Owners of older Nvidia RTX graphics cards can now enjoy FSR 3 frame generation in games that support DLSS 3, due to a clever new tweak.
Your first reaction may be confusion over FSR support being added for Nvidia DLSS 3 games and how that works. So, the easiest way to look at this is that it’s a ruse for RTX graphics cards that aren’t from the most recent Lovelace lineup.
Of course, gamers can use DLSS 3 on current-generation RTX 4000 GPUs, but prior generations of Nvidia RTX graphics cards do not enable DLSS 3 frame generation.
Here’s where this mod comes in: for DLSS 3 titles, the referenced mod implements FSR 3 frame generation. So what you’re receiving is fudged frame generation that boosts your frames per second through an AMD workaround in Nvidia-supported titles (with Nvidia RTX graphics cards).
All of this is only feasible because AMD made FSR 3 open source, allowing modders to use it in new ways, such as injecting FSR 3 frame generation into DLSS 3 games. In case you’re wondering, installation consists of dropping a few of DLLs into the game’s directories and doing a fast Registry adjustment, so it’s not too complicated.
Aside from that, all you really need to know is that adding this mod to DLSS 3 games results in a significant frame rate boost for RTX 2000 and RTX 3000 GPUs.
Digital Foundry put the mod through its paces (as suggested by Tom’s Hardware) in a number of titles, and you can see the results in the below video.
To summarize, Cyberpunk 2077 witnessed an RTX 3080’s performance increase by more than 60% (at 1440p resolution). Before tinkering, the RTX 3080 averaged 60 to 70 frames per second (fps), but with FSR 3 enabled via the hack, it frequently exceeded 100 fps.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales got a similar kind of increase from the hack, moving from 50 to 60 fps up to roughly 100 fps with FSR 3 fudged on.
Analysis: Catch Two
That all seems fine, but what’s the catch? There are two significant caveats to be aware of.
To begin, one disadvantage of any frame generation system is the increased input lag. This can be more of an issue in some games than others (you suffer less if you have a decent frame rate before using frame generation).
A second disadvantage is the presence of artifacts and other visual niggles caused by the forced integration of FSR 3 support. Notably, interface elements can have distracting shimmering lettering, as well as glitching shadows or a character’s hair. The latter is demonstrated in Alan Wake 2, and an apparent remedy outlined in the YouTube comments is to go into the game’s INI file and adjust ‘bLensDistortion’ to ‘false’ – which may be worth a try.
Anyway, this is a fudge of a solution, and it will never compare to a developer correctly integrating FSR 3 natively in a game. Overall, Digital Foundry is very excited with this customized solution, describing it as near enough to native FSR 3 that many gamers will not notice the difference most of the time.
It’s weird that an AMD tech can be recruited in to assist folks with older-generation Nvidia GPUs yet the mod isn’t compatible with Team Red’s Radeon graphics cards. However, additional mods are likely to add equivalent capability to non-RTX GPUs, including AMD models, in the future.
Finally, for those wondering: didn’t RTX 3000 GPUs acquire support for DLSS 3.5, anyway? No, they did not. They did get something with DLSS 3.5, notably support for ray reconstruction (for better ray tracing), but not frame creation, which was not included in the agreement (unfortunately).
