Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 50 series has been shining with cutting-edge technology since January 2025, but Nvidia is now following suit for the RTX 40 series with some upgrades.
The GeForce 590.26 preview driver, which is available on Nvidia’s developer website, allows owners of Ada Lovelace graphics cards (such as the RTX 4080 and RTX 4060) to utilize Smooth Motion frame generation technology.
This feature, previously reserved for RTX 50 cards, promises almost twice the frame rate in many games, reports VideoCardz.
Doubled frame rates for older games
Smooth Motion is Nvidia’s answer to AMD’s Fluid Motion Frames. The technology AI-generates intermediate images at the driver level, which are then inserted between two rendered frames. This makes games appear smoother without requiring developers to specifically incorporate the feature in their games. Smooth Motion is especially attractive for older games with frame rate limits and/or without DLSS support.
Users on the Guru3D forums report double the frame rate in World of Warcraft, from 82 to 164 FPS. Similar leaps were achieved in Company of Heroes 3, as demonstrated by VideoCardz. In competitive and CPU-limited games, Smooth Motion unlocks noticeably smoother gameplay, even if the quality doesn’t quite match DLSS 3 Frame Generation.
Only for developer accounts so far
There are some restrictions on this new feature: the driver is only a preview, and it requires the Nvidia Profile Inspector from GitHub and a developer account with Nvidia to activate Smooth Motion.
Without developer access, users will have to wait for the final version, which is expected to make the feature easier to access. Nevertheless, the free performance boost is a strong argument for RTX 40 owners who want more FPS without new hardware.
Smooth Motion technology shows how Nvidia is extending the life of the RTX 40 series. For gamers who want to get maximum performance out of their graphics card, the preview driver is an exciting foretaste—and the final version shouldn’t be too long in coming.
This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC-WELT and was translated and localized from German.
