Nearly a couple of months have passed since AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2, commonly known as AFMF 2, was rolled out as a technical preview in AMD’s Adrenalin software. It’s a driver-level Frame Generation alternative to FSR 3, helping cover all the gaps in games that don’t (yet) support the full FSR 3 suite of features.
AFMF 2 is available to a wide range of AMD hardware, and as we previously highlighted, it makes integrated graphics viable for gaming. Currently, you can find support for the FG tech in the following series:
- 700M integrated graphics
- 800M integrated graphics
- Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs
- Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs
New benchmarks show how good AFMF 2 really is
Something that really highlights the benefits of AFMF 2 is a recent video from YouTube Panjno. Within, they demonstrate AFMF 2 benchmarks versus no frame-gen, AFMF 1, and FSR 3 FG implementation.
On top of that, they made sure to keep track of the all-important latency; one of AFMF 2’s biggest downsides is the added latency it brings, though AMD’s Anti-Lag 2 tech can mitigate this to some degree. For a quick example, Forza Horizon 5 was running at ~85 FPS with no Frame Generation, ~125 FPS with AFMF 1, and ~140 FPS with AFMF 2. The newer version also boasts significantly less framelag, 23ms versus 8ms in this specific example.
Panjno also took to The First Descendant to demonstrate the differences and how AFMF 2 deals with the input lag problem. As a general rule of thumb, this tech is best suited for more casual games or those played with a controller. We wouldn’t recommend Frame Generation for a competitive title where minimal input lag should be preserved.
| Frame Generation | Latency (The First Descendant) |
|---|---|
| None | 35.9ms |
| FSR 3 | 56.3ms |
| AFMF 2 | 54.6ms + 9ms |
AFMF 2 works on a wide range of hardware and games
Perhaps the best thing about AFMF 2 is its widespread support. While support is limited by hardware to a certain extent, the fact that it’s a driver-level solution means it doesn’t require specific game support. AMD notes that it is available across “thousands of games”; not something that can be said for FSR 3, especially when not every game supports its Frame Gen component, just its upscaling.
Whereas AFMF 1 supported DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 games, the second version now adds support for OpenGL and Vulkan graphics APIs. And even for older games without these (for example DX10), a workaround may help – introducing DXVK. This is a Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 8-11, which can be utilized to enjoy AFMF 2 in games that don’t natively run on one of the supported APIs.
Furthermore, you can use AFMF 2 to go above and beyond the framerate of a game engine’s limits. Since Frame Generation is a form of interpolation, it creates AI-generated frames to improve smoothness. In other words, it doesn’t natively run at this framerate and hence won’t break the game. One good example is given as GTA V on PC, which reportedly stutters beyond 187 FPS (don’t ask us why it’s this number in particular).
Final word
Team Red has never really been the go-to option for graphics cards, with Nvidia generally holding it down as you’ll see in any recent Steam Hardware Survey. While they may currently be favored when finding the best CPU for gaming thanks to the success of X3D chips, as someone with a Radeon GPU, I think it’s getting increasingly more appealing to have a full AMD build – especially if you don’t necessarily need something as powerful the RTX 4090, or don’t care for ray tracing.
With AFMF 2 providing Frame Generation tech to anyone with a relatively recent AMD GPU, supporting a massive amount of PC games, all within the AMD Adrenalin software, it makes for a solid suite of features that doesn’t lock it to a limited number of games and graphics cards like Nvidia.
