At Computex 2021, we were very excited to share with everyone an update on one of our most anticipated technologies ever, AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) (1). At this event, you got an early first look at FSR running on Counterplay Game’s Godfall and saw the amazing performance uplift (2) it can offer to gamers while preserving up to near-native resolution gaming experiences.
Fast-forward to today, and the launch of FidelityFX Super Resolution is upon us, with 7 games available NOW that support FSR, including 22 Racing Series, Anno 1800, Evil Genius 2, Godfall, Kingshunt, Terminator: Resistance, and The Riftbreaker. We are also announcing that we have 12 more confirmed games coming out in the future that will support FSR, including Far Cry 6 and Resident Evil: Village, along with over 40 leading game developers and publishers on board, such as Capcom, Electronic Arts, Gearbox, Obsidian Entertainment, and Ubisoft, who will also bring FSR to their future titles.
This unprecedented level of support for FSR builds upon the support we have for our other AMD FidelityFX technologies, which are already available in more than 45 games. With the addition of FSR, we now have over 70 developers supporting AMD FidelityFX technologies!
In this blog, we take a deeper dive into some more detailed information on FSR, including why it is needed, how it works, how it performs, and all the games and partners we have lined up to support it. You can also see FSR in action on Twitch today being played by some of our #AMDRedTeam partnered streamers. Check out the schedule at the end of the blog.
Today’s Challenges for Gamers and Developers
The where/why/and how people play games is rapidly evolving, which throws up a lot of challenges for both gamers and developers. Today’s gamers are increasingly moving towards gaming on laptops, playing on high-refresh displays, expecting next-generation visuals (with technologies like raytracing), and extracting the maximum amount of performance from their hardware. Developers too are challenged when creating next-generation gaming experiences that can support a wide range of hardware and deliver high framerates for as broad an audience of gamers as possible.
That’s where upscaling and image reconstruction comes in as a way to solve some of the pain points gamers and developers both have. Upscaling can help deliver the needed performance boost to experience the latest gaming technologies on as many platforms as possible. And while other upscaling solutions have been available for some time, we believe that FidelityFX Super Resolution offers the most appealing upscaling solution available today for both gamers and developers. Here’s why.
Introducing AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution, Built for Gamers
FidelityFX Super Resolution uses cutting-edge upscaling technologies to help boost your framerates and deliver high-quality, high-resolution gaming experiences. FSR has been developed to significantly improve performance in many of the challenging scenarios that modern gamers face – getting better performance when demanding technologies like raytracing are turned on, achieving high framerates in the latest games on high-refresh-rate monitors, and playing the latest games at maximum detail on laptop graphics as well as on older graphics cards.
With FidelityFX Super Resolution, gamers can expect to get on average 2.4x the performance when running at 4K in FSR “Performance” mode in select titles (3), and with our state-of-the-art spatial upscaling algorithm delivering up to a near-native resolution quality gaming experience with super high-quality edges and detail.
There are four quality modes available, so you can find the perfect balance between the best image quality and the best performance, and FSR is broadly supported on multiple platforms and graphics cards – from the latest generation of graphics cards all the way back to AMD cards from 2016.
This broad level of support will help drive the adoption of FSR into as many games as possible, as evidenced today with our announcement of 19 games that currently support or will support FSR in the future and the backing of over 40 leading game developers.
Also Built for Game Developers
At the core of our gaming feature and technology development philosophy is our support for developers. One of the major pillars of GPUOpen is a firm belief in the benefits of supporting open standards and providing open-source solutions for developers – at AMD we put developers first. FidelityFX Super Resolution is an excellent example of this philosophy.
FSR is a scalable solution supported on a broad spectrum of graphics cards and platforms. It works across multiple OSs and supports multiple APIs (DirectX® 11, 12, and Vulkan®). It is easy for developers to integrate, and it does not require any special per-game training or history information from previous frames.
It also complements other FidelityFX technologies we have available on GPUOpen – and using those solutions together with FSR can help developers deliver amazing next-generation gaming experiences with advanced graphics features like raytracing at a performance level that will let almost any gamer enjoy them. FidelityFX Super Resolution will be open source and available for developers on GPUOpen in mid-July.
