AMD’s FPS-doubling FSR 3 is coming soon, and not just to Radeon graphics cards

Even if you're not interested in buying one of the new Radeon graphics cards AMD announced today, the company still has some software-related announcements of interest to anyone who plays games on their PC. And that includes not just owners of older AMD GPUs but people who use Nvidia GeForce or Intel Arc cards, too.

First, AMD is finally ready to reveal more details about FidelityFX Super Resolution version 3, the latest major update to the company's open source upsampling technology. A competitor to Nvidia's proprietary Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and Intel's GPU-agnostic but nascent XeSS, all of these technologies attempt to generate a high-resolution image by rendering a lower-resolution image, blowing it up and filling in the gaps algorithmically to approximate what a natively rendered image would have looked like.

What GPUs support FSR 3?

Last year, FSR 2.0 went a long way toward making the technology more competitive with DLSS while also working on a wider range of graphics hardware from AMD, Nvidia, and Intel. Contrary to some prior speculation, FSR 3 will continue to support a wide range of old and new GPUs from all three major GPU companies. AMD has confirmed to us that the following graphics hardware should all support FSR 3:

• Radeon RX 5000, 6000, and 7000 series. AMD "recommends" running it on a 6000- or 7000-series GPU, mostly because faster cards will give you a better experience.
• Intel Arc GPUs and, presumably, upcoming integrated GPUs with similar feature sets.
• All Nvidia RTX-series GPUs, including the RTX 20, 30, and 40-series.
• Unspecified game consoles (likely the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S).

This leaves out many GPUs that earlier versions of FSR support, like AMD's Vega dedicated and integrated GPUs, Intel's Iris Xe integrated GPUs, and older Nvidia GTX-series GPUs. But it's more generous than Nvidia's cutoff for DLSS 3, which requires a brand-new RTX 40-series card to run.

What does FSR 3 do?

While Nvidia's DLSS and Intel's XeSS rely on machine learning (referred to as AI more recently, mostly for trendiness) hardware to generate the interpolated pixels and frames, AMD Director of Product Marketing Jay Marsden says FSR 3's hardware-agnostic approach "does not use or require any kind of machine learning hardware to run." Instead, AMD says FSR 3 uses "motion vector data" from games being played to help generate its interpolated pixels.

The flagship feature of FSR 3 is something AMD calls "Fluid Motion Frames," a name borrowed from a similar feature that doubles the frame rate for video playback. Instead of simply filling in the gaps in a rendered image, FSR 3 can also look at the differences between rendered frames and generate entirely new frames to fit between them, effectively doubling your frame rate without doubling the amount of GPU rendering power you need.

Nvidia has been doing this kind of thing for a year or so already with its DLSS Frame Generation technology, and many of its benefits and shortcomings will likely be shared with FSR 3. When your GPU is already pushing out a fairly high frame rate, it's easier for the algorithm to generate good-looking and non-distracting interpolated images because it has a lot of data to work with. When a game is running less quickly, the algorithm has to guess more, and especially with objects that move relatively quickly and randomly (think grass waving in a field or a driving rainstorm), the algorithm will often guess incorrectly.

DLSS FG also suffers from increased latency and input delay, which can make controls feel less responsive and less precise. This effect is also more noticeable the lower your base frame rate is.

"Running at 60+ FPS prior to enabling FSR 3 frame generation is recommended to mitigate any latency introduced by the technology," an AMD representative told Ars. "Additionally, gamers using AMD Radeon RX 7000 Series graphics cards can combine the benefits of our new driver-based AMD Radeon Anti-Lag+ technology to further lower latency in supported games when frame generation is used."

We don't know how noticeable these issues will be, and what unique-to-FSR problems will crop up, until there are actual FSR 3 games to test. AMD says that Square Enix's Forspoken and EA's Immortals of Aveum will add FSR 3 support at some point in September, and a total of 12 games were said to add the technology at some unspecified point in the future.

“HYPR-RX” promises even more frame generation

The less-interesting aspect of HYPR-RX just makes it easier to turn on existing AMD features in games that already support them.

AMD

The less-interesting aspect of HYPR-RX just makes it easier to turn on existing AMD features in games that already support them. AMD

Collectively, the features promise higher frame rates with lower latency than a natively rendered image.

AMD

Collectively, the features promise higher frame rates with lower latency than a natively rendered image. AMD

The less-interesting aspect of HYPR-RX just makes it easier to turn on existing AMD features in games that already support them. AMD

Collectively, the features promise higher frame rates with lower latency than a natively rendered image. AMD

The last software feature AMD talked about is HYPR-RX, pronounced "hyper arr-ex." Two separate features fall under the HYPR-RX umbrella; one is interesting and the other is less so.

To get the less-interesting addition out of the way, HYPR-RX is a driver-level switch you can flip to enable Radeon Boost, Radeon Anti-Lag, and Radeon Super Resolution features all at once in all games that support them. This bundle of existing technologies promises to boost frame rates and lower latency, but they're also all things you can enable individually in supported games.

The more interesting version, which is not coming to the September 6 driver, also adds Fluid Motion Frames to all DirectX 11 and 12 games when running on a 7000-series AMD GPU. Unlike FSR 3, this doesn't support older Radeon cards or competitors' GPUs; AMD is "investigating" the possibility of supporting older GPUs but "cannot commit that this is possible."

AMD says that this version of its frame-generation tech may not work as well as it does in games that explicitly add support for FSR 3. Where FSR 3 can use AMD's motion-smoothing technology and motion vector data from games to improve its predictions, the HYPR-RX version can only use motion smoothing, which AMD says "can have some impact on the quality of frame generation."

The "existing features all enabled by a single driver-level switch" version of HYPR-RX will be included in a new driver that will be released on September 6, along with the Radeon RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT. The frame generation-enabled version of the feature should be available around "Q1" of 2024.