by AMD's FSR 4 "Redstone" upscaling and frame generation suite debuted as an exclusive feature for the company's latest generation Radeon 9000 (RDNA 4) graphics cards - despite a leaked build that clearly worked with older models using the less capable INT8 instruction set, as our testing in the video embed above shows.
Now, AMD has announced that FSR 4.1 is coming to older Radeon 7000 (RDNA 3) and 6000 series (RDNA 2) cards too, with a phased roll-out that suggests specific architectural optimisations are being made - ideally to shore up performance which could be a bit ropey on the earlier generation cards.
It's a smart move, as it lets users of older GPUs access to the significantly better upscaling tech in the newer models, while still giving a premium experience to those on the latest generation. FSR 4 was developed alongside Sony, so it offers much of the same advantages as the latest generation PSSR 2.
As AMD SVP of graphics Jack Huynh's tweet above states, the Radeon 7000 implementation arrives in July, while Radeon 6000 support is scheduled for a vague 2027 launch.
The first FSR 4.1 titles include Forza Horizon 6, Death Stranding 2 and Crimson Desert, with the new version offering improvements to fine detail for objects in motion and upgraded denoising for RT. The ultra performance mode is also a bit more performant, which is ideal for targeting higher-than-4K resolutions.
We'll of course be testing FSR 4.1 on multiple graphics card generations as it arrives, so stay tuned.
Comments 17
What took them so long?
@rosto94 Seems like they wanted better performance than the naive INT8 version that was leaked!
I think this is huge. It means all their handheld APUs are covered, it means 7000 series users do not get abandoned and FSR 4 is so much better than FSR 3 that this should not have taken this long and should have been road mapped from the start.
@wsjudd This should be a really interesting comparison, full fat on RDNA 4, INT8 on RDNA 2, 3 and 4 should give some really interesting (if geeky) results. I guess it also means it should run on PS5 and Series consoles which could be good for base consoles currently stuck on older FSR versions.
@wsjudd Good stuff. They could have also released as it was and optimise it after the fact... but oh well.
Also can't wait for Nvidia to also optimise their DLSS models, the last few releases keep increasing cost in ms, but we haven't had a simple version to improve performance since the release of the Transformer model.
Will the handhelds support this as well or will they be left out?
@ThePortugeezer It's hard to imagine that they'll be left out, but I've not seen any clarification on this yet - would be good to have it confirmed for sure!
@wsjudd hopefully we'll get some clarification soon regarding the handhelds and consoles. Thank you!
It'll be interesting to see how well my RX6750XT handles it.
@MattGPT Interesting point on the base consoles. I wonder if this will be the first time we see a significant gap between the Series X and PS5. Xbox has native INT8 support baked into its RDNA 2 implementation, but PS5 doesn't. If FSR 4 relies on that, the Series X could theoretically run the algorithm more efficiently while the PS5 deals with the emulation overhead.
@AlessioCoco if the X gets a version it will certainly provide better image quality than FSR3 on the base PS5. I do not know how performant the X is with INT8 and how much it impacts the rest of the SOC so it will be interesting to see. The PS5 would need to use FP16, but that is 2-3 times heavier than INT8 so I do wonder if that will be viable. I wonder if Rich could see what happens with the FP16 version running on the Linux PS5?
@MattGPT I hadn't thought about that but it would be cool to see it tested.
Would this also work on consoles because my biggest complaint with PS5 and Xbox Series X games was the really bad (in my opinion) FSR2/3 upscaling in games.
This was one reason why I upgraded to a PS5 Pro but even that came with PSSR issues for the first 18 months until it was updated back in March this year.
This would also presumably benefit the Steam Machine which has an older AMD GPU in it?
Could Steam Deck run this?
It will run on Series as native INT8, the base PS5 does not have INT8, so it would have to run FP16 which is heavier to run. The Deck is full RDNA2 so will run when that version comes out, as will the Machine when that is released which is potentially a bit of a game changer for Valve, especially if they can inject it via Proton where FSR was not previously enabled.
bout time for real
@rosto94 probably work on PSSR 2 was prioritized before it was back ported to RDNA3. What I'm really surprised is that AMD got it working on RDNA2. That means Xbox Series consoles, PS5 and Steam Deck will receive FSR4 too.
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