Frame generation has been around ever since the RTX 40-series GPUs launched four years ago. Since I have an RTX 4090, I’ve never really had to rely on it to get decent frame rates. While that’s partly because I rarely use ray tracing, it’s also because DLSS upscaling usually gives me the extra performance I need. That said, I still experimented with it in a bunch of games over the last year, including Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, Battlefield 6, and 007 First Light.
Seeing my FPS double just like that is hard not to get excited about. Even without a counter on the screen, if someone watched me play, they would definitely think the game was running at a much higher frame rate after toggling it on. However, just because the game looks smoother doesn’t mean it feels smoother, and that’s the difference between native performance and frame generation.
Responsiveness is just as important as FPS
But frame generation only gets you one of those
Normally, when you improve frame rates by lowering your graphics settings, dropping the resolution, or even using DLSS upscaling, you’re reducing GPU load so it can render frames faster. That means you’re not just increasing the number of frames you see on screen, but also improving responsiveness because the game is updating more frequently. This is exactly why games feel more responsive at higher frame rates.
However, when you enable frame generation, it just predicts the next frame and fills in the gaps between real frames. Your GPU isn’t really rendering twice as many frames all of a sudden. So your inputs and mouse movements can feel slightly off when you quickly react to what you see on screen, even though the game itself isn’t updating nearly as often as the FPS counter suggests. Responsiveness is tied to raw performance, and frame generation only improves visual smoothness.
Frame generation still depends on your base FPS
You need a good starting point so that responsiveness isn’t a dealbreaker
No, I’m not saying you can’t enable frame generation if you don’t meet a certain performance threshold. You absolutely can, just like Nvidia does in its Cyberpunk 2077 demos, but that doesn’t mean you should. When you’re gaming at 30FPS, for example, the responsiveness is already so poor that doubling or even quadrupling your frame rate won’t suddenly make the game feel fast and responsive. Enabling frame generation may get you 60FPS in MSI Afterburner, but you’ll still feel like you’re playing at a lower frame rate.
That’s why it’s important to make sure your base performance is decent before you even bother with frame generation. You can’t just use it like a crutch for poor frame rates. At 60FPS or higher, your responsiveness is decent enough that frame generation’s trade-offs are harder to notice, at least in slower single-player titles like 007 First Light. In faster multiplayer games, like Battlefield 6, you will still notice some input lag even with a decent starting point, which is why I’ve learned to completely avoid them in shooters.
I know exactly when to use frame generation now
Single-player games benefit more from visual smoothness than responsiveness
Open-world AAA titles these days are very demanding at 4K, even on flagship GPUs like the RTX 4090 and 5090. Once I enable ray tracing, I’m looking at sub-60FPS in more recent games like Assassin’s Creed: Shadows and Black Myth Wukong. Now, you’d think that’s a bad starting point, but I actually use DLSS upscaling first to max out my base performance. Then, I enable frame generation on top to complement that performance rather than compensate for poor frame rates.
At that point, I’m not using frame generation because I really need it, but because it’s nice to have that visual smoothness. Responsiveness doesn’t matter nearly as much because I’m playing these games on a controller anyway. However, the moment I switch to keyboard and mouse to play fast-paced shooters like Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Warzone, responsiveness becomes my top priority, and frame generation just isn’t worth the trade-off. There’s also the added latency, which is the main reason most competitive titles don’t support it in the first place.
You need to look past that FPS counter to judge frame generation
If you keep focusing on the FPS counter in your monitoring software, you’ll only be disappointed, because your experience doesn’t quite match the numbers you’re seeing on screen. Nowadays, I only enable it when a game is already running pretty smoothly, so it’s just a nice visual enhancement to get more out of my high refresh rate OLED monitor. Once you start looking at frame generation as a motion smoother, you’ll realize it can be worthwhile. Just know when to use it, keep your expectations realistic, and you won’t be disappointed with the results.
