Monday, January 20th 2025
NVIDIA's Frame Generation Technology Could Come to GeForce RTX 30 Series
NVIDIA's deep learning super sampling (DLSS) has undergone many iterations to the current version 4 with the transformer model, delivering new technologies such as DLSS Multi Frame Generation, predicting multiple frames in advance to generate the upcoming frame, and increasing the frame output per second. However, not every NVIDIA GPU generation supports these more modern DLSS technologies. In an interview with Digital Foundry, Bryan Catanzaro, VP of Applied Deep Learning Research at NVIDIA, commented on trickling down some DLSS technologies to older GPU generations. For example, DLSS Ray Reconstruction, Super Resolution, and Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing (DLAA) work on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20/30/40/50 series GPUs. However, the RTX 40 series carries an exclusive DLSS Frame Generation, and the newest RTX 50 series carries the DLSS Multi Frame Generation as an exclusive feature.
However, there is hope for older hardware. "I think this is primarily a question of optimization and also engineering and then the ultimate user experience. We're launching this Frame Generation, the best Multi Frame Generation technology, with the 50 Series, and we'll see what we're able to squeeze out of older hardware in the future." So, frame generation will most likely arrive on the older RTX 30 series, with even a slight possibility of the RTX 20 series getting the DLSS frame generation. Due to compute budget constraints, the multi-frame generation will most likely stay an RTX 50 series exclusive as it has more raw computing power to handle this technology.
Bryan Catanzaro also shared some notes about the DLSS development. "When we built NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation, we absolutely needed hardware acceleration to compute Optical Flow. We didn't have enough Tensor Cores and we didn't have an Optical Flow algorithm that was good enough. We hadn't developed a real-time Optical Flow algorithm that ran on Tensor Cores that could fit our compute budget. We had the Optical Flow accelerator, which NVIDIA had been building for years as an evolution of our video encoder technology, and it's also been a part of our automotive computer vision acceleration for self-driving cars.
It made sense for us to use that for NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation. But the difficult part about any sort of hardware implementation of an algorithm like Optical Flow is that it's really difficult to improve it. It is kind of what it is and the failures that arose from that hardware Optical Flow, we couldn't undo them with a smarter neural network until we decided to just replace it and go with a fully AI-based solution, so that's what we've done for Frame Generation in DLSS 4."
Sources:
Digital Foundry, via VideoCardz
However, there is hope for older hardware. "I think this is primarily a question of optimization and also engineering and then the ultimate user experience. We're launching this Frame Generation, the best Multi Frame Generation technology, with the 50 Series, and we'll see what we're able to squeeze out of older hardware in the future." So, frame generation will most likely arrive on the older RTX 30 series, with even a slight possibility of the RTX 20 series getting the DLSS frame generation. Due to compute budget constraints, the multi-frame generation will most likely stay an RTX 50 series exclusive as it has more raw computing power to handle this technology.
It made sense for us to use that for NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation. But the difficult part about any sort of hardware implementation of an algorithm like Optical Flow is that it's really difficult to improve it. It is kind of what it is and the failures that arose from that hardware Optical Flow, we couldn't undo them with a smarter neural network until we decided to just replace it and go with a fully AI-based solution, so that's what we've done for Frame Generation in DLSS 4."
24 Comments on NVIDIA's Frame Generation Technology Could Come to GeForce RTX 30 Series
So c'mon lads, get your piping hot RTX 50 series GPUs today, because DLSS 4 definitely won't run on older hardware, pinkie promise. :roll:
Timed exclusivity :D
Anyways... what did I say? They just locked it to the 4000 series because it was a massive selling point while driving up the prices. People fell for it, bulls saw that leather jacket fly and they stormed for it. ;P
In short, the reason this is an option now when it wasn't before is because they completely changed the model so it no longer uses hardware that was exclusive to the newer cards. But the Nvidia guy was also very specific in his wording, it's only a vague possibility currently because they aren't sure if they can get the model to be performant enough on older hardware to be worth using.
But from that interview something caught my attention more. Their new Transformer model seems to be a lot better but it's also requires more compute. And while Blackwell will be fine, I'm wondering what will be the performance hit on 2xxx, 3xxx and 4xxx. That is also the reason why in Cyberpunk demo you can select which model you want, because the new one is heavier.
Nvidia can tell us anything. Most of it is a convenient half-truth, if not an outright lie. In the end it just comes down to how they manage their development, and the first aim is always to sell more GPUs. Not to bring features to older gens; that comes after the sales are made, or to fuel a new round of sales.
Latest gen is now early access to software features. :)
Now that's the typo. I quit my pants laughing at it.
I am using AMD's Frame Generation without any issues, there is also a freeware application available that does this, and now nGreedia is telling us that they could bring the DLSS Frame Gen to the 30x0 generation too.
Well, F**K YOU very much nVidia!!!
I mean nvidia backported all the dlss improvements as far back as turing (2018), gpus that are still capable of running new games just fine (contrary to it's competition at the time, lol), but planned obsolescence and ngreedia.
They are not selling nor producing 3x or 2x series GPUs anymore, which means they wont get any money from implementing it on these cards, yet they'd have to pay some engineers to implement it, which means spending money for 0 return.
Also it makes people wonder if they are really truthful about what they are claming, as there is no way to verify it. It could very well be that they could do it on day 1 but held the capability for older cards to sell 4x series.
Seems like they just opened a big can of worms.
It is simply a matter of time.It is damage control to nudge fools into paying for DLSS4 and for existing customers to create the illusion they are treated well. This is all PR strategy. Nvidia the benevolent.