AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) Tested

[Iota]

it doesn't look too bad on ultra quality it seems.

I compared the screenshots, the lower left area specifically, the water reflections get pretty bad at anything other than ultra compared to the native 4K shot (even ultra quality seems pretty naff compared to native, being honest). I'm not sure I'd actually notice it so much when playing a faster paced game, it's only when I'm playing an open world RPG where I tend to stand and gawk at the scenery.

AMD FSR / DLSS1.0 / 2.0 aside, personally I'd rather just wait for the hardware to catch up for performance boosts and just run things at native.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Level1Techs tested it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYbm-Rlwf-0

[Corky34]

Something i don't understand and hope someone can explain, what's the purpose of the other modes? It seems anything other than quality mode look a bit pony & trap so why are they there, wouldn't you be better off simply lowering some settings or the resolution?

[3dcandy]

Something i don't understand and hope someone can explain, what's the purpose of the other modes? It seems anything other than quality mode look a bit pony & trap so why are they there, wouldn't you be better off simply lowering some settings or the resolution?

Watch the LTT video with Anthony. He explains it quite well. Those with older hardware for example would get better performance (say 60fps) with this rather than having to go down completely on settings which also results in worse image quality. Like he said - free performance doesn't come along very often. Not for everyone, but a free option! Also being available on consoles is what will drive this making consoles able to drive 4k displays at better framerates, for example

[Tabbykatze]

Nvidia says a smart dev can get DLSS running in under a weekend... but we still see loads of games without it.

AMD happily raises the bar for that comment from LTTs Anthony stating one dev said it took them two hours...!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Surprise,surprise DF were the most negative of all the reviews:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkct2HBpgNY

They think TAAU is better!

It seems some people on Reddit found an interesting point about the DF comparison:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comment...eb2x&context=3

Their TAAU comparison is actually completely rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbish. They only tested FSR performance mode. It's entirely possible FSR is superior to UE4's TAAU if you use Ultra Quality FSR vs TAAU at similar base resolution.

Incredibly lazy testing and could potentially be incredibly misleading. They should really know better and not make broad conclusions of TAAU being superior when they only use 1 test case.

KitGuruTech compared TAAU vs FSR much more exhaustively. They found FSR to be a bit better IQ-wise and for the most part, also faster (same internal resolution).

I'd say, for how "limited" (at least on paper) of a upscaling technique FSR is, it's mightily impressive. Def the most impressive of it's (exact) kind.

Apparently they also enabled VSync too which was weird,and also ignored the shimmering TAAU also introduces.

The KitGuru review:
https://www.kitguru.net/components/g...lution-tested/

They compare FSR and TAAU:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E12PM6HeSNI&t=285s



FSR is matching a TAAU(slightly less sharpening) but actually has less shimmering so looks better.





Another issue is if TAAU has more GPU overhead,then a weaker GPU could be able to push a higher internal resolution compared to TAAU anyway. Hence why I think the use of VSync was a tad suspect.

[Corky34]

Watch the LTT video with Anthony. He explains it quite well. Those with older hardware for example would get better performance (say 60fps) with this rather than having to go down completely on settings which also results in worse image quality. Like he said - free performance doesn't come along very often. Not for everyone, but a free option! Also being available on consoles is what will drive this making consoles able to drive 4k displays at better framerates, for example

So basically even though the lower FSR settings are noticeably worse they're (sometimes) not as bad as lowering some in game settings or the resolution? Did i get it right.

[Tabbykatze]

That Reddit thread is a total Warzone, lol.

I understand potentially why they would do an image quality comparison and take FPS out of the equation but it's still a very odd thing to do because it removes one side of the coin: to make a game look good you have to sacrifice performance but if you want it to be fast, you have to sacrifice the game looking good.

It still is highly unusual where DF is coming from and in comparison to the "normal" way of doing things, it does look a little bit weird.

