upscaling not from the frame generation component itself which doesn't improve latency to the same degree as running at a higher native render rate we therefore end up with the same situation as dlss frame generation where it does improve the smoothness of the presentation but doesn't feel as responsive as true higher frame rate gaming the real kicker for FSR 3 latency is that nvidia's current dss3 implementation delivers notably lower latency due to its full integration with Reflex on an RTX 490 reflex provides a solid latency Improvement when using DSS quality upscaling and no frame generation reflex itself reduces latency from 106 to 87 milliseconds this is a similar benefit we saw from anti-ag Plus on the radon side where we went from 122 to 89 milliseconds of latency under similar conditions but as reflex works and is always enabled with dss3 frame generation in our testing we saw an output frame r rate of 125 FPS for 90 milliseconds of latency using quality upscaling FSR 3 without reflex delivered 140 FPS for 108 milliseconds of latency so while FSR frame generation was able to increase the frame rate by 67% versus just a 42% increase for dlss frame generation dlss ended up with 18 milliseconds lower latency this is where the lack of compatibility for FSR 3 with anti-ag plus Hertz the RTX 4090 using Nvidia frame generation Tech and reflex delivered 125 FPS and 90 milliseconds of latency the RX 7900 XTX using AMD frame generation Tech and anti-ag plus delivered 124 FPS with 107 milliseconds of latency in a best versus best comparison that gives Nvidia the latency Edge until AMD can get anti-ag plus working effectively and given that you can use Reflex on an Nvidia GPU alongside FSI 3 currently the lowest latency experiences with FSR 3 technology will be on an Nvidia GPU where that Tech is integrated it's not all bad news here these performance figures do suggest that the optical flow pass in FSR 3 has less overhead than the optical flow pass in dlss 3 meaning that FSR 3 delivers a higher FPS Boost from the same base frame rate but until latency is equalized this doesn't result in a better experience from FSR and won't until upscaling IM quality is improved either so overall I haven't been very impressed with what I've seen from amd's FSR 3 technology so far in its two launch titles to me this feature seems rushed incomplete and not fully ready for prime time there are too many incompatibilities and configuration issues which stands out badly compared to nvidia's deal S3 technology itself a feature with issues the resulting FSR 3 frame generation experience is difficult to recommend outside a few Niche use cases and AMD are already up against it with FSR 3 due to the fundamental nature of frame generation the same sort of caveats that we talked about with Ds S3 also apply to FSR 3 to avoid visible artifacts in generated frames you'll need a base frame rate of at least 60 FPS with a final output around 100 to 120 FPS and given that frame generation does not improve latency for that true High refresh rate experience you'll want a base frame rate of 100 to 120 FPS with a final output above 200 FPS for the responsiveness we typically associate with the best gaming experiences this is why we refer to frame generation as a feature that enhances the game smoothness rather than something that improves overall performance the benefits are entirely visual in nature if you're a gamer that doesn't have the GPU performance to hit those frame rate targets then frame generation whether that's DSS or FSR isn't going to deliver a very good experience if you're a gamer that that is only playing at 60 FPS but wants to improve that to a true High refresh rate experience frame generation isn't properly capable of that if you're a multiplayer gamer that specifically wants to increase frame rates to access lower latencies and increase responsiveness to make you more competitive frame generation is useless for that FSR 3 is no better than dss3 at any of those aspects that right now are fundamental to frame generation where AMD stumbles is they've taken a feature that already has somewhat limited usability and have limited it further not only do you now need to worry about base frame rates but you'll also have to ensure you've set up vent correctly and are pumping out enough frames to avoid jutter you'll have to be satisfied with sacrificing proper variable refresh rate functionality to access frame generation and variable refresh is a feature we strongly recommend that every gamer uses there are situations where that trade-off alone is not worth it as FSR 3 can be less smooth than not using it defeating the whole purpose of a technology designed to improve smoothness that's not to say FSR 3 never works well if you have a reasonably high output frame rate and are running at or near your monitor's maximum refresh rate with Fe sync on the FSR 3 frame generation experience can be smoother and better than not using frame gen but when we have DS S3 frame generation that to use an Nvidia ISM just works with features like vrr going backwards on compatibility with FSR 3 really stands out AMD have clearly put a lot of work into ensuring the frame generation part of the technology works well with fast and effective interpolation it has lower overhead than deals S3 frame generation it has zero issues rendering UI that we've seen so far the general quality of interpolated frames is acceptable and it works across all graphics cards no special Hardware required that's a big win for FSR 3 it's the most impressive aspect of what AMD has produced and it provides a solid foundation for improvement but all that great work that's been put into generating frames is let down by amd's inferior upscaling technology which you are locked into using with FSR 3 frame generation the overall image quality factoring in generated frames and normal frames is simply better from dss3 and that's largely down to nvidia's upscaler without substantial Improvement to FSR upscaling especially at lower resolutions dss3 will continue to offer a better overall package than FSR 3 FSR 3 is also let down on the latency front with its incompatibility with anti-ag Plus at the moment meaning that de S3 when run on an Nvidia GPU delivers lower latency at the same output frame rate than FSR 3 does on an AMD GPU the two most relevant comparisons as Nvidia owners will use D S3 and AMD owners FSR 3 the golf wies for Radion RX 6000 series owners which can't even use anti-ag Plus at all and owners of older Nvidia gpus will will be praying for reflex and FSR 3 titles as the built-in latency reducing Tech in FSR 3 isn't overly effective now AMD has said that some of these issues will be improved they're working on anti-ag plus compatibility vsync off has been fixed in a newer version of FSR 3 and they're aware of vrr compatibility issues but some of these problems really should have been resolved before launch so that when the tech debuts it launches with a bang and everyone that turns it on is treated to a great experience instead it seems to me that AMD rushed the feature out the door to make a September launch deadline alleviating pressure that was put on themselves by announcing FSR 3 far too early but I can only evaluate FSR 3 on what is in front of me right now which is integration into two publicly available games with plenty of issues if you can use FSR 3 to max out your monitor I think the experience will be pretty good for you and I'd probably recommend giving it a try at least if that's not possible it's pretty hard to justify using right now even in situations where I might recommend someone use deals S3 and that's really the current state of FSR 3 it isn't overly competitive with dss3 and doesn't do much to close the feature gap between AMD and Nvidia even if we ignore the large difference in the number of supported titles it needs significantly more work to be at that level but the good news is that provided AMD actually allocate resources to improve FSR 3 it should be possible to get it to that level solve the frame pacing and vrr compatibility issues get it working with anti-ag plus and perhaps the most difficult of all improve the quality of FSR upscaling and FSR 3 would be the gold standard for frame generation technology given its low overhead and Broad compatibility I hope AMD can get it to that level anyway that's it for our little look at FSR 3 for the moment in the two games where it is supported we will continue to assess this technology as it is integrated into more games and whether or not AMD fixes some of the things that we've brought to their attention and things that they are already aware of in the launch version we also going to be assessing the new driver AMD fluid motion frames feature in an upcoming video so stay tuned for that we'll be taking a look and see how the non-game integrated version works if you do want to stay tuned for that video then the best way is to subscribe get it in your inbox when that video is ready and also you can support the channel directly via our patreon or float plan accounts links in the description below if you really appreciate these sorts of in-depth analysis it does take a while to make this sort of video so we do rely on the direct support from our patreon and float plane members so thanks for watching and I'll catch you in the next [Music] [Music] one

Channel: Hardware Unboxed

Views: 333,458

Keywords: hardware unboxed

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Length: 31min 1sec (1861 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 06 2023