It's on the lips of every PC gaming hardware enthusiast of late, whether it's spat out with vitriol or whispered with a twinge of desire: "frame generation". Whether those words give you shudders of the good or bad kind, get used to them because GPUs and games are leaning ever more in the direction of AI-aided rendering. Case and point: Assassin's Creed Shadows, which will offer a veritable variety of frame gen and upscaling goodness.
In a recent tech Q&A, Pierre F, technology director of Assassin's Creed Shadows, explained that the upcoming game will offer the full cornucopia of frame gen solutions (minus DLSS 4 Multi Frame Gen, it seems). And more than this, you'll be able to mix and match it with your upscaler of choice for quite the non-native buffet.
The tech director says: "DLSS 3.7, FSR 3.1 and XeSS 2 are all supported for both upscaling and frame generation purposes. Our own Temporal AA solution is also available. Note that a mix and match approach is possible. You may select one technology to upscale while using a different technology for frame generation purposes."
Of course, those with an AMD or Intel card won't be able to use Nvidia's DLSS upscaling or frame generation, but the ability to mix and match might be of special benefit to Nvidia RTX 20-series and 30-series gamers. It will mean these GPUs will be able to use FSR frame gen, for instance, in combination with DLSS upscaling.
AMD GPUs would be able to use XeSS upscaling alongside FSR frame gen, but only with a version of that upscaling that's not as good as FSR 3.1. And regarding Intel GPUs, well, they'll probably be sticking with XeSS 2 frame gen, as even Alchemist cards can use it.
Speaking of Intel XeSS 2 frame gen, though, isn't that somewhat of a rare gem? To date, we only have two games that support it: F1 24 and Marvel Rivals. Assassin's Creed Shadows will make a third, and that's thanks to Ubisoft's partnership with Intel for this game.
Pierre F explains: "As part of our partnership with Intel, we had direct and privileged access to XeSS 2 before it was made public, and we worked directly with Intel engineers to provide the best implementation possible." It'll be interesting to see how the blue team's frame gen plays out in more games against the titans of FSR and especially DLSS.
We shouldn't have long to wait to find out. Assassin's Creed Shadows—after a disappointing delay—is set to launch on March 20, 2025. This next iteration in the series is promising dual-protagonist gameplay to satisfy both stealthers and hack-n-slashers alike—plenty for frame gen and upscaling to deal with.
