IF you have an AMD graphics card that’s in this list, then this guide will show
you how to upscale CS:GO (Or any game, for that matter!). If you have an NVIDIA card,
then check out my other video where I cover their upscaling method instead. And if you have an older
sort of AMD card then I’m sorry, you’re out of luck and will need a third party program like
Lossless Scaling to do the upscaling instead. Or you can simply not bother with it at all!
And if you have ANY questions about this, then read the description because the chances are,
someone’s already asked the question, and I might have already posted the answer there. Let’s begin!
AMD owners will be using RSR to upscale CS:GO with. The game itself doesn’t have
upscaling as an option, so it instead uses your graphics card’s drivers to upscale the image.
This is weird cos it means you won’t see the upscaling in screenshots you take of it- and it’ll
only affect what’s seen on your monitor! I still can’t fully get my head around this, but it is
what it is. But don’t worry- I can still capture it to show you in this video because I’m MAGICAL.
RSR does not add extra detail to the image. It merely makes what is already there look nicer,
and it does that by stretching the image intelligently, resulting in crisper edges
which look like they’re a higher resolution than they actually are,
and the whole image in general will get sharper. This comparison demonstrates what RSR can do. And
if you like the look of this (and have a supported graphics card), then this video is for you!
The first step is to enable upscaling on your graphics card.
Right-click on your desktop, click here on AMD Software,
go to the Gaming tab, Global Graphics, and enable Radeon Super Resolution. If
you have VSR on then I recommend disabling it because it stopped RSR from working for me.
So the next thing to do is to gloat to owners of Nvidia graphics cards, because AMD’s RSR is
better. The image quality of it is about the same, but the GREAT thing about RSR is that it works for
all kinds of aspect ratios. Nvidia’s upscaling solution, on the other hand, ONLY upscales if the
resolution that you’re using in-game is the same aspect ratio as the screen that you’re gaming on.
Which rules out all the CS:GO pros who are gaming on 16:9 monitors, yet all like to
play at silly aspect ratios like 4:3, 5:4 or 97:80 or WHATEVER. But AMD supports all these! I think
The ONLY limitation with RSR is that it forces a stretched screen.
So no black bars. If you want some, then you’ll have to find some literal card,
and tape it to the sides of your monitor. That is the only way I can see of getting
black bars to work with upscaling. But who cares, cos black bars are stupid any way.
The next step, luckily, is the simplest- just load up CS:GO, and set it to the resolution
you want to play at. To check that upscaling is actually working, press alt+r to load up the AMD
control panel, navigate to here, and you’ll see either a green thing indicating is upscaling,
or a yellow one saying that it isn’t, along with an explanation for why that is.
In this instance, I’m playing CS:GO at the same resolution as I set my desktop to,
so it obviously can’t upscale it, because it’s still at the same resolution! That’s better.
So what does this upscaling look like? This is 720p. And this is 720p with
AMD’s RSR upscaling enabled. RSR isn’t supposed to anti-alias
the image, but I think it does- or at least, it does on some edges. It still misses others.
So if you’re looking just to take the edge off the edges, then enabling FXAA will do just that.
So in short: don’t use anti-aliasing, then RSR will look okay on about half the edges.
Enabling FXAA allows it to do an okay job on all of them. But it comes at the expense of
the image’s sharpness, because unfortunately for AMD users, RSR does not come with a sharpening
option that you can configure. Which is something that Nvidia’s upscaling DOES have! But with RSR,
currently, you’re stuck with the level of sharpness it gives you, which is an okay amount,
but not enough to fully offset FXAA. AKA, Fuzzy 😉, Approximate Anti-Aliasing!
If you want the good kind of blur that better represents how the image SHOULD
look, then you need to look to MSAA, which actually does add more information to the image.
There’s 2x MSAA, 4x and 8x. Now 8x is obviously the best, but there are diminishing returns, and
it will demand more of your graphics card- which might even negate the entire point of gaming at a
lower resolution in the first place! But since RSR only works on newer and faster AMD cards any way,
chances are your PC is already powerful enough to run CS:GO at a low resolution with anti-aliasing,
so I’d say just to ramp it up to maximum 8x MSAA and to see if your PC can handle it. If it can’t,
and it starts feeling laggy then to drop it down to 2x MSAA with FXAA, which I find is quite a good
compromise. Now CS:GO’s FXAA option is bugged- it will disable again if you return to the options
menu, but provided you enable it, and click APPLY, and then LEAVE THE SCREEN, then it will remain on.
So hopefully now you know what RSR is, and how/if you can even use it. May it make
that silly low-res, square aspect ratio image you insist on gaming at just that little bit clearer!