Is at least the first frame generation coming soon for older Nvidia GPUs?
During CES 2025, Nvidia not only presented the new GPU generation around the RTX 5090, but also presented the new version of the in-house AI upscaling, DLSS 4.
The catch: The feature of DLSS 4 called “Multi Frame Generation”, which generates up to three frames via intermediate image calculation and thus promises a significantly higher frame rate per second, will be exclusively reserved for the new graphics cards.
Nvidia did a similar thing with the first version of Frame Generation, which came onto the market as part of DLSS 3. This technology could only be used on the RTX 4000, but that could change soon.
Nvidia leaves room for speculation
Nvidia's Vice President for Applied Deep Learning Research Bryan Catanzaro recently answered questions from the Digital Foundry in an interview.
In addition to an interesting deep dive into the new DLSS 4, the question was also whether frame generation was technically possible on GPU generations like the RTX 3000. Catanzaro commented as follows:
I think it's mainly a question of optimization, technology and ultimately the ultimate user experience. We're introducing the best multi-frame generation technology with the RTX 50 series, and we'll see what we can get out of older hardware in the future.
Catanzaro thus opens the door at least a little to subsequent support for frame generation for RTX 3000 (and perhaps even older GPUs), even if the high-ranking Nvidia employee was unable to elicit a definitive answer.
Link to YouTube content
The stumbling block for these thought games was a previous question about the fundamental change that Nvidia is making to its upscaling technology as part of DLSS 4.
- Instead of relying on the so-called “Optical Flow” hardware accelerators (OFA) as before, DLSS 4 uses the tensor cores of the GPUs and should also use less video memory.
- Previously, Nvidia argued that older architectures such as Ampere and Turing did not have enough OFA performance to support frame generation technology.
Theoretically, the Catanzaro statement opens up another scenario: Multi frame generation should – provided that a sufficiently high tensor performance is actually required – also be able to run on high-end GPUs of the RTX 4000 series.
However, it is doubtful that such a step will take place, at least for the next few months, as from a market strategy perspective the release of the RTX 5000 generation would be putting oneself in one's own hands.
4:52
RTX 5090 Unboxing – First impression of Nvidia's new flagship graphics card
The most conceivable scenario would be in which, with the change to tensor cores as the basis for upscaling, older graphics cards up to RTX 30 would be equipped with the “first” version of frame generation.
A “feasibility study” for this was provided not least by AMD, which has also been fielding an FG variant since the introduction of FSR 3 – and is releasing it open source for all FSR 3-compatible GPUs.