Realistically, what FSR seems to boil down to is that the Ultra Quality and Qaulity presets give a healthy performance bump without sacrificing enough image quality to make it a poor-er experience unless you're looking closely. It's not a DLSS competitor in apples to apples but it certainly provides an exceptional case to developers of "why wouldn't I integrate it to widen my potential buyer/player bases' satisfaction while playing the game".

The arguments about TAA have gone on for a while but although TAA can look quite good (there was a huge amount of testing of TAA done when DLSS 1.0 came out), but it can be very computationally expensive which means the realistic targeting of lower end GPUs wouldn't even be using TAA anyway so FSR is a good side step in.

If you have a 3090, you're more than likely going to be using TAA or DLSS 2.0/2.2 and even then something like FSR may only be useful in games where DLSS hasn't been trained and you want to play it at 8k and exceed a 30FPS threshold with all settings maxed (which that could be an interesting test).

[cheesemp]

Looking forward to trying this on my rx480 (Why bother replacing it with GPU prices like they are!). Shame it need implementing on a game by game basis though as I don't have any new games except some game pass ones (Forza Horizons 4/5 and Flight sim please Microsoft).

[Tabbykatze]

Tbh, it sounds like the implementation is literally just enabling it in the games optional effects in the UI if Anthony @ LTTs description of a devs reaction is anything to go by.

Which does mean it has to be implemented on a game by game basis as it's part of the graphical pipeline rather than existing outside of the games pipeline.

[kalniel]

So basically even though the lower FSR settings are noticeably worse they're (sometimes) not as bad as lowering some in game settings or the resolution? Did i get it right.

Precisely.

Looking forward to trying this on my rx480 (Why bother replacing it with GPU prices like they are!). Shame it need implementing on a game by game basis though as I don't have any new games except some game pass ones (Forza Horizons 4/5 and Flight sim please Microsoft).

Agreed. It would be a very good match for Forza Horizon. Flight sim could do with the performance increase though I suspect it might suffer from texture loss of detail (though how important that is if you're high enough I don't know).

[ShreddedWheat]

I would only use this when turning on ray tracing to get back some of the performance hit. My 6800XT is great at native res without RT turned on but when it is on the performance hit is a bit much.
I do think however that FSR being available to implement on console will be the game changer, less work for the developer to just add FSR on console then port over and not bother with DLSS. Unless Nvidia are throwing a lot of money at them to do it why would they bother!

[Tabbykatze]

I do think however that FSR being available to implement on console will be the game changer, less work for the developer to just add FSR on console then port over and not bother with DLSS. Unless Nvidia are throwing a lot of money at them to do it why would they bother!

Because if they do go through the effort, the results are superior.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That Reddit thread is a total Warzone, lol.

I understand potentially why they would do an image quality comparison and take FPS out of the equation but it's still a very odd thing to do because it removes one side of the coin: to make a game look good you have to sacrifice performance but if you want it to be fast, you have to sacrifice the game looking good.

It still is highly unusual where DF is coming from and in comparison to the "normal" way of doing things, it does look a little bit weird.

Realistically, what FSR seems to boil down to is that the Ultra Quality and Qaulity presets give a healthy performance bump without sacrificing enough image quality to make it a poor-er experience unless you're looking closely. It's not a DLSS competitor in apples to apples but it certainly provides an exceptional case to developers of "why wouldn't I integrate it to widen my potential buyer/player bases' satisfaction while playing the game".

The arguments about TAA have gone on for a while but although TAA can look quite good (there was a huge amount of testing of TAA done when DLSS 1.0 came out), but it can be very computationally expensive which means the realistic targeting of lower end GPUs wouldn't even be using TAA anyway so FSR is a good side step in.

If you have a 3090, you're more than likely going to be using TAA or DLSS 2.0/2.2 and even then something like FSR may only be useful in games where DLSS hasn't been trained and you want to play it at 8k and exceed a 30FPS threshold with all settings maxed (which that could be an interesting test).

The weird thing is when they are attempting to make it look like Epic's UE TSSA is better than FSR. He is on social media trying to push his review - this is also weird.

