GeForce RTX 40 Series owners are getting access to NVIDIA's new Smooth Motion tech

NVIDIA's Smooth Motion technology was released earlier this year, a driver-based Frame Generation solution similar to AMD's Fluid Motion Frames in that it doesn't require game integration, like DLSS. Initially, this new feature was exclusive to the latest GeForce RTX 50 Series of graphics cards, but that's changing in an upcoming driver release.

The feature was spotted in the latest GeForce 590.26 Preview Driver for developers, which includes support for enabling Smooth Motion on GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics cards. Although Smooth Motion doesn't require game integration like DLSS Frame Generation, it still utilizes the AI hardware in GeForce RTX GPUs for generating its additional frame.

Smooth Motion, like Frame Generation, is all about improving the performance of a game by generating a new frame in between traditionally rendered frames. This improves the overall smoothness of the presentation, giving the impression and effect of doubling or substantially boosting performance.

The ability to enable Smooth Motion on GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs was spotted while using the NVIDIA Profile Inspector for the GeForce 590.26 Preview Driver. Discovered by Macer at the Guru3D forums, they did note that the option wasn't in the NVIDIA App. Testing with World of Warcraft, they offer a great example of Smooth Motion in action. Running on a GeForce RTX 4090, it allowed the 83 FPS frame limit of the game to increase to a smoother 164 FPS.

As DLSS Frame Generation or the new DLSS Multi Frame Generation offers better image quality, latency, and performance than Smooth Motion, you'd only use the technology in games like World of Warcraft or those without any form of integrated Frame Generation. Reviews of Smooth Motion have shown that it offers better image quality with fewer artifacts than AMD's Fluid Motion Frames or the popular Lossless Scaling app.