Nvidia’s RTX 30 series launched when GPU pricing was all over the place due to a global chip shortage – even still, it proved to be a popular generation of cards. To this day, the RTX 3060 is still the most popular GPU on Steam despite the launch of the 40 series with its exclusive frame generation technology. And now with the reveal of the 50 series – led by the flagship RTX 5090 – with Multi Frame Generation, it may be increasingly tempting to upgrade your graphics card.

Currently, the 30 series supports ray reconstruction, DLSS upscaling, and DLAA (anti-aliasing). However, a recent interview with Nvidia’s Bryan Catanzaro suggests that Team Green hasn’t ruled out bringing frame generation to some of the older models in the future.

Nvidia might be able to bring frame generation to RTX 30 series

In an interview with Digital Foundry, Catanzaro discussed DLSS 4 and Nvidia’s advancements in machine learning overall. On the top of frame generation, when asked “what’s keeping it from running on RTX 3000”, he had the following response:

“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”

Bryan Catanzaro, Vice President of Applied Deep Learning Research at Nvidia

It’s clear that not much is being given away here, but the idea that Nvidia seems open to revisiting some of the older hardware is a promising sign if you’re keen to cling on to your 30 series card for now. With modern AAA titles becoming more and more graphics-intensive and even requiring ray tracing support as a minimum, the need for DLSS (or AMD’s equivalent, FSR) is very apparent these days, and unlocking DLSS frame gen in some of the older hardware would be a game changer.

We should note that frame generation is possible on the RTX 30 series, but has to be done via FSR – not Nvidia’s own DLSS technology. The open-source nature of FSR 3 allows for frame generation on a wider range of cards. Even if a game doesn’t natively support it, you can sometimes find FSR 3 frame-gen mods such as this one for Path of Exile 2 which will work on Nvidia GPUs. Even still, direct support from Nvidia will help its older hardware stay relevant for much longer.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.