Final Words & Conclusion

Concluding

We do not need to go into detail about AMD's new functionality or how RSR as a technology works. What AMD presents here today is nothing new in a sense; it's a reconditioned spatial upscaler with an added sharpening pass, however, it now resides inside the driver. The benefit here is that any game in full-screen mode will be able to make use of it. If you require speedier framerates and apply it, this will undoubtedly help you boost performance. However, it is a temporal scaler, which has existed for years; these have developed a reputation for making image quality sacrifices during gameplay. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

AMD and NVIDIA are entering a gray zone where image quality degradation is deemed acceptable, as we must mention. However, if you're OK with it, who are we to judge or be judgmental? The tough part about technologies like RSR is that although some people will despise it, others will never notice any image quality loss. 

An APU bummer

One bummer with Radeon Super Resolution is for those who use AMD APUs to play games, any Ryzen 1000 to 5000 series APU has integrated graphics based on the GCN Vega architecture, the RSR algorithm depends on rDNA or later architecture. We don't know why at the moment, but we believe AMD tuned its super-resolution algorithm for use with its most contemporary graphics architecture. Similarly, owners of Radeon VII, RX Vega, or the 400 or 500 series graphics cards will be unable to benefit from Radeon Super Resolution. Here RSR could have made a huge difference.

FSR 2.0 is coming 

AMD implements v1.0 of FSR into RSR. FSR is used to render games at a lower resolution than the native resolution of the screen and then scale them up to the native resolution of the screen. However v2.0 is under development and provides "next-gen image upscaling". AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 is scheduled to be revealed in the upcoming months and is believed to have temporal upscaling and enhanced anti-aliasing. The second iteration of AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (test) is expected to work on all graphics cards from all manufacturers and provide improved image quality. 

Final Words

Moving FSR inside the Driver API, creating RSR was the suitable thing to do. In this method, game developers are not required to include the necessary libraries or adjustments in each game, as the necessary changes to each frame of the title are done within the driver. In the end, we (the media) are (or at least should be) a little conflicted with technologies like FSR and RSR, as really we feel that it's hustling a little, you render at a lower resolution and claim it to be Ultra HD quality. That doesn't sit well with us for many objective reasons. Then again, if you paid 400 USD for a graphics card, and run out of stamina in a game at Ultra HD, this is the most inexpensive upgrade in performance, at minimal image quality loss perhaps saving you an expensive upgrade. 

• Sign up to receive a notification when we publish a new article.
• Or go back to Guru3D's front page
• Download RSR Driver

- Hilbert, LOAD"*",8,1.