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AMD's FSR 4.1 now works on Radeon RX 6000 cards, Xbox Series X and S, and Ryzen AI Max, AI 9, and Z2 SoCs
AMD gives older GPUs an image quality boost amid the ongoing AI chip drought
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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.
And the higher upscaling quality of FSR 4.1 might let gamers use Performance mode where they might previously have used Balanced, or so on, which might offset that performance cost.
There are more goodies in store, too. The Radeon team says that FSR Frame Generation now ought to have better frame pacing, resolving a longstanding complaint with the tech and potentially making for smoother gameplay with framegen enabled. Support for the Vulkan API with FSR 4.1 is set to arrive at some point, as well, a boon for some games and console emulators. Finally, AMD says FSR Ray Regeneration will also be coming to more games, too. The company showed the tech running in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, and that integration is available now.
To get all this goodness into your GPU, you can download the just-released Radeon 26.10.1 drivers from the AMD Adrenalin application or directly from AMD's website. The updated software also adds support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, and Final Fantasy Resonance. You can check out the full release notes here.
For owners of Xbox and Ryzen Z2-series handhelds, AMD says that an update from their manufacturers will be forthcoming, as those devices depend on OEM-specific drivers.
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