AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2: Preview Driver Available With Surprisingly New AFMF

It’s a classic AMD Radeon Software presentation when a presentation doesn’t happen, and instead a preview graphics driver with a new feature is suddenly released. However, the release doesn’t go without comment; in a blog post on the developer blog, AMD talks about the new AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2.

AFMF is AMD's driver-level frame generation.

As a reminder: Under the name AFMF (AMD Fluid Motion Frames), AMD, in addition to the “regular” FSR Fluid Motion Frames, offers image averaging using the Radeon driver, which is reserved exclusively for the Radeon RX 6000 and Radeon RX 7000. A detailed FAQ article provides details on the topics of upscaling, frame generation, and related differences in feature sets.

• Upgrade FAQ: Questions Answered About Nvidia DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS

Suddenly there: AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2

Surprisingly, AMD has now made a new preview graphics driver available for download: Adrenalin 24.20.01.02 Preview Driver for AFMF 2, which introduces a new generation of frame rate technology with AFMF 2 as part of the HYPR-RX package. It is not a final driver, and therefore does not come with WHQL certification and can lead to issues and unstable behavior.

Vulkan and OpenGL support

AFMF 2 brings a whole host of innovations. In general, the technology in the second generation is no longer limited to Microsoft's DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 graphics APIs, but also works with Vulkan and OpenGL, according to AMD. Additionally, intermediate images can be calculated via AFMF 2 with borderless full-screen window modes; the technology no longer relies on a “true” full-screen display.

Also new is compatibility with Radeon Chill, AMD's frame limiter in the driver. As with other frame rate generation solutions, this combination tends to be problematic because rendered frames can be swapped for interpolated frames. With AFMF 2 with Radeon Chill, AMD wants to ensure that native FPS is limited to half the maximum FPS.

AMD promises lower latency

The Achilles heel of all current framerate implementations is always latency. If some output frames are not rendered but are met – by whatever means – the ratio between frame times and output latency gets out of hand. As a result, a game can run smoothly at 60 FPS or more depending on the FPS display, but not look smooth at all due to latency at 30 FPS. So reducing latency is always a problem and a build site. Especially with AFMF, which is not installed in the game's source code.

With AFMF 2, AMD claims to have made improvements in this regard – regardless of the settings, resolution, and hardware used. In Cyberpunk 2077, the manufacturer measured 28 percent lower latency when going from AFMF with Radeon Anti-Lag to AFMF 2 with Anti-Lag using the Radeon RX 7900. However, the manufacturer does not provide absolute values, achieved FPS, or other information that tends to be useful for grading.

In Counter-Strike 2 with Anti-Lag Plus, AFMF 2, with the Radeon 780M Mobile, at Full HD and with the High preset, helped reduce latency by 12 percent, according to AMD. In this combination, over 120 frames per second were achieved.

Performance mode to reduce load

AFMF 2, unlike Nvidia’s DLSS solutions, is still not a machine learning-based algorithm. However, AMD is talking about “Enhanced AI improvements“. What this means is that, according to the manufacturer, the AFMF-2 algorithm has been improved with the help of artificial intelligence, which actually leads to higher frame rates. This obviously raises questions, but there is no answer to them. In any case, with the new performance profile, AMD is clearly referring to the positioning of integrated GPUs where the overhead of calculating the average image should be less. The technical background is not mentioned.

New mode for higher accuracy

The second new mode, called “Search,” is aimed at higher resolutions and therefore more powerful hardware in general. The fallback behavior for fast-moving frames has been improved in particular, where AFMF (2) stops for a short time – this is where the potential for blurring and incorrect interpolation is highest. However, with more pixels on display, this function has to work less hard, AMD explains, which is why the search mode automatically reduces the fallback density from QHD onwards.

In general, AMD also wants to improve the image quality. However, the manufacturer does not provide any technical details or examples here.