AMD Fidelity FX Super Resolution (FSR) is a type of rendering technique that looks to boost framerates in games and enable quality high-resolution gaming. It’s also a rival to Nvidia’s DLSS, though the two differ quite a bit in how they function. FSR works by rendering frames at a lower resolution and then using an open-source spatial upscaling algorithm to make the game look as though it’s running at a higher resolution. DLSS uses an AI algorithm to accomplish similar results, but it only works on Nvidia’s RTX GPUs, some of the best graphics cards right now. FSR in contrast will work on just about any GPU — we’ve confirmed it runs even on Intel integrated graphics, for example.
AMD doesn’t directly promote FSR as a competitor for DLSS, mostly because it sees FSR as having application for a wider variety of games. While FSR can definitely help in performance-heavy games and titles with extensive effects, like ray tracing, it can also work as a general purpose algorithm to simply boost performance, even on games that already run fine. That could prove useful for high refresh rate 1440p displays, some of the best gaming monitors, but it can also help smooth out framerates on older GPUs and gaming laptops.
