Imagine playing demanding games at silky smooth 120 frames per second even if your PC isn't cutting-edge. That's the vision of Lossless Scaling's latest Adaptive Frame Generation feature. Early tests are certainly making eyes water.
Digital Foundry Takes a Look: Impressive Results on Modest Hardware
Digital Foundry recently tried out this tech. The results are revealing. They used a rig featuring a modest Ryzen 5 3600 CPU and an NVIDIA RTX 4060 GPU. This is hardware many gamers might have. They explored what Adaptive Frame Generation can do.
The mission was to see if it could deliver a smoothly consistent 120 FPS across the board. This was tested even when the base framerate was well below it. They tried it with heavy-hitters like Control at 1440p high settings and ray tracing. They also tested native 4K resolution Starfield. The result was smooth 120 FPS frame rates in both titles.
The Upsides: Unexpected Smoothness
This is significant for several reasons:
- Smoothness on a Budget: You don't need the latest hardware to play at high framerates. This benefits those with mid-range or older PCs.
- Works Even with Low Base FPS: The technology achieves smoother experiences even when the game doesn't natively run at a high framerate.
- Hardware Agnostic: Lossless Scaling's approach doesn't rely on specific GPU vendor technology. This potentially benefits a wider range of users.
The Caveats: Not Yet Magic
It's important to have realistic expectations. Digital Foundry pointed out some drawbacks:
- Visual Artifacts: Like other frame generation, it's not perfect. Visual artifacts can appear, meaning image quality isn't flawless.
- Higher Latency: Faking frames introduces latency. Technologies like NVIDIA Reflex can minimize this. However, it's still present, especially from a low baseline framerate.
- Not a DLSS/FSR/XeSS Killer: In games supporting NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, or Intel XeSS, those technologies still offer superior image quality and potentially reduced latency.
A Promising Future
Despite limitations, Lossless Scaling's Adaptive Frame Generation is compelling proof-of-concept. It indicates the potential to improve perceived smoothness in games on lower-end hardware. This can be achieved without vendor-specific approaches.
For gamers of older titles or those without DLSS/FSR/XeSS, or those wanting higher framerates on mid-range hardware, Lossless Scaling's technology is interesting. It's not a replacement for native high framerates or high-end upscaling. Yet, it's an interesting direction for smoother gaming for more users.
