AMD expands FSR 4.1 to RX 6000 GPUs, Ryzen APUs, handhelds and Xbox
AMD announced that its machine-learning FSR 4.1 upscaling now reaches Radeon RX 6000-series (RDNA 2) GPUs, Ryzen AI Max and Ryzen AI 9 APUs, and Ryzen Z2-series handhelds including the ROG Xbox Ally, with the update included in version 26.10.1 of its graphics driver as reported by TechSpot. The company says it retuned the neural network to run on INT8 shader hardware instead of the FP8 matrix hardware on Radeon RX 9000 cards, and built a handheld model less than half the size of the full one to fit tighter power budgets. AMD also confirmed FSR 4.1 is coming to Xbox Series X and Series S with no date given, that Vulkan API support will arrive in FSR SDK 2.4, and that future APUs will be added; it separately said the next Xbox, codenamed Project Helix, will use an FSR Diamond technology whose details it has not disclosed.
The rollout brings AMD's latest ML-based upscaler to the large installed base of RDNA 2 cards and to consoles, where Sony already offers PSSR and QSSR, though AMD's image-quality and frame-rate claims remain vendor-supplied.
Earlier this year, AMD brought the previously RX 9000-exclusive FSR 4 upscaling tech to Radeon RX 7000-series graphics cards and promised an early 2027 release for RX 6000-series products. Christmas has come early for RDNA 2 and many other Radeon gamers, as Radeon honcho Jack Hyunh has announced an FSR 4.1 release for Radeon RX 6000 series cards, Xbox Series X and Series S consoles, Ryzen Z-series handhelds, and machines with Ryzen AI Max and AI 9 chips today.
To accomplish this feat, AMD says it tweaked FSR 4.1's neural network model to support the INT8 shader hardware (as opposed to the higher-precision FP8 matrix acceleration hardware on Radeon 9000 cards). Additionally, the version specific to handhelds is slimmed down even further, to less than half the size of the full one.
AMD says that compared to FSR 3, games on the aforementioned GPUs and APUs will now deliver better image quality, all else equal. With Cyberpunk 2077 running in FSR Balanced mode at 4K, our quick testing with a Radeon RX 6900 XT shows that running FSR 4 costs just about 13% performance, a small price to pay for sharper and more stable visuals, especially in motion.
#AMD#Radeon RX 6000#Ryzen AI Max#Ryzen AI 9#Ryzen Z2#ROG Xbox Ally#Xbox Series X|S#Vulkan#FSR SDK 2.4#Project Helix#FSR Diamond#Microsoft