Ark Survival Ascended forces AMD Radeon gaming GPUs to use FSR frame gen

The steady march towards upscaling and frame gen being used in games by default continues, as the early access version of Ark Survival Ascended has been shown to be forcing frame generation on for AMD Radeon GPU users, with no option to disable the feature in the game's menus.

While Ark Survival Ascended is certainly a game that has plenty of potential to look amazing, this latest development means owners of AMD GPUs are being forced to endure sluggish gaming performance with high input lag, thanks to FSR frame generation, though thankfully there is a workaround to turn the feature off. It's still a sorry situation for owners of what right now are some of the best graphics cards you can buy, however.

Ark: Survival Ascended has had a fairly torrid time of it since its original early access launch back in October 2023, with poor performance being a consistent problem. Even an Ark: Survival Ascended UE5 engine update couldn't fully fix the sluggish performance.

The fact that frame generation is forced on for AMD GPUs was revealed by YouTuber, zWORMz Gaming, who was testing the latest patch of the game, only to find that even when running only at 1440p on an RX 9070, the game stuttered and had high input lag. The reason was twofold.

Firstly, the game just runs badly on this GPU at these settings, delivering only around 50fps with frame generation. Without frame generation, it could only manage around 27fps, which is an inherently slow experience. What's more, at lower frame rates, frame generation is effectively delivering quite long-lasting frames (at 50fps a frame is shown for 20ms) where the image isn't directly responding to your input. The image is updating quicker and looks smoother, but it doesn't feel smoother.

It's for this reason that AMD recommends a starting frame rate of at least 60fps before engaging frame generation. As such, Ark: Survival Ascended forcing the feature on at such a low frame rate shows how technologies such as upscaling and frame generation are starting to erode trust in what performance figures mean for a game.

Just recently we saw that some games are now starting to reveal system requirements that are all based on upscaling being enabled, including the Hell is Us system requirements, without detailing what level of upscaling is required. If we're moving towards a future where game developers can get away with suggesting a game can run at 60fps on a certain set of hardware, only for it to turn out this is only possible with upscaling set to performance mode and frame generation also switched on, the true performance picture starts to become meaningless.

It's not actually clear, though, if this was intentional on the part of the Ark Survival Ascended developers. What's more, the feature can be turned off. You just need to open the console interface and enter the command r.fidelityfx.fi.enabled 0.

For more on how to get the most from Ark: Survival Ascended, check out our Ark: Survival Ascended mods guide. Also, be sure to read our AMD Radeon RX 9070 review to find out what AMD's mid-range GPU can achieve when it's not hamstrung by poor game optimization.

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