It gets worse when you start reading the DF reviewers stances. First he makes a strawman trying to say the tech press needed to be corrected:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comme...&utm_name=null

Most didn't do what he said,as they made the distinction. He also says since FSR is a spatial method and how TAAU is much better technically,hence he has gone into that review with that mindset. The rest of the press has just gone in and did their image quality comparisons,etc and not prejudged the issue.

Then on Resetera,it gets even worse(look at his posts):
https://www.resetera.com/threads/vid...434456/page-14

People pointed out some issues with what he is doing,just ignores it and he and his supporters then try to deflect from all of it. Apparently Beyond3D is low level according to his mates because a number don't 100% agree with DF. WTF?

Seems to get into his head TAAU is better than FSR,but ignores the extra shimmering,or what KitGuru has seen. Then says with FSR you get shimmering anyway which isn't the point. TAAU makes it worse to a larger degree overall(unlike FSR),and this is after the same reviewers liked DLSS1.0 since it reduced TAA associated shimmering. AFAIK DLSS1.0 was also spatial.

But its to be expected when they all of a sudden wheeled out UE TAAU(it existed since 2018) for the FSR review,but not for the DLSS1.0 review. After all the same people waxed lyrical about RT at launch but also DLSS1.0 - Gamersnexus and HUB were far more critical than they were in highlighting issues.

Then he attacks HUB:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/vid...#post-68031605

Makes another porky where he says most reviews say FSR is nowhere near native,and accuses HUB of not looking at their own images because they said Ultra Quality FSR looked close to native. Yet,TPU and many other websites praised FSR Ultra Quality:

From a quality standpoint, I have to say I'm very positively surprised by the FSR "Ultra Quality" results. The graphics look almost as good as native. In some cases they even look better than native rendering. What makes the difference is that FSR adds a sharpening pass that helps with texture detail in some games. Unlike Fidelity FX CAS, which is quite aggressive and oversharpens fairly often, the sharpening of FSR is very subtle and almost perfect—and I'm not a fan of post-processing effects. I couldn't spot any ringing artifacts or similar problems.

Remember on here I said that stuff like DLSS probably is also adding edge enhancement and sharpening like effects,so it looks "better" than TAA images? Its what people are seeing with Ultra Quality FSR too. Its just taking advantage of our vision being sensitive to contrast gradients.

Yet if you read that thread and their review,they are trying their best to make even FSR Ultra Quality seem worse than UE TSAA. So either they are right,and most of the reviewers out there were wrong in saying FSR Ultra Quality is only a mild loss in image quality,or either there is something not quite right with their assessment.

The review is like the answer was already made before the question - this is why it is the most negative of all the reviews. Yet most other reviews seem very consistent in their assessments of FSR.

What its also lead to is Nvidia fans latching onto just the DF video,to go and criticise FSR on tech forums despites tons of other commentary which seems more balanced. Until that video they had been harping about how FSR would be rubbish,and were mostly quiet until DF posted their take on it. Nvidia couldn't have asked for a better piece of free PR IMHO.

[ET3D]

I don't get why it needs to be implemented on a game-by-game basis. If all the devs are doing is tweaking the scale factor and sharpening amount then why can't I do that as an end-user instead?

It's best explained on this AMD page. Search for "Where to integrate FidelityFX Super Resolution in a frame?"

The simple explanation is this: there are things that are best rendered after the upscale, like a UI. An upscaled UI will look bad. A UI rendered natively at the higher resolution will look good. It's therefore better that the developers determine where to apply FSR instead of having it automatically added.

[kalniel]

It's best explained on this AMD page. Search for "Where to integrate FidelityFX Super Resolution in a frame?"

The simple explanation is this: there are things that are best rendered after the upscale, like a UI. An upscaled UI will look bad. A UI rendered natively at the higher resolution will look good. It's therefore better that the developers determine where to apply FSR instead of having it automatically added.

See my later comment