Fans have been asking AMD to provide AMD’s version of “DLSS” for improved performance without losing image quality and in Computex, AMD fulfilled their wish.
AMD’s DLSS is now called as FidelityFX Super Resolution or FSR. It sounds similar to Deep Learning Super Sampling in one way and does a fantastic job of providing significant performance improvement for free. With multiple examples, AMD showed that you can get up to 2X or more performance with different FSR modes in select titles.
According to AMD,
“FidelityFX Super Resolution is a spatial upscaling technique, which generates a “super-resolution” image from every input frame. In other words, it does not rely on history buffers or motion vectors. Neither does it require any per-game training.”
While the current support for games is not that great but AMD has a form for the fans to fill from where they can let AMD know in which game they want the new technology to work. I would personally like the upcoming Battlefield 2042 and Dying Light 2.
AMD showed 2 instances where you can see the improvements done through FSR. In GOD FALL, while running at 4K native resolution with the RX 6800 XT, the game is running at around 50fps. With 4 modes of FSR, the fps increases dramatically.
With Ultra Quality, the image quality is almost as good as the native 4K while the performance is almost 1.5 times delivering an average of 78fps. The Quality mode increases fps to double while the other 2 modes namely- Balanced and Performance give 2.5X to 3X boost. But seeing the visuals we can say that they are better to be avoided.
The amazing thing, however, with this new technology is that it works with Nvidia GPUs too. AMD showed that in Godfall, they obtained about 41% of performance increase with GTX 1060 which is the most popular Nvidia GPU according to the Steam survey.
There is, however, blur when you zoom and the quality is not 100% identical to the native 1440p resolution. Running this game at 1080p would have been a better choice to show the improvements as <40fps is not a smooth gaming experience.
This not only brings free performance to AMD GPU users but also Nvidia GPU user. So, I can finally rejoice that I can use my GTX 1080 Ti for a while especially in these times when you can’t find a GPU.