How Does FSR Work?
FSR, like all upscaling solutions, lowers the render resolution of the game to significantly improve performance then upscales the lower resolution input back to your target resolution, using its cutting-edge algorithm to improve the super resolution output to up to near-native resolution image quality (of note, FSR does require developer integration into a game to work).
The upscaling process analyzes the source image to detect edges and then reconstructs them in high definition at the target higher resolution. Then a sharpening pass further improves the image quality by enhancing pixel detail. Both passes take place in a single step in a game’s graphic pipeline. This simple and single-step integration into the graphics pipeline is part of the reason why FSR is so easy for developers to add to their games.
The result is a super resolution image with super high-quality edges and distinctive pixel detail when compared to basic point or bilinear upscaling -- at the highest “Ultra Quality” mode, FSR’s image quality is indistinguishable from the target native resolution when viewed from normal gaming viewing distances.
FSR Modes for the Optimal Balance of Quality to Performance
With FidelityFX Super Resolution, you can choose between four different quality settings, allowing you to adjust the balance between image quality and performance as you see fit. This allows you to configure FSR to your personal preference, the “sweet spot” if you will, whether that is achieving the best image quality with a still significant performance boost, or prioritizing performance above all else, allowing you to play the latest games at higher detail settings and higher resolutions on as many graphics cards as possible, both old and new.
The four different quality modes are listed below and for image quality comparison purposes, they should be evaluated at normal gaming viewing distances:
- “Ultra Quality” mode produces an image with quality virtually indistinguishable from native rendering with good performance. It should be selected when the highest FSR quality is desired.
- “Quality” mode produces an FSR image with the quality representative of native rendering while delivering great performance.
- “Balanced” mode produces an FSR image approximating native rendering quality and delivers exceptional performance for gamers.
- “Performance” mode visibly impacts image quality and should only be selected in situations where the need for the ultimate in performance is critical.
To give you some insight as to how these different modes work at two common gaming resolutions, 4K and 1440p, the table below shows the scaling factor and the input resolution of each mode.
| FSR QUALITY MODE | SCALE FACTOR | INPUT RESOLUTION FOR 1440P FSR | INPUT RESOLUTION FOR 4K FSR |
| “Ultra Quality” | 1.3X per dimension | 1970 x 1108 | 2954 x 1662 |
| “Quality” | 1.5X per dimension | 1706 x 960 | 2560 x 1440 |
| “Balanced” | 1.7X per dimension | 1506 x 847 | 2259 x 1270 |
| “Performance” | 2.0X per dimension | 1280 x 720 | 1920 x 1080 |
Note – when comparing the image quality of the various modes against native resolution (i.e., not upscaled) you should turn off any additional image sharpening solutions that may not allow you to properly evaluate which FSR mode is right for you. Also, in some situations, FSR at “Ultra Quality” can produce visibly better-than-native image quality at normal gaming viewing distances on titles that don't employ separate sharpening or use it sparingly.
What You Really Want – Performance!
“Give me more performance!” And that’s exactly what FidelityFX Super Resolution delivers. Performance, and lots of it! Depending on your level of graphics card, monitor resolution, and type of game you are playing, FSR can help deliver better gaming experiences across a wide range of situations. Let’s have a look at some of these and see the performance gains FSR can deliver in your games:
As you can see, FSR solves a lot of gaming performance issues for a wide range of gaming scenarios and gaming hardware, and it is not just for the latest graphics cards – FSR is supported on over 100 AMD graphics cards and processors. See the table below for a complete list of supported AMD products.
| AMD Radeon™ 6000 Series | AMD Radeon™ 6000M Series | AMD Radeon™ 5000 Series |
| AMD Radeon™ 5000M Series | AMD Radeon™ VII Graphics | AMD Radeon™ RX Vega Series |
| AMD Radeon™ 600 Series | AMD Radeon™ RX 500 Series | AMD Radeon™ RX 480/470/460 Graphics |
| AMD Ryzen™ Desktop and Mobile Processors with AMD Radeon™ Graphics |
Wait, FSR Works on NVIDIA Graphics Too?
