[IrishWhiskey]

During their Computex event AMD announced among other technologies their FidelityFX Super Resolution technology, known as FSR for short.

You can view a timestamped video below of the FSR portion of the AMD event.



FSR is apparently based on a "spatial upsampling algorithm". This generates a higher resolution image from every input frame without relying on previous frame data or motion vectors. How exactly this works under the hood will likely be expanded upon closer to the first games with support releasing on June 22.



FSR, similarly to DLSS will support multiple performance/image quality options, they are listed below:

Ultra
Quality
Balanced
Performance

AMD claims that FSR Ultra will give a practically identical experience to native quality.

Enabling FidelityFX Super Resolution at "Ultra Quality" gives a practically identical visual experience with around 59% more performance in Godfall. Or get up to 2.5x the performance in select games when you choose the #FSR "Performance" preset in 4K.

AMD demoed Godfall at 4k Epic preset with RT turned on while using FSR at various modes with a 6800XT:

Native 4K - 49 FPS
FSR Ultra - 78
FSR Quality - 99
FSR Balanced - 124
FSR Performance - 150

AMD have also stated that FSR will be supported on all Radeon RX graphics cards:

FSR will officially be supported by all Radeon RX graphics cards, including RX Vega, RX 500, RX 5000 and RX 6000 series. In fact, AMD will enable FSR support even on Ryzen APUs and even competitors' products.

In addition to this FSR is cross platform, meaning it will also work on Nvidia and Intel GPUs. In a ballsy move AMD showcased Godfall with FSR running on a GTX1060 on stage to prove that this technology is intended to set a new cross platform industry standard.

FSR is open source and will be available under the very unrestrictive MIT license on GPU Open shortly. This will allow people to access and view the source code as well as contribute to further development or integrate with their own games/engines/technology.

In addition to this FSR is set to support Direct X12, Vulkan and Direct X11.

Super Resolution
Major framerate boosts combined with high-quality, high-resolution graphics!
Four different quality modes proposed: Performance, Balanced, Quality, and Ultra Quality.

Cross-platform
FSR is not limited to the latest GPU architectures only! It runs on a large variety of GPUs.
Wide API support for DirectX®12, Vulkan®, and DirectX®11!
Once released, FSR can be ported onto multiple platforms without restriction.

Open source
In due course, FSR 1.0 will be provided here on GPUOpen under the MIT license.

Easy to integrate
The same great experience that you expect from AMD FidelityFX, with a low barrier of entry.
Full shader source code provided for a smooth and flexible integration.
Fixed and arbitrary scaling supported.

Highly optimized
FSR is hand-optimized for fast performance across a wide variety of GPUs.

Very interesting times ahead. It looks like AMD are casting a very wide net with this as it is set to work across a huge amount of GPU/CPU/APU combos from all different vendors. The different FSR modes look like they provide some good options for gamers and the code is supposed to be very easy to implement.

The key question will be the actual visual/image quality when we actually get to see some 3rd party comparisons, reviews etc... and when gamers actually get to use it on June 22 for themselves. Exciting times indeed, we could be witnessing the beginning of a new open standard for image upscaling in games.

 

[Stilton Disco]

Fantastic news, hopefully between this and DLSS we'll start to see more dev time put into effects and content, and less on making sure games look pretty when needlessly chasing that 4K white whale.

 

[regawdless]

Very curious about how it compares to DLSS and how future games will deal with both solutions.

Even if FSR will be abit worse than DLSS, it being open and supported by all GPUs, there won't be much motivation for devs to implement DLSS - other than Nvidia offering them money or support.

Or Nvidia could try to provide DLSS on a driver level and automatically working for all games.

Exciting times ahead!

 

[IrishWhiskey]

What is interesting about this in terms of potentially high adoption in the industry is the fact that FSR will likely also be available on the consoles very soon. That means as a developer or engine developer it makes sense to implement and "code it once, run anywhere" kind of philosophy.

Who knows how popular it will become in the end or how widespread but it definitely looks like AMD are nailing their execution these past few years and they seem to be doing everything right in terms of trying to spread adoption and get this running in as many devices as possible, you have to give them kudos for that.

