Well, we all saw that coming. AMD has officially announced that FSR 4.0 will be exclusive to its RDNA 4 GPUs. This new iteration of FidelityFX Super Resolution is an ML-based upscaling solution akin to NVIDIA’s DLSS. It’s locked behind the latest RDNA4 GPUs because those chips can make the most of it.
This move by AMD shows they’ve taken a page from NVIDIA’s playbook. Sure, many fans have been frustrated with NVIDIA for keeping features exclusive to newer hardware, but now AMD is following suit. It’s a bit ironic.
The goal of this ML-based solution is to provide better visuals and performance. Owners of the RX 9070 and RX 9070XT can expect a boost in performance without sacrificing too much image quality.
According to AMD, FSR 4.0 will utilize the same API as FSR 3.1, which should make it easier for developers to swap out FSR versions in existing games. However, details on how players can upgrade from FSR 3.1 to FSR 4.0 in their favorite titles are still murky.
At launch, PC gamers can look forward to enjoying FSR 4.0 in about 30 titles, with plans for over 75 games to support it by the end of 2025. My gut tells me that simply replacing DLL files from games using FSR 3.1 won’t cut it when trying to enable FSR 4.0, at least that’s the vibe I’m getting from AMD’s statements.
The real question now is how well FSR 4.0 will stack up against NVIDIA’s DLSS 4. Thanks to its Transformer model, DLSS 4 has made notable strides in image quality—leaps and bounds ahead of what we saw with FSR 3.1. Given that FSR 4.0 is also ML-based, there’s potential for it to come close to DLSS 3.
NVIDIA still has some advantages; for instance, DLSS includes MFG (Motion Field Generation), while FSR doesn’t offer anything quite like that yet. I love or hate those “fake frames,” but NVIDIA remains ahead in this department; AMD has some catching up.
Moreover, AMD has touted massive performance gains with its Frame Gen technology regarding FSR 4.0, another concept borrowed from NVIDIA’s strategy.
