AMD launch FSR 2.1 for sharper GPU upscaling
DLSS rival promises better image quality and less ghosting
FSR 2.0 – AMD’s graphics card-powered upscaling tech for boosting games performance – already has a newer, prettier version. AMD have announced FSR 2.1, which is available to developers immediately, and has made its playable debut via a Farming Simulator 22 update – just a couple of days after FSR 2.0 got its latest big-name backing from Red Dead Redemption 2.
According to AMD’s GPUOpen site, FSR 2.1 mainly focuses on reducing the ghosting effect that FSR 2.0 (and, let’s be honest, the original FSR 1.0) can sometimes add when it’s enabled. The latest version also supposedly improves upscaling and “temporal stability” in certain cases, so when it pieces together a higher-resolution frame from the initial, lower-res render, it should result in a sharper picture that more accurately matches the ‘true’ image. It will still run on both AMD and Nvidia GPUs, unlike its archnemesis DLSS, which needs a GeForce RTX graphics card. Oh hey, there's an FSR 2.0 vs 2.1 comparison video as well:
Speaking of DLSS, I’m intrigued to see whether this update can press the quality gap between Nvidia and AMD’s upscalers even tighter. Despite FSR 2.0's improvements over 1.0, and the hardware hard-to-get of DLSS, the latter is usually the one I’ll use when given the choice, and access to it is no small part of why most of today’s best graphics cards are Nvidia models. It’s just always looked closer to native resolution than any version of FSR thus far, and is often capable of matching FSR’s FPS performance improvements. DLSS is also available in a much wider range of games, though to be fair, it’s had years to make up that lead over FSR 2.0, which only launched earlier in 2022.
AMD also confirmed that FSR 2.1 will come to Hitman 3, but that’s it in terms of confirmed supporting games. As for FSR 2.0, which AMD is now calling FSR 2, it sounds like that will continue to find its way into both upcoming and already-released games despite the arrival of an enhanced version. Indeed, an FSR 2.0 update for Cyberpunk 2077 is in the works, and it’s set for support in games like Scorn and Lies of P on their respective releases.
