AMD is going all-in on artificial intelligence to power its new frame-generation tech, with the hope of boosting the frame rates and battery life of handheld devices such as the Steam Deck. AMD FSR 4 (FidelityFX Super Resolution 4) will be AMD’s fourth release of the technology designed to help boost frame rates in games.
AMD revealed that it made the switch internally to focus on an AI-based approach “nine to 12 months ago,” because the original FSR technology wasn’t “where the future is going” for gamers. The company continues to battle it out against Nvidia’s dominance of the GPU market, and while AMD’s own chips are regularly used in some of the best graphics cards available, Nvidia has a big headstart when it comes to AI-based gaming tech.
Jack Hunyh, senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s Computing and Graphics Group, spoke in an interview with Tom’s Hardware about the change in focus for the company at the IFA tradeshow in Berlin. “FSR2 and FSR3 were analytical-based generation,” says Hunyh, “it was filter-based.” He then adds that AMD is now “going AI-based frame generation, frame interpolation, and the idea is increased efficiency to maximize battery life.”
Technologies such as FSR help to address slow frame rates on underpowered GPUs in demanding games, by not only upscaling the resolution but also by using frame generation. The latter is where additional frames are inserted between the ones rendered by the GPU, increasing the frame rate to provide smoother gameplay.
Unlike Nvidia DLSS 3, which uses AI to create additional frames using the power of Tensor cores built onto the GPU, FSR 3 frame generation is GPU-agnostic and can be used on any GPU hardware. However, in our testing, DLSS 3 often looks better than FSR 3 when it comes to both upscaling and frame generation, with fewer on-screen artifacts and shimmering. DLSS is also supported by more games than FSR 3 right now.
If AMD is fully embracing AI with FSR 4, its upscaling and frame-generation technology could be about to take a leap forward. Hunyh doesn’t say whether or not FSR 4 will follow Nvidia’s approach and require specific hardware to do these AI calculations, but AMD has the tech – its RDNA 3 GPUs, such as the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, feature matrix cores that can be used for AI, but they currently go unused in games.
This could mark a big change for AMD’s desktop gaming GPUs, but it also has large implications for handheld chips, where AMD is currently dominating, with its chips not only used in the Steam Deck, but also in the Asus ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion Go. Hunyh expresses frustration that the “battery life is not there” in the latter two devices, and says that AMD is planning to use FSR 4 to improve this situation.
Hunyh also spoke to the site about locking the frame rate of handhelds to 30-35fps, in an effort to preserve battery life. Capping the frame rate would certainly limit the power draw, but 30-35fps is barely playable by modern PC gaming standards, and AMD also only recommends using FSR 3 frame generation in games running at 60fps and above, so there’s enough information for it to create the extra frames. We’ll be interested to see how this plays out when FSR 4 is finally released.
If AMD gets FSR 4 right, though, then future handheld gaming devices could be faster and more power-efficient. If the new CPU in the Steam Deck 2 ends up featuring full AI hardware that can take the upscaling and frame-generation workloads away from the rest of the chip, while also offering decent CPU and GPU performance, then gaming performance and image quality could improve, and the battery could last longer too.
While other details are scarce, Hunyh’s comments at least confirm that FSR 4 is on the way. With AMD working on the technology for about a year already, a release might not be far away, although game developers will need time to integrate the tech once it’s released.
If you’re interested in taking your gameplay with you, you might want to look into the best handheld gaming PC for your needs next. With handhelds like the AUS ROG Ally X out there, and technology such as AMD FSR getting better and better, you’ll be surprised how many of today’s games you can play on a handheld now.