AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution - preview - Image quality

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 06/22/2021 03:00 PM [

] 216 comment(s)

What about FSR and image quality?

The cumbersome question of this technique applied is what the level of image quality will be. AMD has subdivided four quality modes; these modes are Ultra Quality, Quality, Balanced, and a quite horroble Performance mode. And really the success of this implementation depends on image quality, or 'how clean' the image scene remains. DLSS has a strong advantage here, as really AMD is applying an upscaling technique that will need to offer sharp image quality without grave spatial or temporal artifacts. In our findings, we can conclude that FSR has a significant negative effect on image quality. In retrospect, the earlier versions of DLSS had issues as well; however NVIDIA has the advantage of deep 'learning', they can improve and over time, and did exactly that reaching DLSS v2.2 already.

AMD created something that certainly isn't new, temporal upscaling and applied sharpening, the combination of the two will often bring some sort of an effect as they';re trying to make an apple with an orange ( the one solution has an effect on the other), this can translate into a blur, grain/noise, artifacts, or other forms of quality degradation. The question however remains, how much of that is acceptable and how much of that can you really see? In our findings, the performance and balanced modes are completely hopeless due to the related problems mentioned above. The last two modes; Quality mode (is somewhat acceptable), and ultra Quality mode is at a level we deem 'acceptable'.

The image quality results are going to vary per game. We tested three games; you'll notice degradation in Godfall, but less so in Anno 1800. We also tested Terminator, here we had some good results all-around, but the game itself does not have much detail so that's more of a no-brainer. Let's have a look at some examples, we'll start with Godfall:

Godfall

Above: reference screenshot

Native: way up is the natively rendered scene, no FSR is applied (off) You'll get proper image quality the way it's intended.
Performance: In the previous chapter I warned that performance and balanced modes absolutely blow. You'll spot massive amounts of loss in detail, missing lines due to blur, and whatnot. Disrecommended.
Ultra Quality - here we do get much better detail at first sight. However, when you look closer you'll start to notice a loss of detail. We noticed some artifacts when leaves blew by, lines are far more blurry and a lot of detail gets grainy and noisy. For example, the iron corroded bar to the right now was showing lots of noise, pixels that do not make sense,

Overall the Ultra quality mode we deem to be 'acceptable, but it also yields the lowest increased render performance. We'll look at [erformance differentials at the next pages btw.

We included the full-size screenshots for you to download so you can manually check them out on your PC. These are 3840x2160, we can recommend you checking them out at the same resolution, as checking them ion 2560x1440 would rescale the image with accompanying quality loss.

Download - native, performance, balanced, quality, ultra

Anno 1800

Anno 1800 is one of the first titles that announced it would support the tech. And as opposed to being an FPS, you're now working with an RTS game, the lower movement number of rendered images should greatly help with temporal upscalers versus artifacting and anomalies. We looked, but still found image quality deterioration:

Above: reference screenshot

So the image quality loss is less apparent in Anno 1800 due to the fact we have far less movement as well. The clips you see above are real-size and not rescaled. However in ultra HD, the smaller your screen size is, the less prone you are going to perceptively see issues.

Native: way up is the natively rendered scene, no FSR is applied (off) You'll get proper image quality the way it's intended. Beautiful.
Performance: We spot more blur in the scene overall, you can see it at the colored tent cover. It's a bit arbitrary though. What does jump out is the fact that detail starts to miss. In the native screenshot, you can observe fish in the baskets, at performance mode, it's a pile of unidentifiable goop. This extends to lots of detailed things in the scene.
Ultra Quality - here we notice something different. Now we rechecked this several times, but it is correct Ultra quality mode looks worse than performance somehow. Likely the sharpening filter is messing things up. The red-colored tent cover looks fuzzy and has a bit of a moire effect going on. When you look at the fish in the basket, you can't tell it's fish anymore. Then to your lower left, look at the detail of the basket, and compare it with the native screenshot. The detail makes all the difference.

We included the full-size screenshots for you to download so you can manually check them out on your PC. These are 3840x2160, we can recommend you checking them out at the same resolution, as checking them at 2560x1440 would rescale or interpolate the image with accompanying quality loss.

Download - native, performance, balanced, quality, ultra

Terminator Resistance

AMD has a handful of games supported at launch, seven of which we deemed three titles to be good enough to test. You've seen two, the third one is Terminator Resistance.

Above: reference screenshot

Terminator Resistance is a game that we'd normally not have tested, it's very linear and image quality wise not at all impressive. Perhaps that's why it works well with FSR, as the lack of image quality in-game also yields proper results with FSR enabled. So the image quality loss is less apparent in Anno 1800 and Godfall. The clips you see above are pretty much real-size and not rescaled.

Native: way up is the natively rendered scene, no FSR is applied (off) You'll get proper image quality the way it's intended. Good.
Performance: even in a scene with little detail, here performance mode looks spectacularly horrible. Blur, jagged edges, worn-out shadows, quality loss.
Ultra Quality - for once we're please with what we see. However, that couch is showing more grain and noise, which is hard to show with a still image. Also if you compare the shadow from the bottle with native to ultra, the native one is better anti-aliased. But this we could live with.

We included the full-size screenshots for you to download so you can manually check them out on your PC. These are 3840x2160, we can recommend you checking them out at the same resolution, as checking them at 2560x1440 would rescale the image with accompanying quality loss.

Download - native, performance, balanced, quality, ultra

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