- AMD FSR 4 will reportedly be a “drop in” replacement for FSR 3.1
- In theory, this means that all FSR 3.1 games should support the newer technology
- This is only a rumour, although it chimes with hints that AMD has already dropped
AMD could have a whole bunch of games ready for FSR 4 support, its frame rate boosting technology exclusive to incoming RDNA 4 graphics cards, right from the start (one of which will be Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, pictured above).
So far, it’s been a bit of a guessing game as to how FSR 4 support might shake out – especially given that Nvidia has a lot of PC games lined up for its rival DLSS 4 from launch – but this is the best news, Team Red fans could have hoped for.
The theory is – and it’s just a rumour, floated on X by a regular hardware leaker, Kepler – that AMD will just replace the existing FSR 3.1 DLL with the new FSR 4.
What this means, as a drop-in replacement, is that FSR 4 will be compatible with all existing FSR 3.1 games without the game developers having to do anything. In other words, it will ‘just work’ with the existing titles covered by FSR 3.1 support.
Or this ‘should’ be the case as Kepler puts it, so we must note that they are not quite sure about this. As always with rumors, we should exercise caution around them, but in this case AMD has already hinted that FSR 3.1 games would get FSR 4 in marketing material (during the FSR 4 reveal at CES 2025).
As VideoCardz, who noted the post above, points out, there are more than 50 games that currently support FSR 3.1, so you should be good to go with FSR 4.
If you’re wondering why that support is based on FSR 3.1 instead of FSR 3, it’s because AMD made the move to include frame generation with the former, so bringing it up to FSR 4 would require a lot more work. into a new DLL file.
Analysis: Good news, but with that RDNA 4 catch
So this is apparently good news for those considering buying an RX 9070 graphics card, which will be the first boards to use FSR 4 when these next-gen GPUs are released in March. In fact, AMD has already said that the reason it’s taking a bit more time with these RDNA 4 graphics cards is to get them right for launch and perfect the graphics drivers as well as enable more FSR 4 games.
This sounds like a smart move to me, especially given the rumors surrounding Nvidia’s RTX 5000 series, which currently make it seem like there isn’t a big rush to get the RX 9070 on sale. I’d like all of these next-gen GPUs to go on sale sooner rather than later, ideally, but if I’m going to wait for a good product, so be it.
AMD’s FSR 4 sounds like a significant step forward for frame rate boosting from Team Red, but of course the catch is that it’s exclusive to RDNA 4. This goes against the grain for FSR, as the technology has previously been open in the wild and available for Nvidia RTX GPUs’ is, as well as previous generation AMD graphics cards (back to the RX 5000 series, technically, albeit not with frame generation).
So it’s certainly a shame to lose that aspect, but it seems to be the price Team Red has had to pay to get FSR 4 to offer better quality upscaling (and frame generation). Given the constant chatter from gamers about how AMD is behind DLSS in this regard, I’m hardly surprised that Team Red made this call, but as we’ve discussed before, it’s a compromise that some PC gamers could have difficulty accepting.
