FSR4 is without a doubt the most awaited feature of AMD’s freshly released RX 9000 series of Graphics Cards. It wants to rival NVIDIA’s master-of-its-kind DLSS engine which is the gold standard in terms of AI generated frames, and upscaling.
Well, it’s here and it has been tested.
FSR4 rivals DLSS but not everywhere
The immediate plus is better particle rendition (both in water and fire) when FSR is turned on. It is a substantial leap forward for the FSR technology.
Equally, FSR4 has an obvious impact on the level of details and textures, mainly thanks to an improved anti-aliasing engine.
Compared to its FSR3 predecessor, the improvements are unprecedented (for AMD at least).
The images and motions are much smoothers with an clear reduction of ghosting effects, as well as a less pixelized rendering.
An image speaks a thousand words. In the introduction scene of Ratchet & Clank : Rift Apart, we can observe a much more detailed, less torn silhouette. The metal effects and contours are much more precise and ups the overall realism.
The greens equally show a net improvement in terms of contours and realism when compared to the previous FSR3 engine.
Compared to DLSS CNN (CNN being the previous version of NVIDIA, now replace by the TRANSFORMER version), FSR4 shows similar visual improvements and can therefore be seen as DLSS 4 equivalent which speaks volume about how much AMD caught up with NVIDIA .
But that applies only to the visual effects, because we can not say the same can be said about frame rate performances.
Slower than DLSS4
Both FSR (3 and 4) have been tested against the new DLSS 4 (NVIDIA) engine using Ratchet & Clank : Rift Apart.
The first thing to notice is that FSR 4 needs more resources than FSR3 and accuses an FPS drop anywhere between 8% to 9%. Predictable.
Unsurprisingly, since both AMD and NVIDIA more recent upscale engines ( FSR4 and DLSS TR respectfully) need more resources, they trail in terms of FPS output and remain within in a close performance range (4% differential at most).
But compared to the DLSS CNN ( previous DLSS version and with less image correction), FSR4 trails by 17%.
Obviously this is FSR4 first version and you can be certain that future updates will improve both image quality and performances. But as it stands right now, and, on the current available FSR4 engine, it can be seen as game-changer for AMD.
Not only AMD seems to have matured their AI frame model, but it comes at a time where NVIDIA’s GPUs are facing scalped pricing as well as manufacturing systemic issues.
A clear win for team RED.