Very exciting times!

 

[regawdless]

What is interesting about this in terms of potentially high adoption in the industry is the fact that FSR will likely also be available on the consoles very soon. That means as a developer or engine developer it makes sense to implement and "code it once, run anywhere" kind of philosophy.

Who knows how popular it will become in the end or how widespread but it definitely looks like AMD are nailing their execution these past few years and they seem to be doing everything right in terms of trying to spread adoption and get this running in as many devices as possible, you have to give them kudos for that.

Very exciting times!

This will do wonders for consoles.

In general, it's so crazy what kind of progress we have, especially on PC. These image quality solutions like FSR and DLSS are freeing up a ton of compute power in addition to the improvements in hardware, which have also been significant.

 

[Nikana]

VIdeos have been a bit underwhelming, granted they are compressed. It being open source is fantastic but it looks like IQ takes a much bigger hit than AMD is willing to admit so far. Will keep an eye on it. But since you can't buy a GPU anywhere........I will have no way to check it out myself.

 

[VlaudTheImpaler]

Sounds like it's a flop to me...

[Timestamped]


Basically just post processing?...

Why not just spread Vaseline all over your screen?

 

[Arkam]

Cool. Looks like they are making progress but still have a ways to go. "Practically identical" is a bit of an overstatement though. It looks good, but at 20:40 look at the ground and those "shells". Noticeably blurry.

Hopefully they make as quick of progress as Nvidia has.

 

[Mista]

Good stuff. They need to improve it a lot if they even want to compete with DLSS

Because the current state of it is nowhere near ever scratching DLSS, let alone compete.

Anyways, glad AMD started taking stuff more seriously now and I want them to succeed

NVIDIA needs some slapping every once in a while to make them work properly

 

[Sejan]

Cool. Looks like they are making progress but still have a ways to go. "Practically identical" is a bit of an overstatement though. It looks good, but at 20:40 look at the ground and those "shells". Noticeably blurry.

Hopefully they make as quick of progress as Nvidia has.

I don't know the details of the open source license they are using, but it being open source could potentially allow faster growth—particularly if the license requires that derivative work on the feature be made open source or shared with AMD in some way. Either, way it'll improve and that's only a positive.

 

[Redviper]

 

[regawdless]

When the image with FSR already seems to be blurrier on shitty YouTube quality videos, it doesn't scream to me "just like native!".

Will wait for it to release and see for myself of course. But I'm a bit concerned.

 

[Ascend]

G-Sync was superior to Freesync, and Freesync still pretty much killed it. At least, till HDMI 2.1 came along.

The same thing will happen here... FSR has the advantage that it works on the most popular graphics card, the GTX 1060, which doesn't have a competing nVidia technology, because DLSS is reserved for newer generations. FSR also works on consoles, so adoption is pretty much a given.
So even if DLSS offers better quality, the performance should still be compared, and even then, AMD's market is simply larger, which means it will likely become the standard implementation.

We can also expect developers to improve the tech themselves, like what happened with TressFX. So this is all good.

 

[Zefah]

When the image with FSR already seems to be blurrier on shitty YouTube quality videos, it doesn't scream to me "just like native!".

Will wait for it to release and see for myself of course. But I'm a bit concerned.

It will probably be a bit shit at first, just like FreeSync, but FreeSync has come a long way.

I'm sticking with Nvidia for now, but I really do hope that AMD can come through and make this really competitive (somehow) with DLSS.

 

[Sejan]

It will probably be a bit shit at first, just like FreeSync, but FreeSync has come a long way.

I'm sticking with Nvidia for now, but I really do hope that AMD can come through and make this really competitive (somehow) with DLSS.

If it's as easy to implement as they are claiming, then the adoption rate will be huge. This tech on it's own could smooth out many frame rates on PS5 and Series S/X with just the ultra setting. The fact that this will work on consoles and give them better performance guarantees this implementation's success. Being open source and working on PCs without additional hardware further cements it's place in the market.

Personally, I'll give up a little image quality for a more stable frame rate any day.

 

[IrishWhiskey]

It is still pretty early days yet as so far we have only really seen a video feed of Godfall from the presentation.

