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AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution: Can It Make Games Run Faster on Any GPU?

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AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution: Can It Make Games Run Faster on Any GPU?
Until the launch of the Radeon RX 6000 series earlier this year, AMD’s Radeon GPUs were not exactly competitive with Nvidia’s top-end GeForce RTX series. Performance was generally not as good, and there was no support for ray tracing, the hot new technology that everyone’s talking about. It takes a combination of hardware and software to not only perform ray tracing, but also compensate for the strain it puts on a GPU. Now that the red team has finally delivered the kind of hardware that fans want, it’s time to fill in the missing pieces of the strategy – and AMD is calling it FidelityFX Super Resolution, or FSR.

AMD FSR upscaling: Two competitors, two strategies

Ray tracing in PC games has been around for a few years now, with Nvidia taking a decisive lead over AMD with the release of its GeForce RTX 20 series graphics cards in late 2018. While adoption has been slow and limited in scope, the difference it can make in graphics quality is really starting to become a reason for people to want to upgrade from older hardware. You can now get much more realistic-looking lighting effects, shadows, reflections, explosions, and more in games.

This does come at a huge cost to performance – enabling ray tracing can cause frame rates to plummet. Nvidia addressed this issue by launching DLSS, or Deep Learning Super Sampling, at the same time that it rolled out ray tracing. What this does is allow games to be rendered at lower resolutions in the background, which reduces the burden on the GPU. That output is then upscaled in realtime using dedicated machine learning hardware and algorithms to match the original target resolution. To the gamer, there should be little to no drop in visual quality, which you would otherwise have to live with after reducing the resolution.

By reducing the load on the GPU this way, its power can be diverted to things like ray tracing, and even without that, those with lower-end hardware can experience better performance on larger monitors. DLSS is Nvidia’s proprietary technology and works only with GeForce RTX GPUs, which have so far been relatively expensive.

AMD finally implemented ray tracing with its Radeon RX 6000 series earlier this year, but without an equivalent feature, which meant there has so far been no way to compensate for the performance drop. FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is now here to fill that gap. It’s a new feature that developers can implement in their games to achieve the same objective as DLSS. However, it doesn’t require machine learning, specific training routines for each game, or special-purpose logic within the GPU. FSR instead uses simple spatial image upscaling, and for that reason it works on a wide variety of hardware.

Photo Credit: AMD says it’s extremely easy for game developers to implement FSR

FSR vs DLSS: Supported hardware and games

While DLSS only works with Nvidia’s premium GeForce RTX 20- and 30-series GPUs, FSR can be enabled on a wide range of hardware, from Radeon GPUs going back as far as the Radeon RX 400 series to all Ryzen desktop and mobile processors with onboard graphics – and yes, even Nvidia’s GeForce RTX as well as GeForce GTX 16- and 10-series models. There’s even mention of the older GTX 900 series in some AMD documentation, indicating that it might work. Intel’s integrated GPUs are not officially supported yet, but should work, and its upcoming discrete gaming GPU will likely fit into this landscape too.

There are currently dozens of games that support DLSS, including many of today’s most high-profile PC titles – Cyberpunk 2077, Crysis Remastered, Metro: Exodus, CoD: Black Ops Cold War, Watch Dogs: Legion, Control, Death Stranding, No Man’s Sky, Rainbox Six Siege, and even Fortnite. Support has very recently been added to Doom Eternal and Red Dead Redemption 2, with more new and old games added to the list regularly. There’s also integration with popular content creation software and game engines. Clearly, DLSS has established a foothold.

On the other hand, AMD launched FSR with only seven games– Godfall might be the most high-profile example. The rest are Anno 1800, Terminator: Resistance, Kingshunt, 22 Racing Series, The Riftbreaker, and Evil Genius 2. Dota 2, Arcadegetton, and Necromunda: Hired Gun recently received patches enabling FSR, bringing the total up to 10. A few more are confirmed to release or add support soon, including Far Cry 6, Resident Evil Village, Myst, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Farming Simulator 22.

A huge number of game developers and studios are also on board and have released statements praising FSR, including EA, Ubisoft, Capcom, Warner Bros Games, Valve, Nixxes, and Crystal Dynamics. On top of that, AMD’s current-gen RDNA2 Radeon architecture is also used in current-gen game consoles, the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5, the Google Stadia cloud service, the just-announced Steam Deck, and upcoming flagship-class Samsung Exynos SoCs with Radeon graphics as well. There are plenty of situations in which gamers will benefit from improved performance, even if it isn’t compensating for ray tracing.

