Skip to main content

AMD’s Super Resolution feature may be further away than we thought

4A Games has issued a statement:

“4A Games has not evaluated the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution feature for Metro Exodus at this time. In our FAQ, we were referring to the AMD FidelityFX open source image quality toolkit which targets traditional rendering techniques that our new RT only render does not use, and noting that we have our own Temporal Reconstruction tech implemented natively which provides great quality benefits for all hardware, so do not currently plan to utilize any other toolkits.

Recommended Videos

4A Games is always motivated to innovate, evaluate, and use the newest technologies that will benefit our fans across all platforms and hardware.”

Original story follows:

Image used with permission by copyright holder

AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution is poised to counter Nvidia’s Deep Learning Supersampling (DLSS) technology, finally giving Team Red a way to run games with ray tracing at playable frame rates. Whenever it arrives, that is.

AMD has been silent on when Super Resolution will show up, and a recent FAQ from the upcoming Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition suggests that wide adoption may be a long way off.

The removed FAQ — spotted by @Locuza on Twitter — responds specifically to Super Resolution. Apparently, AMD’s technology is “not compatible” with the rendering techniques used by Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, and developer 4A Games says its own temporal-based reconstruction tech offers “the same or better image quality benefits for all hardware.” That doesn’t bode well for Super Resolution, suggesting it may be more difficult to implement than AMD has implied.

AMD's Super Resolution feature is likely many months away and we already have a first Ray Tracing game which according to 4A Games is not compatible with its rendering pipeline.
Their own method is claimed to be similar or even better in terms of quality.https://t.co/bOMyWwCubu pic.twitter.com/a2zTZRQjl7

— Locuza (@Locuza_) April 29, 2021

In a talk with PCWorld, Scott Herkelman, AMD vice president of graphics, said that “you don’t need machine learning to do it,” referencing Nvidia’s reconstruction technique and how Super Resolution could improve on it. Herkelman said there are “many different ways” to go about reconstructing an image, and that AMD is focused on one core question: “What do game developers want to use?”

Clearly, 4A Games didn’t want to use whatever AMD is offering, or simply couldn’t. Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition is one of a small number of games that require hardware ray tracing support. The latest AMD RX 6000 graphics cards support ray tracing, but without a tool like DLSS to combat the massive performance loss it brings on, it’s a bit of a moot feature.

That puts AMD at a large disadvantage for ray tracing-only titles moving forward. The recommended system specs for the RT Extreme preset don’t even include an AMD card. Instead, AMD tops out with the Ultra preset, which targets 4K at 30 frames per second on an RX 6900 XT. It’s worth pointing out that 4A Games created its system specs matrix with DLSS turned off, and it says that players can expect far better performance with Nvidia’s reconstruction feature turned on.

However, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition is just a single game. The RDNA 2 architecture behind the RX 6000 graphics cards is the same architecture inside the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Consoles still make up the majority of the gaming market, and AMD will, at some point, need an image-reconstruction method to keep games looking their best on consoles. The lack of support on Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition could point to problems with implementing Super Resolution. We won’t know for sure, though, until we hear something official from AMD.

Jacob Roach
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
All the games that support AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution
A woman wielding a weapon jumps out of red smoke.

AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is here, promising up to a 2.5 times performance increase in supported games across Nvidia and AMD graphics cards. Not only are old and new games alike getting FSR support, but AMD is also improving FSR itself, which is now in version 2.0. Although FSR 2.0 doesn't always look quite as good as Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), it has better support for GPUs from both graphics companies and for most will provide about the same image quality as Nvidia's upscaler.

At the moment, the vast majority of games that support FSR use version 1.0, but that's only because version 2.0 is much newer. Over the coming months, many games will be adding FSR 2.0 to its graphics options.
AMD FSR 2.0 games available now
Deathloop

Read more
FSR 2.0 is the complete reboot AMD’s upscaling needed
Julianna pins Colt to the ground in Deathloop.

AMD announced the next version of FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) not too long ago and the company shed more light on how it works on a technical level at GDC 2022.

FSR 1.0 wasn't perfect, and the new version looks to improve image quality while sticking to the values that made FSR stand out in the first place. Here's what we learned about FSR 2.0 at GDC 2022, and how it might impact your PC games in the future.
FSR 2.0 quality modes and support

Read more
AMD FSR 2.0 takes notes from DLSS — and it’s coming soon
A comparison of AMD FSR in Deathloop.

AMD has lifted the curtain on the new version of FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), and this time around, it's looking to be a more direct competitor to Nvidia's DLSS. The aptly named FSR 2.0 promises higher image quality compared to the first version, and according to AMD, it can hold its own against native resolution.

AMD fans have eagerly waited for an upscaling solution to go toe-to-toe with Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS). For now, though, all we have are a few screenshots from AMD. You can see FSR 2.0 at work in Deathloop below.

Read more