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A new AMD driver has just released that brings support for the company’s AFMF 2 and VGM technologies to its Ryzen AI 300 laptop chips. With these additions, AMD says these low-power laptop chips can achieve 100fps in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p low settings, up from just 56fps without the use of AFMF 2.
We’ve long seen how software support and technologies such as DLSS and FSR are transforming gaming graphics, and this latest AMD update means its best gaming laptop contenders are about to get a dose of the good stuff too.
AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2 (AFMF 2) is AMD’s take on DLSS/FSR-style frame generation but without the need to have the feature built into the game. Instead, it works just via the driver, generating extra frames for your game to boost frame rates. This means you can apply it to any game, so long as you have a compatible GPU.
Meanwhile, variable graphics memory (VGM) is a feature that allows AMD’s CPUs with integrated graphics, such as its AMD Ryzen AI 300 laptop CPUs, to allocate more system memory to the GPU than is provided by default. This essentially prioritizes graphics performance over general performance.
AMD took to its blog to demonstrate the power of these two features, claiming that when enabling AFMF 2 in Cyberpunk 2077 on an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 test system, it nearly doubled in frame rate. This was achieved when running the game with FSR upscaling also enabled, using its Balanced preset, which means the game would have been rendering frames at 1,506 x 847 and upscaling them, as well as then inserting newly-generated frames using AFMF 2.
As for VGM, AMD didn’t demonstrate the effect of this on its own but gave other examples of combining VGM with AFMF 2, showing performance in Horizon Zero Dawn jumping from 61fps to 91fps. Meanwhile, F1 23 jumped from 68fps to 106fps and Far Cry 6 moved from 65fps to 105fps.
The new driver is only a preview version, rather than what’s considered a stable, final release, but in our experience, these types of releases are generally quite stable and safe to use. You can download the driver here.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking to learn more about AFMF 2, check our original AMD AFMF 2 release story, which details how it works.
