FidelityFX Super Resolution in the test: AMD FSR can do something, but not yet beat Nvidia DLSS

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AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is now available in the first games. ComputerBase took a look at the Nvidia DLSS competitors in the games Anno 1800, Godfall and The Riftbreaker and presented quality impressions in picture and video as well as benchmarks with Radeon and GeForce – because FSR runs everywhere.

Table of contents

  1. 1 AMD FSR can do something, but does not beat Nvidia DLSS yet
    1. The Nvidia DLSS competitor FSR in the test
    2. AMD FSR vs. Nvidia DLSS: Technologies in comparison
    3. Supported games, compatible graphics cards, open source approach
  2. 2 The image quality of AMD FSR
    1. FSR in The Riftbreaker
    2. FSR in Anno 1800
    3. FSR in Godfall
    4. FSR vs. DLSS: Which looks better?
  3. 3 The performance of AMD FSR
    1. Benchmarks with FSR in Anno 1800 in UHD
    2. Benchmarks with FSR in Anno 1800 in WQHD
    3. Further benchmarks in Godfall and Riftbreaker
  4. 4 First impression of the DLSS competitor

The Nvidia DLSS competitor FSR in the test

With RDNA 2 and the Radeon RX -6000 series, with the exception of ray tracing performance, AMD is finally competitive again up to the top of the range for graphics cards for gaming PCs. On the other hand, there was still a lag on the software side, because AMD had nothing to do with Nvidia's intelligent AI upsampling DLSS.

For a long time, this didn't seem to be a big problem, because the first DLSS iteration had various weaknesses and was only used sporadically. Since DLSS 2.0 (test), however, the technology has been very convincing in many games. If you want to use high resolutions and ray tracing at the same time, you can often not get past DLSS even with high-end graphics cards and you no longer have to do so. And as a reaction to AMD's powerful Radeon RX 6000, the technology is now also being used separately in more and more games without RT coupling as an optional performance turbo.

AMD had to react and did so in early 2021 with the announcement of FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR). Then it was quiet again for the time being, until the announcement of FSR for June 22nd was made at the beginning of June.

That June 22nd is today. With immediate effect, the first seven games support FSR, twelve more titles have been announced and 44 developers and publishers have already announced support.

FSR and DLSS could hardly be more different

FSR wants to be a competitor to DLSS, but AMD actually does everything differently. It starts with the software philosophy (closed source vs. open source from mid-July), extends to the technology (AI vs. no AI, temporal vs. spatial upsampling) and the objective (comparable vs. minimally poorer image quality) continues and ends with the supported hardware (only GeForce RTX vs. AMD, Nvidia and Intel).

The question of how competitive FSR with this approach has recently become DLSS is, ComputerBase is looking into the games Anno 1800, Godfall and The Riftbreaker, because these are three of the seven titles that support FSR from today.

AMD FSR vs. Nvidia DLSS: Technologies in comparison

FSR works fundamentally different to DLSS and Nvidia definitely brings heavier guns on DLSS. DLSS not only scales up, but also replaces the game's anti-aliasing, which is made possible by the fact that the technology not only processes individual frames separately, but also compares the previous images for each image and includes them in the current frame to be rendered. So there is a temporal component in DLSS, which has various advantages.

With this approach, DLSS can manage to smooth out any elements in an image, which is why the graphics with DLSS often appear much more flicker-free, i.e. without. At the same time, the technology often manages to correctly display objects that are not correctly displayed in the native resolution – as the additional data from the previous frames are helpful for this. This work is carried out by a neural network that Nvidia has trained beforehand and allows it to continue to train and thus improveTemporal upscaling is not only the great strength of DLSS for the two reasons mentioned. At the same time, the technology can replace poor anti-aliasing in the game. However, DLSS is not perfect – not even when it comes to image quality. If there are graphics errors in games, for example, be it smeared objects or errors that are already present, they are mercilessly amplified by DLSS. Sometimes titles with DLSS also lose their sharpness and even if Nvidia has improved the integration of the exclusive technology (it is particularly easy with the UE4 with the new plug-in), the game developers still have to invest time in installing it. In addition, DLSS only works on GeForce RTX graphics cards.

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AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution

FSR is more classic, simpler and more flexible than DLSS

AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution works completely differently. AMD does indeed do without a neural network, so AI does not play a role. And a temporal component is also missing. FSR is a simple so-called spatial upsampling. Nevertheless, FSR should deliver a visibly better image quality than the native resolution or a significant performance boost with only a minimal loss of quality. And that is how the objective differs from FSR. AMD's technology should deliver significantly more performance with minimal loss of quality, while Nvidia promises significantly more performance with comparable quality.

How FSR works in detail has not yet been made public by AMD. Looking at the result, the company speaks of “high quality edges” and “distinctive pixel details”. After the upscaling, FSR also sharpens the image to make lost details visible again – DLSS does that in some games. FSR does not offer its own temporal stability, but the anti-aliasing of the game can do this job. This means that the end result of FSR inevitably depends heavily on the game's anti-aliasing. If it is good, the missing temporal component of FSR need not be a disadvantage at all. If, on the other hand, it is inherently problematic, it will remain problematic with FSR.

Supported games, compatible graphics cards, open source approach

In terms of quality, the missing temporal component can be a disadvantage, but the FSR implementation should be easier because the developer does not have to pay attention to the correct use of motion vectors for DLSS. Optimization for each individual game is therefore not necessary, albeit entirely possible, in order to adapt the technology to the peculiarities of a title.