So despite a slow start, AMD has two big advantages already – first, FSR is open source, and second, a broad base of existing hardware will work with it. Developers have very little reason not to implement it, considering that pretty much everyone can benefit. FSR could very well end up being something we just expect to see in every game’s graphics options panel.

Of course, what really matters is how well all this works. There are no games that support both DLSS and FSR at the moment, so it isn’t possible to pit these two solutions against each other. What we’re looking at today is just how much of a difference FSR makes to performance, and whether the image quality tradeoffs are worth it.

amd fsr support amd

Plenty of big names in the gaming industry have indicated that they will soon support FSR

AMD FSR: How it works

AMD’s approach to upscaling works entirely within the GPU shader pipeline, which means no dedicated hardware is required. No AI training is required and no information from previous frames is used to anticipate what needs to come next. Geometry doesn’t need to be rendered separately. FSR works primarily by identifying the edges of objects in each frame, reconstructing the frame based on those coordinates and intensities, and then sharpening the output. This simply becomes an extra step inserted partway through the rendering process. AMD recommends that developers implement FSR after the tone mapping stage and before applying visual effects.

Gamers don’t need to do anything special to set up FSR – no new drivers are needed and there are no GPU settings to be tweaked. It’s open source, so there’s no licensing barrier, and it will work across DirectX 11, DirectX 12, and Vulkan APIs. Unity and Unreal Engine will soon have integrated support. AMD officially says it should take less than a day to implement FSR in a game, depending on game engine.

Developers can choose how to present FSR options to gamers within their games’ video quality settings menus. The recommended approach is to offer five quality settings: Native (FSR disabled), Ultra Quality, Quality, Balanced, and Performance. These determine the difference between the render and target resolutions, or in other words, the extent of scaling that will be required based on how much you reduce the render resolution. At Ultra Quality, scaling is only 1.3X per axis, so if you want 4K (3840×2160) output, the game will actually be rendered at and upscaled from 2954×1662. If you slide down to Performance mode, the game will be rendered at 1920×1080 which means it will be upscaled 2X on each axis to get back to 4K on your screen.

If your output resolution is less than 1080p, FSR might not make sense at all. It also requires Antialiasing to be set as high as possible, since it relies on edge detection – you might see degraded image quality if this isn’t possible. As for downsides, AMD says there’s virtually no performance overhead – between 0.2ms and 1ms depending on your GPU’s strength and the settings you choose. Still, extremely sensitive pro gamers might not want to use FSR. AMD also recommends disabling Radeon Image Sharpening and any other custom sharpening filters, which can be overkill if the two are combined.

Of course none of this matters if a game looks much worse with FSR enabled than without. We’re now going to test the various settings on a variety of different GPUs, using some of the games that support it at launch time.

amd fsr resolutions amd

Each FSR mode corresponds to a set of input and output resolutions, and the scale between them will affect image quality

AMD FSR: Testing and impressions

We’ll be using two games throughout our test process – Anno 1800 and Godfall. AMD provided pre-release codes for these games for the purpose of evaluating FSR. Resolutions vary between tests and GPUs, and the highest game quality settings were used for all discrete GPUs. Both of these games are resource-intensive and can pose a challenge to even the most modern GPUs when running at 4K with all the quality settings turned up. Both offer synthetic benchmarks that run through exactly the same scenarios each time, making it much easier to compare performance across platforms and sessions. Godfall even supports ray tracing. In the tables below, you’ll see performance scores for both games running with FSR disabled as well as at the least and most aggressive settings, Ultra Quality and Performance respectively.

For this demonstration, I pulled out a bunch of hardware both old and new, to see how well FSR works in different situations. First, we begin with a standard PC test bench, consisting of an an AMD Ryzen 2700 CPU, ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate motherboard, 2x8GB of G.Skill F4-3400C16D-16GSXW DDR4 RAM, a 1TB Samsung 860 Evo SSD, and a Corsair RM650 power supply. The monitor was a 4K Asus PB287Q. All Windows and driver updates were applied before testing began.