From what I've seen of screens and whatnot taken the upscale to 4K "Ultra Quality" mode looked pretty good to me. Not as good as native obviously and not quite as good as DLSS Quality mode but it looked pretty solid to me.

The 1440p upscale they showed on the GTX1060 definitely looked noticeably blurry compared to the native version. Granted there was weird motion blur and we are also talking about youtube compression etc... but the same can be said for the native side so it definitely didn't look amazing in that scenario.

There are still a ton of open questions about how the implementation works. For example for the 4K upsampling which looked pretty good to me to be honest, we don't know what the base resolution was for the upscale, or if it was dynamic in some way.

Same goes for the 1440p image, if it was upscaling from 720p for example to 1440p then it might make sense that they have less data to work with so the final result might look worse/more blurry. In addition for some reason they showcased the "Quality" mode on the 1440p section instead of "Ultra Quality" meaning they were leaving some image quality on the table there for some reason.

My guess is that they wanted to show the biggest FPS increase so they could show their percentage metric on screen and have people be all: "Oooohh so many more FPS!"

But the likely scenario is that enabling the "Ultra Quality" mode would probably have dropped performance/framerates especially considering it was running on a 1060 and they likely wanted to maximize impact during their presentation.

In addition AMD hasn't told us whether any of the examples shown were using Radeon Image Sharpening or some kind of CAS sharpening filter. If not then it is possible to maybe gain some slight additional sharpness to offset some of the blur/loss of detail, particularly in the 1440p example.

There are still many details we don't know about this that will hopefully be revealed further on the 22nd of this month. I'm also hoping we see some other games showcasing it rather than Godfall.

In general I'm reasonably happy with what we know about it so far. It is always best to wait for proper 3rd party tear downs, reviews and analysis to get a proper idea of the quality, how it works and any weird caveats that using it might introduce.

I didn't expect the quality to beat DLSS with both at highest IQ settings but so far it looks pretty solid at 4K "Ultra Quality" and certainly "good enough" to work as an open standard that will work across multiple devices/platforms. I can definitely see it growing in popularity pretty rapidly, especially given the demand for this kind of tech on the market and what kind of impact it would have for consoles, laptops and low powered/older model GPUs. Overall pretty excited to see where they go with it, but I hope we find out more about how it works soon and see some better games than Godfall showcasing it.

 

[Redviper]

what kind of impact it would have for consoles

A lot of console developers already have their own scaling algorithms, DLSS is better because it uses a different technology, this implementation doesn't, it's just another scaling algorithm.

 

[IrishWhiskey]

A lot of console developers already have their own scaling algorithms, DLSS is better because it uses a different technology, this implementation doesn't, it's just another scaling algorithm.

It is still early days with a lot of unknowns to talk about exactly how they are achieving this, all we know so far is that is uses a "spatial upsampling algorithm". It is also a little early to talk definitively about the overall quality of this solution, although it looks like DLSS will definitely have the edge when it comes to IQ.

I disagree with your statement regarding impact for consoles. For example we know there are techniques such as checkerboard rendering that Sony uses, presumably as a library/API on their console. But that is the problem, it only works on their console so if a developer implements it they are normally a first party developer and it doesn't normally translate to PC ports (that I'm aware of).

Similarly, there are some high profile developers who have the resources, talent and time to create their own engine/game specific reconstruction or upscaling algorithms/tech. This obviously varies from game to game, engine to engine and developer to developer in terms of quality/execution.

For the most part many developers without the resources/talent/time will opt for a simple to implement universal solution that will work across PC, both consoles and on essentially all GPUs of the last 5 years. This is where the impact will lie as developers will always opt for the easier to implement/universal solution that they only need to code once rather than multiple implementations with varying difficulty of implementation/resource allocation/time/budget/quality.

 

[Redviper]

It is still early days with a lot of unknowns to talk about exactly how they are achieving this, all we know so far is that is uses a "spatial upsampling algorithm". It is also a little early to talk definitively about the overall quality of this solution, although it looks like DLSS will definitely have the edge when it comes to IQ.

