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In June 2021, AMD launched the 1.0 release of what they call FidelityFX Super Resolution. This was kind of AMD's answer to Nvidia's DLSS technology, except it did not require the use of special hardware and could be used by graphics cards dating back several generations. FSR allows users to upscale an image to provide them with better performance while still looking kind of good.
FSR 1.0 isn't perfect, nor does it do as good a job as DLSS, but it did give users on older cards or non-Nvidia cards a means to squeeze in higher framerates at the cost of visual quality. Frankly, it's been kind of a godsend for those out there, like me, who struggle to run some newer game releases at acceptable framerates when using native resolution.
AMD recently showed off an update to FidelityFX Super Resolution that they are calling FSR 2.0. Like its predecessor released just one year ago, FSR 2.0 will boost framerates while trying its best to mitigate the loss in image quality. Only now, FSR 2.0 will do a better job at preserving quality when compared to the 1.0 implementation.
During their presentation, AMD showed off the technology at work using Deathloop as an example. This will be the first title to receive FSR 2.0 support and it will come via a patch expected to be out on May 12.
Other games beyond Deathloop have also just been confirmed to one day include support for FSR 2.0. These confirmed titles include Microsoft Flight Simulator, EVE Online, Forspoken, and Farming Simulator 22. FSR 2.0 will also be added to the Xbox Series X|S development kit, which will make it easier for game developers to implement this technology into their Xbox releases. There has been no word from Sony yet on if they will follow suit. Both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles include RDNA2 technology, so implementing this feature into PlayStation 5 is very doable and also very likely.
FSR 2.0 differs from FSR 1.0 in that it will now use "an advanced temporal upscaling solution." FSR 1.0 made use of spatial upscaling, which looks at just one frame at a time. Temporal upscaling makes use of data from several frames and is able to produce a much better looking image for the end user.
The only downside is that FSR 2.0 is just ever so slightly more demanding than FSR 1.0. This means that very old GPUs that may have been able to utilize FSR 1.0 will be left out of FSR 2.0 support. Still, FSR 2.0 can be used on cards as "weak" or as old as the AMD RX 590 and Nvidia GTX 1070. Some of these cards have been around for over six years now, which is still mighty impressive.
It will be nice to see how FSR 2.0 performs and if it will be as quickly adopted as FSR 1.0 has been. I know that personally I have already made use of FSR on my GTX 1080 Ti in games like Back 4 Blood, God of War, Far Cry 6, Death Stranding Director's Cut, Dying Light 2, and Ghostwire: Tokyo. You can see an early look at FSR 2.0 in action from March 2022.