AMD Radeon RX 590 AMD Radeon RX 6800 Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
Godfall, 4K, Epic, Ray Tracing enabled
FSR off 46.2fps
Ultra Quality mode 65.5fps
Performance mode 78.5fps
Godfall, 4K, Epic
FSR off 17.4fps 55.5fps 18.8fps
Ultra Quality mode 24.7fps 75.6fps 27.2fps
Performance mode 37.1fps 85.2fps 43.9fps
Godfall, 2560×1440, Epic
FSR off 31.3fps 81.3fps 35.9fps
Ultra Quality mode 39.1fps 85.7fps 46.2fps
Performance mode 49.3fps 83.6fps 61.3fps
Anno 1800, 4K, Ultra High
FSR off 16.96fps 50.95fps 22.69fps
Ultra Quality mode 23.9fps 68.99fps 31.73fps
Performance mode 39.22fps 101.23fps 52.15fps
Anno 1800, 2560×1440, Ultra High
FSR off 31.36fps 85.96fps 42.59fps
Ultra Quality mode 42.42fps 104.42fps 55.88fps
Performance mode 62.57fps 121.17fps 80.08fps

On this test bench, we’ll first pop in our Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 590 graphics card. The RX 500 series is one of the oldest generations of AMD GPUs that FSR supports officially, so it will make for an interesting study. We see that both games struggle at 4K. FSR is able to raise frame rates dramatically, but we’re still below the ideal threshold for smooth gameplay. At 1440p, you can see that frame rates rise to the point that you can actually play Anno 1800 very comfortably, although Godfall didn’t see quite as much of an improvement. As for visual quality, there are definitely rougher edges and fuzzier textures. Anno 1800 didn’t look too different at any of the quality settings, but the decline was more evident in Godfall.

Jumping all the way to AMD’s latest GPU series, we also have a reference Radeon RX 6800 card on the same test rig. Here we see an enormous generational difference – base frame rates with FSR disabled are not bad, but there’s still room for improvements. Godfall seemed to hit a wall at around 85fps, not improving at any settings, which might be due to a bottleneck with the rest of our hardware. With ray tracing enabled, there isn’t a huge dip in the non-FSR frame rate, but even that can be negated with minimal upscaling using the Ultra Quality setting. Anno 1800 on the other hand posted significant frame rate improvements.

Of course we had to test a few Nvidia GPUs as well. It seemed like a good idea to go with a GeForce GTX 1070, which does not support DLSS or RTX ray tracing, and could be considered at or near the end of its useful life if you’re a demanding gamer. You don’t need to even update drivers or do anything to enable FSR – it’s simply an option in each game’s settings menu, so you can just turn it on and choose your preferred mode. Five years after its launch, this GPU gets a new lease of life. Neither Godfall nor Anno 1800 are playable at 4K at their highest settings without FSR, but you could actually pull that off using the Performance mode. 1440p is more realistic, and the jump in frame rates is very impressive.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 (mobile)
Godfall, 1920×1080, Epic, Ray Tracing enabled
FSR off 26.1fps
Ultra Quality mode 33.4fps
Performance mode 52.2fps
Godfall, 1920×1080, Epic
FSR off 46.2fps
Ultra Quality mode 53.1fps
Performance mode 59.7fps
Anno 1800, 1920×1080, Ultra High
FSR off 54.41fps
Ultra Quality mode 64.30fps
Performance mode 72.11fps

Switching things up a little, we move to a two-year-old Asus ROG Strix Scar II (GL504GV) laptop, which has a mobile GeForce RTX 2060 GPU, Intel Core i7-8750H CPU, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 15.6-inch 1920×1080 screen with a 144Hz refresh rate. Obviously, we test only at this resolution, which is lower than the targets we had set for our desktop rig. What’s most interesting here is that you can really start to see differences in visual quality at 1080p. Godfall in particular looked awful when running in the Performance mode – with such a low render resolution, there just isn’t much to work with. Frame rates also only improved slightly, so this is a tradeoff that I personally wouldn’t make. Both Godfall and Anno 1800 showed relatively conservative performance improvements – making FSR nice to have, but not as much of a game-changer.

AMD Ryzen 5 2400G (Radeon Vega 11)
Godfall, 1920×1080, Low
FSR off 20.6fps
Ultra Quality mode 24.5ps
Performance mode 30.3fps
Anno 1800, 1920×1080, Medium
FSR off 29.66fps
Ultra Quality mode 32.55fps
Performance mode 49.15fps

Finally, we go all the way down to a Ryzen 5 2400G APU with integrated Radeon Vega 11 graphics. Why? Because we can. It’s plugged into a Gigabyte AB350N-Gaming WiFi motherboard with 16GB of DDR4 RAM. AMD’s Ryzen APUs already deliver impressive graphics performance and if that can be boosted even further, plenty of budget-constrained gamers will be happy. I took the quality down to the Medium preset in Anno 1800, which is more appropriate for this entry-level hardware. The game did recommend overriding this and bumping antialiasing up from 2X to 4X when FSR was enabled. Godfall needed to be dropped down to Low quality. As you can see from the scores, both games showed only marginal performance difference with FSR set to Ultra Quality, but there’s a noticeable improvement in Performance mode. Visual quality does suffer, but maybe the tradeoff will be okay for you.

amd fsr comparison ndtv amd

Screen grabs from Anno 1800’s built-in benchmark running on the Radeon RX 590 GPU.

