Summary
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Smooth Motion can be used on RTX 40-series GPUs with developer driver 590.26.
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Nvidia doesn’t officially support it yet, but it can be enabled via the Nvidia Profile Inspector.
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Nvidia is expected to add official support for Smooth Motion on RTX 40-series GPUs in the future.
You can now use Nvidia’s driver-based Smooth Motion frame generation on RTX 40-series GPUs, provided you’re willing to jump through a few hoops. Earlier this year, Nvidia revealed Smooth Motion as a way to counter AMD’s Fluid Motion Frames 2providing driver-level frame generation for just about any game. The problem? It only works on RTX 50-series GPUs. A group of enthusiasts over at the Guru3D forums have uncovered a way to use Smooth Motion on RTX 40-series GPUs with the latest developer driver, however (spotted by Tom’s Hardware).
Related
Smooth Motion works on RTX 40-series GPUs
It’s not “official” official yet, though
Nvidia doesn’t technically support Smooth Motion on RTX 40-series GPUs yet, but you can still turn the feature on. You’ll need two things — the latest Nvidia developer driver, version 590.26, and the Nvidia Profile Inspector. For the driver, you’ll need to sign up for an Nvidia developer account if you don’t already have one. Then, you’ll need to install the new driver and load a profile in the Nvidia Profile Inspector. Under the Common section, you’ll now find a Smooth Motion setting. Macer on the Guru3D forums discovered the setting and showed it doubling the frame rate in World of Warcraft despite using an RTX 4090.
Inside the Nvidia Profile Inspector, the Smooth Motion option still says it’s only supported on RTX 50-series GPUs, but as Macer’s testing shows, you can enable it on RTX 40-series GPUs, as well. Nvidia has said that support for Smooth Motion will come to RTX 40-series GPUs eventually, and it seems this developer driver is laying the groundwork for that. Some Guru3D posters suggest that this driver is using a different version of Smooth Motion with worse quality; it’s possible Nvidia is tweaking the exact model that RTX 40-series GPUs will use before a broad release.
Although Smooth Motion is one of the most underrated features Nvidia offersit still doesn’t get a lot of attention, largely due to the fact that it’s restricted to RTX 50-series GPUs. AMD’s Fluid Motion Frames offers driver-level frame generation, as well, but it works on just about anything — you can enable it on an RX 9070 XT down to a Ryzen AI 300 chip.
You have to jump through some hoops, but it’s good to see that Smooth Motion at least works on RTX 40-series cards. It should work in just about any modern game you throw at it, but Nvidia officially supports DirectX 11, 12, and more recently, Vulkan. If you plan on signing up for an Nvidia developer account and installing the driver, keep in mind that you’ll technically be using pre-release software. Given Nvidia’s recent troubles with driver bugsyou might run into a few issues, especially when turning on Smooth Motion.
