AMD is quietly working on a new version of Fluid Motion Frames, just a year after AFMF 2 was released. Two Guru3D forum posters discovered developer notes in the upcoming AMD Adrenalin 25.20 driver branch that mention AFMF 3 support. The latest AMD beta driver out today is 25.9.2, so we could see this new driver very soon.
The discovery was made from a "Windows Preview Edition" of the driver that came out on the 24th. The driver is focused on AI and features a plethora of AI-focused updates, including Python 3.12 support and PyTorch on Windows Preview, to improve LLM functionality on supported RX 9000, RX 7000 series GPUs, and Ryzen AI 9/Max APUs in Windows 11.
(Image credit: Guru3D)
Despite being focused on AI, the driver is apparently also been prepped for AFMF 3 as previously stated. Whether it will come with 25.20 specifically remains to be seen, as one of the two Guru3D forum posters stated the Adrenalin control panel for the 25.20 preview driver does not claim AFMF 3 support. It was only through exporting the driver’s game profiles through the AMD GPU profile manager that the feature was revealed. Worst-case scenario, we might see this update in a driver release in a newer version of the 25.xx driver branch, beyond 25.20, potentially debuting with FSR Redstone.
There are no official details on what changes AFMF 3 will have, but it is very likely that AMD will upgrade AFMF to the same AI model used for FSR 4. AFMF 2.1 already takes advantage of “AI-optimized” enhancements, but it's likely that these optimizations are part of an older implementation that is not up to the same quality as FSR 4’s ML algorithm. There is also some pressure on AMD to improve AFMF, since Nvidia recently introduced Smooth Motion to the RTX 40 series.
The only disadvantage with this change (if it goes through) is that FSR 4 will only work on the RX 9000 GPUs exclusively, just like FSR 4. The machine learning model AMD is using reportedly only runs performantly on RDNA 4, thanks to the architecture's numerous AI-enhancements over RDNA 3. Technically, there is evidence of FSR 4 models tuned for RDNA 3, but these models have not been officially released, and AMD has not announced any attempts to make FSR 4 work on older GPUs (not yet anyway).
As a reminder, AFMF is the driver-based version of AMD’s FSR frame generation that can be toggled on and off in the Adrenalin control panel. The tech is designed for games that don’t support FSR frame generation, and provides frame generation to those titles. However, since AFMF works at the driver level, its frame generation quality is notably worse than FSR’s, especially surrounding UI elements.
