AMD Announces FSR 3.1: Seriously Improved Upscaling Quality
by Anton Shilov on March 21, 2024 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- FSR
- FidelityFX
AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 technology package introduced a plethora of enhancements to the FSR technology on Radeon RX 6000 and 7000-series graphics cards last September. But perfection has no limits, so this week, the company is rolling out its FSR 3.1 technology, which improves upscaling quality, decouples frame generation from AMD's upscaling, and makes it easier for developers to work with FSR.
Arguably, AMD's FSR 3.1's primary enhancement is its improved temporal upscaling image quality: compared to FSR 2.2, the image flickers less at rest and no longer ghosts when in movement. This is a significant improvement, as flickering and ghosting artifacts are particularly annoying. Meanwhile, FSR 3.1 has to be implemented by the game developer itself, and the first title to support this new technology sometime later this year is Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.
Temporal Stability | |
AMD FSR 2.2 | AMD FSR 3.1 |
Ghosting Reduction | |
AMD FSR 2.2 | AMD FSR 3.1 |
Another significant development brought by FSR 3.1 is its decoupling from the Frame Generation feature introduced by FSR 3. This capability relies on a form of AMD's Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF) optical flow interpolation. It uses temporal game data like motion vectors to add an additional frame between existing ones. This ability can lead to a performance boost of up to two times in compatible games, but it was initially tied to FSR 3 upscaling, which is a limitation. Starting from FSR 3.1, it will work with other upscaling methods, though AMD refrains from saying which methods and on which hardware for now. Also, the company does not disclose when it is expected to be implemented by game developers.
In addition, AMD is bringing support for FSR3 to Vulkan and Xbox Game Development Kit, enabling game developers on these platforms to use it. It also adds FSR 3.1 to the FidelityFX API, which simplifies debugging and enables forward compatibility with updated versions of FSR.
Upon its release in September 2023, AMD FSR 3 was initially supported by two titles, Forspoken and Immortals of Aveum, with ten more games poised to join them back then. Fast forward to six months later, the lineup has expanded to an impressive roster of 40 games either currently supporting or set to incorporate FSR 3 shortly. As of March 2024, FSR is supported by games like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Starfield, The Last of Us Part I. Shortly, Cyberpunk 2077, Dying Light 2 Stay Human, Frostpunk 2, and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart will support FSR shortly.
Source: AMD
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xenol - Monday, March 25, 2024 - link
Everything in graphics rendering is a crutch. Why stop at requiring native resolutions? Use full LODs, no mimapping, no clipping, no texture compression, etc. Half the work of the rendering pipeline is to throw away information that doesn't contribute to the final scene in a meaningful way.If most people can't tell the difference without resorting to pixel peeping, does it really matter?
Railander - Thursday, March 21, 2024 - link
i like your solution, there's just this small barrier called "money" in the way.ballsystemlord - Thursday, March 21, 2024 - link
Inflation. Devaluation of the US currency (and it unfortunately happens to other countries currencies as well).Qasar - Thursday, March 21, 2024 - link
see my post above.....GeoffreyA - Friday, March 22, 2024 - link
I don't play any more but occasionally give it a go. People will laugh, but 900p works all right on my faithful 2200G. (I would upgrade to 5600G but motherboard woes.) Recently, I even played a few chapters of Half-Life: Alyx with NoVR. It worked fine on Vulkan. I fear, though, it won't be able to take Baldur's Gate 3, which I must play, having spent many hours of my younger life in the Infinity Engine.darkswordsman17 - Thursday, March 21, 2024 - link
Er, they did include a video if you go to the linked source. Using GIF is fine for what they were showing in those two images. Plus the format they show these in doesn't even matter since what does matter is how it ends up looking and playing when active when playing the games.Plords90 - Friday, March 22, 2024 - link
Another W for amd, also use APNG for previews, it isn't 2010 anymorePeachNCream - Friday, March 22, 2024 - link
It's a much less expensive solution to simply buy a lower resolution display panel then run at that native resolution versus attempting to upscale to a resolution your graphics adapter is unable to handle natively. Can't handle 4k? Connect a 1080 display. Problem solved, no upscaling required.xenol - Monday, March 25, 2024 - link
But then I'm stuck with a 1080p resolution elsewhere, and 1080p for me is just "okay" outside of gaming.dan82 - Friday, March 22, 2024 - link
I noticed the ghosting (exactly like in that gif) a whole lot in The Talos Principle 2. I didn't know it was ghosting though and just thought the developer had a really odd way of doing water effects.Glad to see that is getting addressed.
Upscaling tech in general is pretty neat and a good way to get higher fidelity graphics without raising the power budget too much more.