I disagree with your statement regarding impact for consoles. For example we know there are techniques such as checkerboard rendering that Sony uses, presumably as a library/API on their console. But that is the problem, it only works on their console so if a developer implements it they are normally a first party developer and it doesn't normally translate to PC ports (that I'm aware of).

Similarly, there are some high profile developers who have the resources, talent and time to create their own engine/game specific reconstruction or upscaling algorithms/tech. This obviously varies from game to game, engine to engine and developer to developer in terms of quality/execution.

For the most part many developers without the resources/talent/time will opt for a simple to implement universal solution that will work across PC, both consoles and on essentially all GPUs of the last 5 years. This is where the impact will lie as developers will always opt for the easier to implement/universal solution that they only need to code once rather than multiple implementations with varying difficulty of implementation/resource allocation/time/budget/quality.

Yeah we need more info.

The quality of it seems....bad. But we should have some comparisons videos in a few weeks.

 

[IrishWhiskey]

The quality of it seems....bad.

At 1440p, from what we have seen so far I agree, that didn't look too hot and was noticeably blurry compared to the native image on the left.

However I thought the 4K upsample at "Ultra Quality" mode looked pretty good to me

I mean the native image obviously looked better/sharper but the FSR mode shown looked pretty solid to me. Maybe I'm just easily impressed?

Hopefully we get more info, examples, teardowns etc... soon. And hopefully we get to see it in something better than Godfall.

 

[IrishWhiskey]

On the topic of FSR and console support it looks like MS have confirmed the obvious that it is coming to Xbox soon:




From an IGN article linked in the above tweet MS had this to say:

At Xbox, we're excited by the potential of AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution technology as another great method for developers to increase framerates and resolution. We will have more to share on this soon

This was the obvious play once we saw recently that the FidelityFX suite of features was made available to Xbox developers/SDK but nice to see an official confirmation.

 

[Arkam]

On the topic of FSR and console support it looks like MS have confirmed the obvious that it is coming to Xbox soon:




From an IGN article linked in the above tweet MS had this to say:


This was the obvious play once we saw recently that the FidelityFX suite of features was made available to Xbox developers/SDK but nice to see an official confirmation.

I am going to assume MS has been working with AMD (and others) to develop this. I know Sony has been very active with development l, so It's a fairly safe bet. But hey official statements make us sleep at night so I'll take it.

 

[regawdless]

Very curious about the results. Judging by the bad YouTube screenshots, I don't expect much tbh. It is a pure software solution and I don't see why it would suddenly do things that haven't been possible before. I think it'll be a general upscaling method with okay-ish results.

Left native, right FSR quality.

 

[IrishWhiskey]

Very curious about the results. Judging by the bad YouTube screenshots, I don't expect much tbh. It is a pure software solution and I don't see why it would suddenly do things that haven't been possible before. I think it'll be a general upscaling method with okay-ish results.

Left native, right FSR quality.

Bare in mind this is the 1440p upscale at the second highest quality mode, but yeah the results are not particularly good in this example.

The 4K Ultra Quality results look much better but it kind of makes sense as they are working with more detailed/higher base resolution inputs presumably.

 

[regawdless]

Bare in mind this is the 1440p upscale at the second highest quality mode, but yeah the results are not particularly good in this example.

The 4K Ultra Quality results look much better but it kind of makes sense as they are working with more detailed/higher base resolution inputs presumably.

Do you have any screens of the 4k ultra quality setting? I couldn't find any.

 

[IrishWhiskey]

I don't know if there are any direct feed screens but a few people have taken screen shots of the higher quality youtube stream so that is the best we have so far.



Obviously these are youtube grabs etc... and not amazing for a comparison as the left side seems to be more busy than the right of the split but it definitely looks significantly better than the 1440p GTX1060 screens/demo at Quality mode.

 

[Ascend]

AMD mentioned that it's nVidia's job to optimize FSR on their cards. It's entirely possible that RDNA cads give better image quality compared to Pascal.

 

[IrishWhiskey]

AMD mentioned that it's nVidia's job to optimize FSR on their cards. It's entirely possible that RDNA cads give better image quality compared to Pascal.

It did cross my mind that could be a possibility, although I think it is still too early to jump to that conclusion just yet.

