The famous hardware news site Videocardz reports multiple reports pointing to an interesting discovery by gamers in Portal Prelude RTX, a demo released by Valve and Nvidia, aimed at showcasing the RTX improvements in the popular game. Although the original is from 2008, its RTX version was officially released in July this year. Considering it is more of a technological demo, gamers quickly set out to "dig" through the settings.
Some of them have noticed that it is possible to activate Frame Generation technology on older graphics cards, specifically the RTX 20 and RTX 30 series, which technically do not support this feature. The discovery could have been quite serious and put Nvidia in an awkward position if it were proven that the capabilities of older graphics card models were intentionally limited. The company, for its part, clearly states that there is a possibility for FrameGen to work in some specific situations on older hardware, but it is not officially supported and they recommend not to use it.
In Prelude, the observed frame generation, which can be monitored with software like Riva Tuner, does not rely on the so-called Optical Flow Frame Generation technology, but rather provides new, unprocessed frames directly. Nvidia released a FAQ to explain the situation, which includes a guide on how to confirm whether this is actually happening. According to them, the game will reproduce errors when using Nvidia Remix tools, indicating that there is no real Frame Generation.
"Why does it seem that DLSS Frame Generation works on RTX 20 and RTX 30 series cards in Portal Prelude RTX?"
Answer: We noticed that some members of gaming communities, including Discord groups, encountered a bug in an old version of the DLSS DLL file (v1.0.1.0), which appears to incorrectly generate frames on 20/30 series hardware. This is not true DLSS Frame Generation, but simply duplicated unprocessed existing frames. The counters report higher FPS, but without any improvement in gameplay and the feeling of a smooth and fluid picture. This can easily be confirmed by examining the duplicated frames with tools like Nvidia ICAT or reviewing the error messages in the Remix logs, which report a problem with Frame Generation.
This bug in the Frame Generation DLL files has already been fixed and Nvidia will soon release an update for RTX Remix to prevent further confusion when the technology does not work as intended."
- Nvidia Forums
Simply put, although new frames are being produced (technically this can also be classified as generation), it is important to understand that they do not receive the benefits of Nvidia's DLSS technology. Therefore, these frames do not provide the expected smoothness and performance boost that the company advertises.
As it became clear, Nvidia has already fixed this bug, but an update for the game itself still needs to be released to prevent the issue from reappearing and causing further confusion among gamers. Still, in light of the recent release of FSR 3 from AMD, it is somewhat disappointing that Nvidia refuses the idea of possibly enabling the technology on older graphics cards, even with an option for more limited capabilities.
Source: Videocardz
