Frame generation became the baseline, and 58% of Steam gamers got left behind

Published Aug 31, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT Gaming has been Samarveer’s greatest passion, and the Literature graduate in him takes immense joy in dissecting games for their themes, messages, and impact. Samarveer holds a deep appreciation of gaming, and considers the platform to be the most immersive and impactful across all media. He can be found engaging with gaming communities online, always ready to debate the finer points of ray tracing or itching to write an 8-page collegiate thesis on any game that impacts him emotionally. If you've bought a graphics card in the last few years, there's a piece of advice that you have probably heard — "just turn on frame generation." Ever since it was introduced with the RTX 40 series, frame generation has become a routine part of the PC gaming conversation. It's also the deciding factor in a lot of GPU purchasing decisions, as it was for me, too. Amidst all of this, it's easy to forget one important detail which revealed itself in the last Steam Hardware & Software Survey. According to July 2026's survey results on Steam, 58.1% of gamers don't have access to any sort of frame generation at all. These 58.1% PCs aren't ancient office PCs, either. They have perfectly respectable GPUs that can still run modern games without completely falling apart. However, they can't run games with frame-gen active. The technology itself is impressive, sure, but the problem is that the industry has begun treating it less like an optional feature and more like the baseline that everyone should already have. The math nobody at the keynote wants to show you The majority never got invited to the party The number that matters here is 58.1%. I got there by cross-referencing every GPU listed in Steam's July 2026 Hardware and Software Survey against GPUs with some form of frame generation support. RTX 40- and 50-series cards account for roughly 34% of Steam users, while AMD's RX 6000/7000/9000-series cards add another 7.6%. Intel Arc contributes roughly 0.3%. Add those together, and you get about 42% with access to frame generation of some sort, leaving nearly three-fifths without it. These are RX 5000 GPUs, RTX 20- and 30-series cards, and something like a GTX 1080 Ti — they don't support frame generation, and they may lack the latest toys and features, but they hardly qualify as incapable of running modern games. Now, we also know that frame generation isn't some magical consequence of having enough silicon, either. AMD has clearly demonstrated that driver-level frame generation can reach considerably older hardware through AFMF (AMD Fluid Motion Frames). As such, the line isn't simply drawn by what a GPU physically cannot do. It's drawn now by which ecosystem you bought into. For roughly 58% of Steam gamers, "just enable frame generation" isn't troubleshooting advice. It's an option they were never given in the first place, and yet, the conversation around PC gaming, day after day, increasingly assumes that they were. FSR 3 complicates this number It's an important asterisk when it comes to the math Yes, I know FSR 3 complicates this number. FSR 3 frame generation is much less picky about hardware, because AMD's technology can run on a surprisingly broad range of GPUs, including hardware that isn't covered by DLSS Frame Generation, XeSS Frame Generation, or AFMF. A GTX 1080 Ti can, in fact, use FSR 3 frame generation in a game that implements it. However, having a frame generation option in some games isn't the same as having it as a feature of your GPU itself. Only a few dozen games have ever shipped FSR 3 frame generation, which is a rounding error against the hundreds in a typical Steam library. This "if a game implements it" is the whole problem, though. FSR 3 frame generation only exists where a studio chose to build it in. Unlike AFMF, which the driver can apply system-wide to supported games, there's no official driver-level switch for FSR 3 that can simply give it to a game that shipped without it. A 1080 Ti owner, therefore, doesn't have frame generation; they have the possibility of getting it, title by title, if a developer decides to grant it, which sounds more like a lottery than access. Frame generation stopped being a bonus and became a crutch I actually like frame generation — that's the problem I've spent plenty of time praising frame generation because it has earned its praise. If a mid-range GPU can suddenly deliver smoother gameplay at higher settings without demanding another four-figure upgrade, that's a win for everyone. Frame generation can democratize visual quality in a way brute force GPU upgrades never could. However, when that useful bonus becomes the foundation underneath the performance numbers, and we're then asked to celebrate it, that becomes a problem. That's how we end up with comparisons like the RTX 5070 offering "RTX 4090-level performance" once Multi Frame Generation enters the equation. The generated frames are real, and so is the smoother experience, but a GPU rendering 30 or 40 frames and generating the rest isn't doing the same work as one actually rendering 60 or 100 frames. Pretending otherwise turns a useful feature into nothing more than marketing camouflage. That same logic applies to games that effectively need frame generation to reach the framerate their recommended hardware promises. If the rendered baseline is struggling at 30 fps, generating additional frames doesn't suddenly make the underlying performance problem disappear. It makes the perception of that performance better, which is valuable, but those remain two different things. The industry seems to have gotten a little too comfortable in this gray area. GPU makers get spectacular uplift numbers, developers get breathing room for demanding games, and reviewers get increasingly enormous FPS figures. Everyone wins, right? Except the people whose GPUs cannot generate those extra frames. This is a choice, and it can be un-chosen Your GPU isn't obsolete, nor should it suddenly become so Credit: Source: Chi Ho Chan via Wikimedia Commons It's absurd to call a perfectly capable graphics card "old" just because it can't perform a trick that didn't exist when you bought it. Sadly, that's effectively where we seem to be heading. A GPU can still render a modern game competently, but if it lacks the right frame-generation implementation, an increasingly important part of the performance conversation simply disappears from its specification sheet. It's beginning to look a lot like soft, planned obsolescence. Manufacturers aren't deliberately sabotaging older hardware, but the software ecosystem is doing it for them, making otherwise useful GPUs feel inadequate without their rendering capability changing at all. AMD's AFMF is particularly awkward evidence here: it's driver-level frame generation that clearly shows the world that the frame generation compatibility window can be widened when a vendor chooses to widen it. Frame generation should continue improving and reach more hardware, but there must always be a clear difference between rendered and generated frames. The answer, then, isn't to abandon frame generation, either. Quite the opposite, in fact. It should continue improving, and be made available on more hardware, but manufacturers should clearly separate rendered and generated frames, and developers clearly need to establish their performance targets on rendered frames before treating FG as the bonus it was always supposed to be. 58% is not a niche. It's the majority, but when the majority can't use a feature, that feature is simply not worthy of being considered an entirely new performance standard. Sales pitch, it certainly can be. The new baseline, absolutely not. There's only a matter of time until the 42% of users who have GPUs with frame-gen support become 50%, and when they form the majority instead of the ones who can't use FG, we might be looking at an all-too-dreadful future — one where frame generation performance begins being quoted in system requirements simply because over half the user base can use it. Even then, a generated frame still isn't a rendered one, and once system requirements start blurring the two, the numbers stop telling you what your GPU can actually do. Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Eagle OC Ice SFF Nobody should have to upgrade just to stay counted It saddens me to see that PC gaming's obsession with making more frames visible has become increasingly selective about which gamers get to participate in that conversation. The best tech should expand what existing hardware can do instead of trying to redefine "acceptable" around whatever feature happens to sell the newest generation of hardware. Frame generation is too useful to be reduced to that. I'd never want to go back to a world without it, either. Better frame generation, wider compatibility, clearer benchmarks, and fewer arbitrary walls between hardware generations is what I'm sure everyone wants. If the industry can make yesterday's GPU feel more capable through software, it can very well make the decision to support that GPU in the first place, too. The future of PC gaming shouldn't require everyone to buy that future first.