AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution feature

Here’s a first look at the visual benefits of AMD FSR 4.0

At CES 2025, AMD demonstrated the latest version of its FidelityFX Super Resolution tech, FSR 4.0. And, thankfully, HardwareUnboxed has captured some footage from it. So, let’s see what this new version brings to the table.

In the following video, we can see two PC machines with AMD’s hardware, both running Ratchet and Clank. On the PC on the left, AMD was using FSR 3.1 Performance Mode at 4K, whereas on the right, we have FSR 4.0 Performance Mode.

The good news is that AMD FSR 4.0 is finally able to resolve numerous visual artifacts that plagued its previous version. Even in Performance Mode, the image quality is better with fewer artifacts. So, from a visual viewpoint, FSR 4.0 is better than FSR 3.1.

Sadly, AMD has not yet confirmed whether FSR 4.0 will be compatible with older AMD GPUs. The red team has implied that FSR 4.0 will be only for its latest RX 90 series GPUs. However, I’m almost certain that there will be a fallback for older GPUs.

My guess is that by selecting FSR in a game, it will default to FSR 4.0 for the RX 90 series GPUs. For those not owning one, it will fallback to FSR 3.1 (or a less accurate version of FSR 4.0, similar to what XeSS does). Again, this is an assumption and nothing more.

AMD has stated that it will have a separate event for the RDNA4 GPUs, in which it will go into more details about its new GPUs and FSR 4.0. However, there is no ETA for when this will happen. As I’ve said, it appears that AMD has chickened out at the last minute regarding RDNA4. Not only are RDNA4 GPUs present in that event but there is also a working demo of FSR 4.0. So yeah, that’s kind of a bummer.

Anyway, first impressions are positive for FSR 4.0. So, let’s hope that AMD will deliver this time. And, since NVIDIA announced Multi Frame Gen, I wondered whether AMD will follow on this. Will we see it in FSR 5.0? Or will they add it in FSR 4.0?

Take a look at the video and stay tuned for more!

Hands-On With AMD FSR 4 - It Looks... Great?

20 thoughts on “Here’s a first look at the visual benefits of AMD FSR 4.0”

  1. There's a tweet from a leaker that itll be $479 and the AIBs will be $550. They probably really werent ready for the 5070 to be $550. Its seems like itll be a strong mid range contender if the price comes down lower or if they throw a decent game into a bundle with it. Also we have to see what the B770 is gonna be hitting for. Can't wait for the reviewers to do more image quality comparisons.

      1. very true. I forgot where it was said but the commentary was that people dont want AMD to good to buy AMD, they want AMD to be good so that Nvidia might lower prices.

  2. 550 for a low midrange with 12GB of VRAM
    All I need is for AMD to give similar performance and 16GB of VRAM and I'll be rocking their card this season.

    Sick of AI

    1. Going with an AMDGPU would also be a good choice if you are planning to dual-boot both Windows 11 & Linux later this year.

      That's because on Linux you get access to the open-source Vulkan driver called RADV, which is mostly developed by Valve and used by default on SteamOS and pretty much every other major Linux distro out there.

      That gives you an additional option which can provide some rather surprising results.

      For example, someone send me a link to a recent YouTube video where Windows 11 was compared to Bazzite (SteamOS-like distro) on an AMD handheld.

      While there were cases were Bazzite currently performs worse than Windows 11, there were also cases where it performed better already.

      There's clearly still lots of work to do on the Linux gaming front, but we are certainly getting there…

      1. I used my nvidia gpu with mvidia proprietary drivers.

        The performance was lower than what i get on winOS, but still not that bad

  3. AMD has chickened out at the last minute regarding RDNA4.

    While John keeps crying about this, the FSR 4.0 Demo was running on the RX 9070, and so far the results are very good.

    RX 9070 has around the performance of the RX 7900, and considering it is a mid range GPU, is a win win.

    So John claims are not aging very well, while he defends NVidia that used Fake Frames for their comparisons.

    1. 7090? Are you ignorant or what? Also, AMD did the same thing Nvidia did when AMD demoed the 9070 running Call of Duty.

  4. Why does the monitor on the left look brighter than the monitor on the right? It makes the colors look more saturated on the right, and the colors look more washed out on the left.

    1. It's because of the angle of the camera. Since there is less of angle on the left monitor it will look brighter that the steeper angle of the right monitor. You can see how this works on your own monitor as you move more to one side the screen becomes less bright. One of the main advantages of IPS displays is they don't have that effect as much as other LCD monitor types. When you look at monitor specs one of the specs is Viewing Angle which is usually given in degrees

  5. FSR4 only working with the 9000 series only proves that AMD ripped off consumers with the 7000 series. Apparently the AI cores in the 7000 series are defective and people paid extra for them despite they seem to have no value at all. AMD wasted millions of transistors that could have been better used to make more CUs and offering better performance and value at the same time

    1. head of marketing recently said they will be working on implementing a version of FSR4 on 7000 series as well.

      1. They have been working on that for 3 freaking years already. They wouldn't have included AI cores in the 7000 series if they weren't already working on using them a year before the GPU came out.

        I think they are just defective and a bad design

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