There’s more? Yes, in fact, in our Computex presentation we showed you a preview of FSR running on the NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060, and we know this was very well received by a lot of gamers. Well, we are not stopping there -- we have currently validated FSR on NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 30 & 20 series graphics cards and GeForce® GTX 16 & 10 series cards.
The performance overhead of FidelityFX Super Resolution on AMD and NVIDIA® graphics cards is comparable for GPUs within the same segment (e.g., Radeon™ RX 6800 XT vs. NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3080) and the expected performance gains in games will be similar on both platforms. However, we do want to make it clear that AMD does not provide end-user technical or warranty support for FSR enablement on other vendors’ graphics cards.
As we showed above for AMD graphics, FSR can help your gaming in many different scenarios, and for older NVIDIA cards here are some situations we think FSR can help with:
Graphics solutions relying on open or industry standards benefit the gaming industry over proprietary solutions and will accelerate the adoption of FSR into many more games for more gamers than other upscaling solutions.
The Moment You’ve Been Waiting For: The Supported Games
Of course, none of the above matters at all if FidelityFX Super Resolution is not available in the games you love. Today, we’re excited to announce that 7 games are enabled with FSR immediately:
22 Racing Series, Anno 1800, Evil Genius 2: World Domination, Godfall, Kingshunt, The Riftbreaker, Terminator: Resistance.
And we have more games upcoming including:
Asterigos, Baldur’s Gate 3, DOTA 2, Edge of Eternity, Far Cry 6, Farming Simulator 22, Forspoken, Myst, Necromunda: Hired Gun, Resident Evil Village, Swordsman Remake, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodhunt.
Even more games will be announced in the future, so check out the FSR web page to keep up to date and sign up for our newsletter. And keep telling us what games YOU want to see with FSR.
When updating these games to support FSR we also recommend that you download the AMD Radeon™ Adrenalin Software 21.6.1 driver, our latest release that is optimized for games with FSR.
To prevent over-sharpening, we suggest not to use Radeon™ Image Sharpening with FSR-enabled games.
Developer Partners
FidelityFX Super Resolution is off to a great start with strong industry support from over 40 game developers, including ACME Game Studios, Counterplay Games, Capcom, Crystal Dynamics, EXOR Studios, Electronic Arts, GIANTS Software, GOATi Entertainment, Illfonic, Larian Studios, Luminous Productions, Midgar Studios, Nixxes, Obsidian Entertainment, Perfect World Games, Rebellion, Teyon, Ubisoft, Unity, Vaki Games, Valve, and Warner Bros. Games.
Let’s See What Developers Have to Say About FSR:
“AMD has helped us bring our vision to fruition to top the performance of our game, Asterigos, with AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution. It has been great to be one of the AMD FSR supported titles. And we look forward to continuing working with them in the future.” — Cheng Hsien Lin, Game Director, ACME Gamestudio
“With FidelityFX Super Resolution, AMD has delivered another amazing platform-agnostic feature that’s easy for developers to implement and provides Godfall players higher performance at higher resolutions with everything cranked way up, including raytracing.” — Keith Lee, CEO, Counterplay Games
“FidelityFX Super Resolution is a great tool that helps many of our users achieve sharper visuals in Myst on all levels of hardware. We can't wait for the world to see how Myst looks with FidelityFX Super Resolution integrated!” — Hannah Gamiel, Development Director, Cyan Worlds
“Implementing AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution into The Riftbreaker was one of the smoothest technology integrations that we have ever done. Thanks to AMD's "no black box" philosophy we were able to very easily implement it and tweak it for the specifics of our game engine. FSR is a cutting-edge upscaling solution that's available on all modern graphics hardware and combines superior quality with blazing fast performance.” — Pawel Lekki, COO, EXOR Studios
“Thanks to AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution our upcoming title Farming Simulator 22 will be able to deliver a more detailed rendering quality without sacrificing framerate. Supporting FSR right from the start is another exciting step for us and lets the good times grow in our Farming Simulator universe!” — Stefan Geiger, CTO & Founder, GIANTS Software
