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AMD is surprise-launching FSR 2.0 this week

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While the highlight of today was certainly AMD’s RX 6000 refresh, the company has also announced its plans to launch FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 (or FSR 2.0) on May 12. The newest version of AMD’s upscaler will debut on Deathloop, a critically acclaimed first-person shooter which released last year. With FSR 2.0, AMD is hoping to catch up to Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (or DLSS) upscaling solution.

AMD had made it clear for some time that Deathloop was going to be one of the first games to feature FSR 2.0, but we expected it would come this summer. In fact, the news about FSR 2.0 was buried in a PR article that mostly focused on the new RX 6000 series refresh. AMD also announced all the other games that will receive FSR 2.0 support “in the coming months,” which means Deathloop will likely be the only FSR 2.0-capable game for some time.

A comparison of AMD FSR in Deathloop.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

AMD announced several other games that will receive FSR 2.0 support. Here’s the full list:

  • Asterigos
  • Delysium
  • EVE Online
  • Farming Simulator 22
  • Forspoken
  • Grounded
  • Microsoft Flight Simulator
  • NiShuiHan
  • Perfect World Remake
  • Swordsman Remake
  • Unknown 9: Awakening
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It’s crucial for AMD to close the gap with Nvidia on upscaling technology. Nvidia launched DLSS in late 2018 alongside its RTX 20-series GPUs, and AMD didn’t get the first version of FSR out until mid-2021. AMD in particular has needed good upscaling technology since its GPUs struggle more than Nvidia’s in ray tracing.

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Although FSR 1.0 was a step in the right direction, it wasn’t enough to bring AMD to parity with Nvidia. FSR 2.0 could change that, however. One of the major improvements the 2.0 update brings is temporal or time-based data. Combined with better anti-aliasing, it could deliver image quality similar to DLSS.

Nvidia’s DLSS is based on machine learning, and while that can have a positive effect on image quality, it severely limits support. Only RTX 20- and 30-series Nvidia GPUs can use DLSS. By contrast, FSR can run on most GPUs made since 2017 (and even some from 2015 like the GTX 1070). AMD is hoping its more open source and more supported solution will be more appealing to gamers and developers, even if FSR 2.0 can’t match DLSS’s image quality.

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Matthew Connatser
Matthew Connatser
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Matthew Connatser is a freelance writer who works on writing and updating PC guides at Digital Trends. He first got into PCs…
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