Verdict

Clearly, FSR works. It does help games run faster, and it takes zero effort for gamers to enable. However, it isn’t a magic solution that will drastically increase the performance of all kinds of hardware in all situations. As we can see, results vary considerably across GPUs of different tiers and ages. There is some visible degradation in terms of textures and definition, and the extent of this also varies. It generally works great at 4K, but the tradeoff can be severe at 1080p.

It’s hard to quantify the extent to which FSR can make up for the performance penalty that ray tracing imposes- more games need to roll out support for this to be tested. What we can see is fewer stutters and dropped frames, which means higher average frame rates and a smoother overall experience – which is well worth trading a little visual fidelity for. Looking at the scores, we can see roughly linear frame rate improvements in many (but not all) cases – 1.3X increases in Ultra Quality mode and 2X in Performance mode.

With that said, if you spend ages analysing frames side by side, you’ll certainly find visible differences. Rather than enabling FSR, you might simply reduce quality settings to boost frame rates – you’ll have to experiment and see what works best for each game on your PC. Low-end hardware does get a boost, but even that isn’t simply going to make an unplayable game buttery smooth.

There’s no way to directly compare FSR against DLSS, at least not yet. If games do support both in the future, it will be interesting to see how different they look. A number of huge names in the game development industry are on board, and so FSR could just become a de facto standard. Since it’s open source, companies could use the underlying tech but call it something different and expose controls in different ways.

Could DLSS become redundant? It’s highly unlikely, but remains to be seen. Will developers keep supporting it if FSR is easier to implement and serves the same purpose? There’s a parallel in Nvidia’s proprietary G-Sync vs AMD’s cheekily named FreeSync variable refresh rate tech – Nvidia does have a market for its more premium implementation, but has also had to embrace AMD’s open-standards approach after it became commonplace.

For gamers, FSR comes at a great time. New graphics cards continue to sell for double their MSRPs or more, thanks to cryptocurrency mining demand, global manufacturing constraints, and scalping. Anything that helps boost performance without requiring a hardware upgrade is extremely welcome. In India especially, FSR will help gamers with budget constraints extend the useful lives of their purchases, and experience the kind of performance that simply hasn’t been possible on low-end hardware before. If FSR is adopted widely, we’ll also see new possibilities for gaming on the newly announced Steam Deck and potential similar consoles; upcoming Exynos-powered flagship phones; and of course low-cost laptops and PCs.

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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox

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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox


Microsoft is teaming up with Inworld AI to create game development tools for Xbox, enabling developers to create characters, generate entire scripts and quests, and more. The multi-year deal brings an AI design copilot and an AI character runtime engine to the forefront, both of them being totally optional to use and to varying degrees. Of course, the use of AI in art has been criticised by many for simply lacking originality, in addition to running the risk of fewer jobs for artists — a growing fear among many considering the alarming number of layoffs seen at game studios this year in an attempt to cut costs.

“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”

The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.

Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.

Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.


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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It

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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It


BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) is a state-owned telecommunication company in India. Earlier this year in May, the government said that the firm started rolling out 4G services in the country. By December, the networks were said to be upgraded to 5G. However, at the India Mobile Congress, BSNL chairman P K Purwar said that the company will launch 4G services in December and then roll it across the country by June 2024. The chairman added that the 5G upgrades will take place after June next year.

In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.

To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.

Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.

The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.


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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed

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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed


Realme GT 5 Pro’s launch date is not far away. The Chinese smartphone brand on Tuesday (November 7) confirmed the arrival of the new GT series smartphone in its home country. The Realme GT 5 Pro is teased to come with a display with over 3000 nits of peak brightness. It is also confirmed to pack a larger heat dissipation area for thermal management. The handset will ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come as a successor to the Realme GT 5 that debuted in China in August.

Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.

The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.

For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.

The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.


The Motorola Edge 40 recently made its debut in the country as the successor to the Edge 30 that was launched last year. Should you buy this phone instead of the Nothing Phone 1 or the Realme Pro+? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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