“High-speed games need high-speed frames - FidelityFX Super Resolution delivers, and all at 4K. FidelityFX Super Resolution is perfect for 4K gaming, and it is also great for accessibility and up-res’ing for our players on integrated graphics machines. FidelityFX Super Resolution helps us to hit 4K and retain high frames. We love it, and our players love it.” — Garth Midgley, Managing Director, GOATi Entertainment
“AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution is a best-in-class spatial upscaling solution. One thing we really like about AMD’s FSR is it doesn’t suffer from temporal ghosting, which has been a huge issue for us in past projects. FSR has a very low overhead latency, which is able to deliver higher performance that even competing products can’t compete with.” — Charles Brungardt, CEO, Illfonic
“FSR is an amazing upscaler, it brings a level of quality very close to a native image while improving a lot of the framerate. It's also simple to integrate and works everywhere.” -- Jérémy Zeler-Maury, CEO, Midgar Studio
“AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution is a performant and easy-to-integrate upscaling solution that Nixxes is happy to provide in their games, to allow for increased performance for players across a wide range of GPUs.” — Jurjen Katsman, Studio Head, Nixxes
“With AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution we are able to offer customers improved image quality at a lower performance cost than full resolution rendering. This is particularly attractive for users with mid-range GPUs wanting to target higher resolutions. We’re very pleased that it is designed for use with all GPUs and AMD’s open-source approach with FSR.” — Dan Ginsburg, Graphics Developer, Valve
More developers are rapidly joining us in supporting FSR, visit our FSR web page for the latest updates.
FSR Has You Covered
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution delivers performance for all gamers with no hardware purchase necessary. Whether you have an old or new GPU, enthusiast-class or integrated graphics, laptop or desktop graphics, AMD, or another brand, FSR has you covered. FSR is designed for rapid adoption -- with an open approach, developers big or small can begin to implement this feature and have it up and running in a short period of time.
This release of FSR is just the beginning of things to come. As you have seen with our AMD Radeon™ Adrenalin Software, we never stop fine-tuning and optimizing our solutions. We're not stopping here -- there are teams around the world that are already working on bringing improvements to our FSR technology and we’re looking forward to sharing more details with you in the future. Stay tuned for more, and from all of us at AMD, Happy Gaming!
Red Team FSR Steamer Schedule
Check out these #AMDRedTeam streamers who will be playing FSR-enabled games today.
Techniq: June 22, 9 AM - 11 AM PT / 11 AM - 1 PM CT / 12 PM - 2 PM ET
Tessachka: June 22, 11 AM - 1 PM PT / 1 PM - 3 PM CT / 2 PM - 4 PM ET
MsAshRocks: June 22, 1 PM - 3 PM PT / 3 PM - 5 PM CT / 4 PM - 6 PM ET
Deere: June 22, 3 PM - 5 PM PT / 5 PM - 7 PM CT / 6 PM - 8 PM ET
LEARN MORE ABOUT AMD FIDELITYFX SUPER RESOLUTION
LEARN MORE ABOUT AMD FIDELITYFX SUPER RESOLUTION FOR DEVELOPERS
TELL US WHICH GAMES YOU WANT FIDELITYFX SUPER RESOLUTION TO SUPPORT
DOWNLOAD OUR FSR OPTIMIZED AMD RADEON ADRENALIN SOFTWARE DRIVER
Alexander Blake-Davies is a Software Product Marketing Specialist for Radeon Software for Developers at AMD. Links to third-party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. GD-5
DISCLAIMERS AND FOOTNOTES
- AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution is available on select games and requires developer integration. See https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-software-fidelityfx-super-resolution for a list of supported games. AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution is “game dependent” and is supported on the following AMD products: AMD Radeon™ RX 6000, RX 5000, RX 500, RX Vega series graphics cards, RX 480, RX 470, RX 460, and all AMD Ryzen™ Processors with Radeon™ Graphics if the minimum requirements of the game are met. AMD does not provide technical or warranty support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution enablement on other vendor's graphics cards. GD-187.
- FSR demo system: AMD Radeon™ RX 6800 XT (DRIVER: 21.20-210518a-367616E), AMD Ryzen™ 9 3900X, MSI MPG X570 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard, 64GB DDR4-3200MHz, Windows® 10 Pro May 2020 update.
