AMD has thrown a curveball into high-end gaming with the FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) refresh. Redstone arrived today with new drivers for Radeon RX 9000 graphics cards. Redstone is a bundled system consisting of four main components: upscaling, framing, ray regeneration, and radial caching. All four employ machine learning models trained on real-world game data for increased speed and detail.
Upscaling starts with the basics, as games are rendered at lower resolutions such as 1080p rather than full 4K. Redstone then reconstructs the image to full size. It is very similar to native 4K and can even outperform native 4K in some cases. The effects in Mafia: The Old Country are especially noticeable in small details such as ropes and wires. By the end of the year, this will simply replace previous FSR versions for over 200 titles.
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However, frame creation goes a step further by creating additional frames to fill in the gaps between the frames the game is drawing. Therefore, for every frame that is actually received, one new frame is added, effectively doubling the frame rate. The good news is that it now works without the previous instability. Shadows are stable and fast motion eliminates flickering that was an issue in previous versions. The developers used real gameplay videos to train the model under difficult conditions, such as racing games. The results are amazing. This feature is expected to be included in at least 30 more titles in the near future.
Ray regeneration cleans up ray tracing effects. Raytracing effects are lines of light designed to recreate real-world reflections and shadows, but they can appear noisy. Redstone starts by collecting fewer lines of light, then fills in the gaps with models. The effects in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 are pretty spectacular. Reflections are crystal clear, edges are sharp, and everything happens much faster than with full ray tracing. This is currently only available in Call of Duty, but more games will be released in the near future.
Radiance caching is the final piece of the jigsaw, as it deals with indirect light (the way light reflects off walls) and requires all the difficult calculations to be correct. Redstone performs calculations in important locations and saves and blends them for less important locations. The ultimate effect is less computation, faster rendering, and beautiful colors and soft shadows. Developers can get the new software kit and start integrating it now, but the public will have to wait until 2026 to see more games taking advantage of this feature.
Cyberpunk 2077 in 4K performance mode increases from 26 fps to 123 fps on RX 9070 XT, God of War Ragnarok by 2.2x, and Black Ops 7 by up to 4.7x. All features combined result in a 3.3x improvement over straight 4K rendering. Benchmarks demonstrate that shadows and motion are better than the competition. The RDNA 4 architecture does all the processing in hardware, so older Radeons are excluded. If you have FSR 3.1 or 4, the new driver will automatically upgrade you without having to fiddle with menus. Simply turn on the switch in AMD software and enable frame generation for smooth gameplay.
NVIDIA's DLSS has long dominated the space, serving as the go-to tool for upscaling, frame insertion, and ray cleanup. Redstone maintains a high level of excellence. Tested with F1 25 and Black Ops 7, moving shadows are as good as DLSS. AMD bypassed multiframe generation and opted for one additional frame instead of three for each stock frame.
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