AMD’s Radeon Software Crimson Edition brought a bunch of improvements in graphics performance for AMD graphics card users in various ways. Amongst these improvements was the much-anticipated frame doubling feature called Low Framerate Compensation (LFC).
To be clear, this is not the first time this type of technology has been released, as NVIDIA’s G-Sync has already had the feature present since its launch. This was possible because of the embedded hardware module that comes with every G-Sync monitor. Since AMD’s FreeSync does not have its module, the company has used software to implement this function.
Previously when a game was played with V-Sync on, and the frame rate fell below the refresh rate, the monitor wouldn’t have screen tearing, but it would still suffer from motion judder. Now with Low Framerate Compensation, the judder is eliminated, and the motion is smooth.
Through Low Framerate Compensation, whenever a game’s frame rate falls under the minimum refresh rate, the graphics card output and refresh rate will automatically be adjusted to stop screen tearing and motion juddering.
This feature should be automatically enabled if your Radeon software is up-to-date, that is, with a small caveat, of course – your monitor supports it.
Low Framerate Compensation only works on FreeSync monitors in which the maximum refresh rate is at least 2.5 times greater than its minimum refresh rate. For example, if you’ve got a newer FreeSync monitor with a 40Hz to 144Hz range, then you are good to go; otherwise, you’ll have to sit this one out.
No amount of tinkering in the Radeon settings will help since your monitor either supports it or doesn’t.
With the new FreeSync 2 certification process, every monitor attempting to pass has to support Low Framerate Compensation. If you see a monitor marketed as having FreeSync 2, you know it has Low Framerate Compensation support.