- Testing by AMD Performance Labs as of June 11, 2021, on the AMD Radeon™ 6900 XT, AMD Radeon™ 6800 XT, and AMD Radeon™ 6700 XT graphics cards with pre-release AMD Radeon™ Software 21.6.1 RC Prime 9 (21.20-210518a-367616E) driver with AMD Smart Access Memory enabled, on a test system comprising of an AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900X, 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM, ASRock X570 Taichi motherboard with BIOS version P3.61 at default settings, and Windows® 10 Pro May 2020 Update (19041.508). Benchmark tests: Anno 1800, DX12, 3840 x 2160, Ultra Hight preset, no raytracing. Evil Genius 2, Vulkan, 3840 x 2160, Ultra preset, no raytracing. Godfall, DX12, 3840 x 2160, Epic preset, Raytracing ON. Kingshunt, DX12, 3840 x 2160, Ultra preset, no raytracing. The Riftbreaker, DX12, 3840 x 2160, Ultra preset, Raytracing ON. Terminator: Resistance, DX11, 3840 x 2160, Epic preset, no raytracing. Game 7, DX12, 3840 x 2160, High preset, no raytracing. Performance may vary and is dependent on the FSR Quality Mode selected. FSR requires developer integration and is available in select games only. RS-365.
- FSR demo system: AMD Radeon™ RX 6800 XT (DRIVER: 21.20-210518a-367616E), AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900X, 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM, ASRock X570 Taichi motherboard, Windows® 10 Pro May 2020 update.
- FSR demo system: AMD Radeon™ RX 6800 XT (DRIVER: 21.20-210518a-367616E), AMD Ryzen™ 9 5950X, Asus Crosshair VIII Hero motherboard, 32GB DDR4-3800MHz, Windows® 10 Pro 21H1 update.
- Testing conducted by AMD as of June 9th, 2021, on a test system comprised of a Ryzen 9 5900X CPU, 16GB DDR4, Radeon RX 6900 XT GPU with Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.6.1 beta on FSR enabled pre-release builds of Terminator Resistance, Godfall, and The Riftbreaker. All games tested at 4K with maximum quality presets. Performance may vary. RS-366.
- Testing conducted by AMD as of June 9th, 2021, on a test system comprised of a Ryzen 9 5900X CPU, 16GB DDR4, Radeon RX 6800 XT with Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.6.1 beta on FSR enabled pre-release builds of Terminator Resistance, Godfall, and The Riftbreaker. All games tested at 4K with maximum quality presets. Performance may vary. RS-367.
- Testing conducted by AMD as of June 9th, 2021, on a test system comprised of a Ryzen 9 5900X CPU, 16GB DDR4, Radeon RX 6700 XT with Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.6.1 beta on FSR enabled pre-release builds of Terminator Resistance, Godfall, and The Riftbreaker. All games tested at 4K with maximum quality presets. Performance may vary. RS-368.
- Testing conducted by AMD as of June 9th, 2021, on a test system comprised of a Ryzen 9 5900X CPU, 16GB DDR4, Radeon RX 6800M with Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.6.1 beta on FSR enabled pre-release builds of Terminator Resistance, Godfall, and The Riftbreaker. External display connected to platform. All games tested at 1440p with maximum quality presets. Performance may vary. RS-369.
- Testing conducted by AMD as of June 9th, 2021, on a test system comprised of a Ryzen 9 5900X CPU, 16GB DDR4, Radeon RX 580 with Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.6.1 beta on FSR enabled pre-release builds of Terminator Resistance, Godfall, and The Riftbreaker. All games tested at 1080p with maximum quality presets. Performance may vary. RS-370.
- Testing conducted by AMD as of June 9th, 2021, on a test system comprised of a Ryzen 9 5900X CPU, 16GB DDR4, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 with NV 466.63 driver on FSR enabled pre-release builds of Terminator Resistance, Godfall, and The Riftbreaker. All games tested at 1080p with maximum quality presets. Performance may vary. RS-371.
ATTRIBUTIONS
Please see our FSR web page for a complete list of attributions.
© 2021 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, Radeon, RDNA, Ryzen, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. NVIDIA, GeForce, and GeForce RTX are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. DirectX and Windows are trademarks of the Microsoft Group of Companies. Vulkan is a registered trademark of Khronos Group Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.