The Hidden Cost of Gaming's Latest Upscaling Tricks

Upscaling technology has revolutionized gaming, but what your FPS counter shows might not be entirely accurate. When you enable DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution), or XeSS on a game, it may also run Frame Generation in the background to boost frames per second.

However, this doesn't mean that your system is actually rendering more frames. Instead, Frame Generation uses AI to insert extra predicted frames between natively rendered ones, giving you the illusion of higher performance.

This technology has evolved beyond simple interpolation and now adds five predicted frames between each native frame, resulting in six total frames instead of one. This is called Multi-Frame Generation and is available on AMD as well, although its ceiling is lower than Nvidia's at 2X for Arc GPUs and 4X for Intel.

While Frame Generation can boost your FPS, it comes with drawbacks such as increased latency and visual artifacts. AI-generated frames are not perfect and can introduce ghosting trails, flickering, and weird textures, especially in fast-paced multiplayer games.