AMD's remarks regarding the support for FSR 4 (INT8) raise some intriguing questions in the gaming community.
At its launch last year, FSR 4 represented a significant leap forward for AMD’s Radeon graphics cards, offering an upscaling technology that rivaled Nvidia’s well-known DLSS in terms of image quality. Yet, there's a notable catch: FSR 4 is currently only available for RDNA 4 graphics cards. But here’s where it gets controversial: leaked information about an INT8 build of FSR 4 suggests that this limitation might not be necessary.
On RDNA 4 graphics cards, AMD employs hardware-accelerated FP8 computations to enhance artificial intelligence-driven upscaling. Unfortunately, this level of hardware acceleration is absent in older Radeon GPU architectures. Nevertheless, the leaked INT8 version of FSR 4 has shown promising results when tested on RDNA 3 and RDNA 2 GPUs, indicating that it could indeed function on these older models. However, it’s important to note that this INT8 variant is still experimental and lacks the polish of the official RDNA 4/FP8 version.
In a recent inquiry by Hardware Unboxed, AMD was asked about the future of FSR 4’s INT8 support. The company’s response was vague, stating they had "no updates to share at this time." This leaves many wondering whether AMD will extend FSR 4 support to its previous generation GPUs. From my perspective, it would be a missed opportunity for AMD not to include FSR 4 for RDNA 3 and RDNA 3.5 graphics cards, especially given that new hardware featuring RDNA 3.5 has been released this year. Without this support, AMD risks facing criticism from its user base in the long run.
AMD should consider adopting a strategy similar to Nvidia's when it comes to FSR upscaling. When Nvidia introduced DLSS 4 and its subsequent iterations, they allowed users of older RTX graphics cards to access these newer models via the DLSS Override feature. Although these newer versions may perform slower on older hardware, they still provided gamers with options—allowing even RTX 20 series users to benefit from DLSS 4.5 upscaling. Nvidia empowers gamers to choose between the legacy (and faster) DLSS models or the newer, higher-quality (albeit slower) alternatives.
Though the INT8 version of FSR 4 might be slower compared to FSR 3.1 on RDNA 3 or RDNA 3.5 GPUs, the potential gains in image quality make it a worthwhile consideration. Providing FSR 4 support for older RDNA GPUs could significantly enhance AMD's reputation among consumers and also offer a substantial boost in image quality for devices like RDNA 3.5 laptops and gaming handhelds. Overall, it seems like a strategic move that benefits both AMD and its users. So why hasn’t AMD taken action yet?
Feel free to join the conversation about AMD’s hesitance to commit to FSR 4 support for older Radeon GPUs here. What do you think? Should AMD broaden the compatibility of FSR 4, or do you believe it’s better to focus on the latest hardware?
