NVIDIA’s RTX 50 “Blackwell” launch campaign hinged on DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation to obscure limited generational gains. GPU-side flip metering and a beefed-up display engine made it possible. Blackwell GPUs generate the optical flow field information required for frame interpolation using Tensor Cores. They also power Smooth Motion, a driver-level frame generation technique available in games supported by the NVIDIA app.
NVIDIA Smooth Motion: Answer to Fluid Motion Frames
Smooth Motion is NVIDIA’s answer to AMD Fluid Motion Frames. Sadly, it’s only supported on the RTX 50 series GPUs. It leverages optical flow data to infer a frame between every two rendered frames. It doesn’t tap into the game engine for motion vectors, promising universal compatibility. However, it’s not completely stable and can cause flickering, ghosting, etc.
Turn-based games like Baldur’s Gate 3 are the best candidates for Smooth Motion. The performance gain is mild, but there are minimal artifacting or visual glitches. CPU-bound scenarios should see larger improvements, and that’s why upscaling doesn’t help.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is a CPU-intensive game that would benefit massively from frame generation. Smooth Motion grants a massive 70% performance boost at 4K using the maximum quality graphics settings.
There’s a bit of visual artifacting in motion but it’s not as bad as you’d expect from driver-level frame interpolation. It still needs some fine-tuning but is usable if you’re playing at a lower resolution or aren’t picky about visual fidelity.
Rust doesn’t play well with Smooth Motion. The performance gain is trivial, the lows are worse, and the artifacting isn’t any less bothersome. Furthermore, the increased latency may adversely impact competitive gameplay.
Smooth Motion can be a useful tool for CPU-bound games lacking frame generation.
- The fact that it’s limited to Blackwell GPUs is its primary downside.
- It needs some fine-tuning to tackle the flickering, but is passable in titles like Baldur’s Gate 3.
- Mobile GPUs which are often CPU bottlenecked can immensely benefit from it.
