Huge news for anyone with an AMD Radeon GPU or Steam Deck: Baldur’s Gate 3 now supports AMD FSR 2. With great strides being made all the time in upscaling technology, it seemed a shame that anyone without an Nvidia GeForce RTX 20-series or later graphics card was limited to AMD FSR 1 in Larian’s wonderful RPG.
While that upscaler can boost fps somewhat, it’s since been upstaged by more recent, better technology. We’re not sure exactly what performance gains Baldur’s Gate 3 AMD FSR 2.2 can deliver, but it’s sure to be an improvement over what we had before.
Baldur’s Gate 3 debuted earlier this year to widespread acclaim. Our Baldur’s Gate 3 review praises its “compelling” story, calling it an “instant RPG classic”. But the game can be somewhat hardware-intensive in certain areas.
Those of us interested in eking out every ounce of performance juice from the RPG were slightly disappointed to learn it would launch without Nvidia DLSS 3 or AMD FSR 2. A Baldur’s Gate 3 DLSS 3 mod was added to bring Nvidia’s latest proprietary upscaling tech to the game, although it’s not yet been officially implemented.
Well, Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 4 arrived last week with over 1,000 gameplay changes and fixes. Curiously, the addition of AMD FSR 2.2 wasn’t among the listed changes, but it’s now clear that it’s been officially added to the game. This should help Baldur’s Gate 3 reach a more playable state on the Steam Deck.
AMD FSR 2.2 is the latest update to team red’s upscaling technology which “aims to reduce ‘High-Velocity Ghosting'”, an issue well-known to affect racing games particularly.
Although they can’t use DLSS 3, the latest AMD Radeon GPUs have been creditable entries into the current generation. If you’re looking for a new graphics card, the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is the best choice under $500.