I would read that statement to do with optimization as in relation to the performance (FPS) rather than optimizing the actual quality of the image itself. Although I could be wrong there.

It also would make sense that the higher resolution/input you give to upscale the more detailed the end result will be. So the opposite is also likely true that given a lower res (720p maybe?) that the resultant 1440p upscale may not look too hot as it would be lacking input data/detail from the base image/frame.

Either way, we should hopefully know more towards the end of this month. I've heard rumors that the games showcased/patched to include FSR on the 22nd will be the boring expected bunch of Godfall, Riftbreaker and Dirt 5.

Shortly after that is expected that RE8 will add support. It should be noted that all of these games are AMD sponsored so it would make sense that these will be used to showcase the tech. Given that I would assume that Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Far Cry 6 will likely both have support at some point this year too.

 

[Ascend]

Tomorrow is the day...

 

[regawdless]

Day of truth! Please be good.

 

[Ascend]

 

[regawdless]

I've read some articles, here just some quick take aways:

- currently no games to compare DLSS and FSR
- FSR in ultra quality with 4k output offers good results and is well worth the performance increase.
- DLSS offers better IQ, especially at lower resolutions. But FSR doesn't have the ghosting that some DLSS games have.
- FSR + consoles = great match

 

[regawdless]

Will watch it later, but here it is.

 

[Redviper]

So it doesn't work on every game and support needs to be added by the devs just like with DLSS. That's one of the biggest advantages just gone.

 

[IrishWhiskey]

So it doesn't work on every game and support needs to be added by the devs just like with DLSS. That's one of the biggest advantages just gone.

It would definitely be an amazing achievement if they could do that, I remember that being a rumour early on before we knew anything about it.

But it is supposed to be super easy to implement and cross platform/open source so should work on anything which means for developers they are more likely to implement the one they only have to code once to run on anything rather than closed source alternatives, unless they are being sponsored of course.

In addition this is also coming to consoles which should shore up adoption pretty quickly when you can implement it once and have it work for both console and PC.

While the launch game selection is kind of meh, it is still early days yet and looks to be coming to a few bigger titles such as RE8 and Far Cry 6 pretty soon.

 

[Allnamestakenlol]

Any word on how well FSR handles objects that are fine-detail or moving rapidly? I recall there being noticeable artifacts with earlier versions of DLSS (seems greatly improved in DSLSS 2.0).

 

[IrishWhiskey]

Any word on how well FSR handles objects that are fine-detail or moving rapidly? I recall there being noticeable artifacts with earlier versions of DLSS (seems greatly improved in DSLSS 2.0).

I haven't heard anything specific about it handling those type of things badly, so far it seems to work well in motion and doesn't introduce ghosting or some of the weird artifacts that DLSS 2.0+ can. However it does introduce a little bit of shimmer it seems.

 

[Redviper]

It would definitely be an amazing achievement if they could do that, I remember that being a rumour early on before we knew anything about it.

But it is supposed to be super easy to implement and cross platform/open source so should work on anything which means for developers they are more likely to implement the one they only have to code once to run on anything rather than closed source alternatives, unless they are being sponsored of course.

In addition this is also coming to consoles which should shore up adoption pretty quickly when you can implement it once and have it work for both console and PC.

While the launch game selection is kind of meh, it is still early days yet and looks to be coming to a few bigger titles such as RE8 and Far Cry 6 pretty soon.

DLSS 2 only needs to be implemented once at the engine level and then you can use if for all your games.

I expect both to become pretty standard.

 

[regawdless]

Any word on how well FSR handles objects that are fine-detail or moving rapidly? I recall there being noticeable artifacts with earlier versions of DLSS (seems greatly improved in DSLSS 2.0).

In the DF video they show the visible shimmering on fine edges and metal surfaces in the highest quality 4k mode during camera movement.

 

[regawdless]

Just finished watching the DF analysis.

- 4k Ultra quality FSR has good performance and nice sharp edges
- inner texture detail is not upscaled and visibly less detailed than native
- shimmering on fine edges and metal during camera movement
- the other quality modes aren't worth it imo

The biggest takeway though:
- Unreal Engine TAAU produces a better and more detailed image than FSR at basically the same cost