This aspect and the potentially broad base as a result of the open approach seem to be well received by developers. With seven games at the start and a further twelve titles to follow shortly, FSR's starting line-up is significantly more extensive than that of DLSS, which took more than a year to come up with this portfolio – although this should also have played a role that DLSS always went hand in hand with RT in the beginning.

The 44 developers and publishers who want to incorporate the technology into their games also speak in favor of the popularity of AMD FSR including numerous heavyweights such as Capcom, Crystal Dynamics, EA with Frostbite, Gearbox, Ubisoft, Unity, Valve and Warner Bros. Games.

The following games support AMD FSR From June 22nd “Coming soon”, unknown period 22 Racing Series Asterigos Anno 1800 Baldur's Gate III Evil Genius 2 DOTA 2 Godfall Edge of Eternity Kingshunt Far Cry 6 Terminator: Resistance Farming Simulator 22 The Riftbreaker Forspoken Myst Necromunda : Hired Gun Resident Evil Village Swordsman Remake Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodhunt

In addition, FSR does not only work under Windows, because Linux is also included. The same applies to the Xbox Series X/S, which Microsoft has already announced that it will support. Technically, the PlayStation 5 (and if desired also the last-gen generations) is able to use FSR, but there is no official confirmation for this.

The following developers/publishers support AMD FSR ACME Gamestudio Anshar Studio Avalanche Software Bloober Team Capcom Counterplay Games Crystal Dynamics Cyan Worlds Destructive Creations Digital Sky Electronic Arts & amp; Frostbite EXOR Studios Focus Home Interactive Gearbox Publishing Giants Software GOATi Entertainment Illfonic Koch Media Kubold Larian Studios Luminous Productions Midgar Studio Movie Games My.Games Nixxes Obsidian Entertainment Oxide Interactive Perfect World Games Plastic QLOC Rebellion Reflector Entertainment Sharkmob Streum On Studio Superbright Teyon The Farm 51 Turtle Rock Studios Ubisoft UMI Co. Ltd. Unity Warner Bros. Games Vaki Games Valve

In contrast to Nvidia DLSS, which requires a GeForce RTX, FSR also supports competitive graphics cards and older generations. Even Intel's integrated GPUs and the discrete graphics cards that are expected to appear this year belong to the target group of FSR, even if AMD does not name Intel products as currently supported hardware.

The following graphics cards currently officially support AMD FSR AMD Nvidia Radeon RX 6000 (M) GeForce RTX 3000 Radeon RX 5000 (M) GeForce RTX 2000 Radeon VII GeForce GTX 1600 Radeon RX Vega GeForce GTX 1000 Radeon RX 500 Radeon RX 480/470/460 Ryzen- APUs with Radeon GPU

Four quality levels for more FPS

FSR, like DLSS, gains performance because the internal rendering resolution is reduced. AMD's variant offers four different modes with “Ultra Quality”, “Quality”, “Balanced” and “Performance”, which use the same scaling factors in every target resolution.

“Ultra Quality”, for example, uses a scaling factor of 1.3, so in Ultra HD it is rendered with 2,954 × 1,662 pixels. “Quality” with a factor of 1.5 and the resulting internal resolution of 2.560 × 1.440 then corresponds to DLSS in the quality setting, while FSR on “Balanced” with 1.7 and internal 2.259 × 1.270 is almost the same as DLSS “Balanced” and FSR to “Performance” with 2.0 and internally calculated 1,920 × 1,080 with Nvidia's performance setting is identical. There is no equivalent to Nvidia's ultra-performance mode.

The scaling factors are the standard, but not set in stone. Developers can customize it.

FSR modes and standard resolutions FSR preset Render resolution Quality according to AMD Target resolution: 3,840 × 2,160 Ultra Quality 2,954 × 1,662 Very close to native rendering Quality 2,560 × 1,440 Representative of native rendering Balanced 2,259 × 1,270 Approximately to native rendering Performance 1,920 × 1,080 Visible graphic influences Target resolution: 2,560 × 1,440 Ultra Quality 1,970 × 1,108 Very close to native rendering Quality 1,706 × 960 Representative to native rendering Balanced 1,506 × 847 Approximately to native rendering Performance 1,280 × 720 Visible graphic influences

FSR works in any resolution including widescreen aspect ratios. However, AMD only recommends the technology as the target resolution from WQHD. It is not only about the expected image quality, but also about the performance gain, which gets smaller and smaller in low resolutions, because the graphics card as a bottleneck moves further and further into the background.

Speaking of performance gain: According to AMD, this should be high: On average, there should be 2.4 times more FPS with the target resolution Ultra HD, whereby this value applies to the performance mode. Of course, the reduced rendering resolution is primarily responsible for this. Using this to create the finished image in the target resolution shouldn't cost much.

The compute shader used for FSR should almost exclusively load the ALUs of the GPU itself. And since these are massively relieved by the reduction in resolution, the computing effort is hardly significant, explains AMD. In addition, the compute shader uses FP32 and FP16 computations, which can be computed faster on most GPUs. And since the upscaling algorithm used has no dependencies on other calculations, it should never have to wait for anything. According to AMD, the “upscaling pass” (edge ​​reconstruction + re-sharpening) in The Riftbreaker costs only 6 percent FPS after rendering the lower resolution.

On the next page: The image quality of AMD FSR