Up until now, the only thing AMD has to compete with DLSS and other upscaling methods has
been FSR 1.0, which is little more than a clever stretch and sharpening filter, and
has only been featured in a handful of titles.
But two things are now happening to bolster AMD’s upscaling arsenal.
The first is to get something like FSR working in all games, instead of just the ones that
are supported.
They have called this technology RSR, and it’s enabled in the graphics drivers, meaning
it should work in most games straight away.
This makes it a more direct competitor to Nvidia’s NIS, which is already out, and
which I’ve been using for a while.
It’s nowhere near as powerful as something like DLSS, but it’s still a nice way to
bring out a bit more clarity and sharpness when you’re gaming at a lower resolution.
In theory, there should be no difference between FSR and RSR’s upscaling.
However, if you’re playing a game that already supports FSR, then you would be better of
sticking with that instead of activating RSR, simply because FSR keeps the HUD at native
resolution.
RSR doesn’t do this- it renders the game AND the HUD at a lower resolution, so it won’t
look quite as good.
Now something like this is a small price to pay for universal support, but it is a reason
for why FSR support in a game is still better.
The BIGGEST problem with RSR that I can see is that it only supports RDNA cards- that
is, the Radeon 5000 and 6000 series, and the upcoming Steamdeck console.
It sounds like it won’t be supported on older cards, like the Polaris 570 or 580,
or the Vega 56 or 64.
It doesn’t even sound like the 5000 series of APUs will be supported, despite being released
less than a year ago- since they still use the older Vega graphics cores.
If this is the case then it’s a real shame, because it’s cards like these that would
benefit the most from a technology like RSR.
I’m not sure if this is AMD simply trying to cut support for older cards, or if they
are genuinely incompatible with it, but it has left a lot of people upset… and it gives
the 6500 XT another reason to exist.
The other -arguably BIGGER announcement- is AMD’s unveiling of FSR 2.0!
This looks to be a lot more like DLSS, in that it uses motion vectors to try and build
up a better-quality image over time, resulting in something that, in many ways, looks as
good, or even better than native resolution does!
I don’t see much point in analysing the video showcases that they have of this, since
the limited bitrate kills any chance of making out finer details.
So we’re left comparing this single image, which they’ve displayed in FSR 1, FSR 2,
and natively.
FSR appears is using the ‘performance’ preset, so just know that there will be better-looking
settings as well.
Comparing FSR 2 with FSR 1, you can see that it’s a major improvement.
It gets rid of that fuzzy, painted look of textures- and the bricks now look like bricks
instead of whatever this horrendous mess is.
It also allows for sharper, crisper edges and details, which is evident on these roof
top edges, as well as on this railing just here.
I don’t think it does shadows as well, though- it over-sharpens them, making it evident that
it’s rendering them at a quarter of the resolution, and it isn’t even making that
look smooth.
You can also make this out around the entrance to the Garden of Perception, suggesting that
checkerboard rendering or something like is being used and that it isn’t fully resolved
to a higher resolution.
And I’d argue it even looks a bit worse around edges of details on this sign, again
appearing as blocks of 4 pixels of alternating colours.
FSR 2.0 isn’t without its problems, but it is certainly better and more detailed looking
than FSR 1.0 is.
And if we compare it with native quality, again, it wins some, and loses some.
The big win is to the thin lines- the lines on these balloon things here look much better
with FSR enabled, and it also results in much better anti-aliasing along the edges of this
wall.
Native resolution, in comparison, makes a right mess of these things, looking overly
dithered and shimmery.
Now, I’ve noticed this conspiracy theory in recent years that temporal anti-aliasing
looks particularly bad in DLSS-supported titles, which I guess suggests that it’s done to
make DLSS look better.
But you can see it’s the case here as well, so maybe we can conclude from this that Temporal
AA just generally looks bad.
Now, if we move over to this wall texture here, it’s more of a mixed bag for FSR,
and I think will be down to personal preference which you prefer.
FSR 2.0 makes it look more detailed and grainy, but I’m not sure it’s meant to- I’m
a little bit concerned by all the completely black pixels I can see here.
There just seem to be TOO MANY for the brick texture that it’s trying to represent, so
yes, it might just be over-sharpening doing its thing, or it could be something a little
bit more sinister.
You can definitely see, though, that native image doesn’t suffer from the same dithered-looking
shadows as FSR 2.0 has.
In other words: FSR wins some, it loses some, but the biggest win for it is that it achieves
something similar-looking to native resolution overall, but at a much higher framerate.
All in all, I’m happy to say that FSR 2.0 looks like a BIG leap in the right direction
for AMD.
Whether it’s quite up to DLSS standards remains to be seen- there seems to be an awful
lot of dithering going on, and what looks almost like colour chroma subsampling where
different colours meet, which I’ve never noticed in DLSS before.
But it sure beats FSR 1.0, and AMD claims they aren’t even using ‘AI’ to do it.
Honestly, I’m not sure how much of DLSS is AI, either- the motion vectors seem to
play a large part in the process, and the rest just seems to be how well it tidies up
the result, so provided FSR can keep up with DLSS at removing trails behind stuff, then
I think it should be quite an even match.
Unlike RSR, though, FSR 2.0 unfortunately requires per-game/engine support.
But in titles where it is available, it looks set to be a no-brainer to enable it, simply
to get the massive framerate boosts it can deliver over rendering it at native resolution.
Those who want better image quality should still use it, but maybe at higher quality
setting like quality or ultra quality, or even to use an above-native resolution.
So yeah, it’s a very exciting update to AMD’s upscaling technologies.
They aren’t without their drawbacks and disappointments, but it looks set to bring
AMD’s technologies to more in line with Nvidia currently has, and to brace them for
whatever Intel’s about to throw at us, too.