First Look at AMD’s Radeon Super Resolution

The main new feature in AMD’s major driver release is Radeon Super Resolution. This upscaling technique brings “all the goodness of the FSR to the driver”, according to AMD, allowing thousands of games to enjoy “free performance” immediately. Does it work as well in practice as it does on paper? Tweakers could already get started.

RSR versus FSR

Let’s start at the beginning: what exactly is RSR? In fact, it is the same scaling technique as FidelityFX Super Resolution, but without the required in-game integration. While FSR in the three quarters of the year after his release managed to gather more than 60 supported games, and 20 more are to be added “soon”, RSR works in one fell swoop with almost all games that exclusive full screen can run. This effectively involves thousands of games.

However, the driver-level implementation is not without its drawbacks; otherwise AMD would of course have opted for this directly. The game is not aware of the applied upscaling. This means that not only the game images are rendered at a lower resolution, but also the interface elements. While these remain nicely sharp with a game with built-in FSR support, with RSR they are treated like the rest of the image.

Due to the driver implementation, RSR obviously requires an AMD video card, while FSR can theoretically run on any GPU. For RSR this must also be a fairly recent model from the Radeon RX 5000 or 6000 series. bit higher frames, so this requirement limits the practicality of RSR a bit.

In practice

Enabling RSR works as follows:

1. Enable Radeon Super Resolution via AMD software drivers. This can be “global” or per game.
2. Launch a game and lower the resolution. Keep the same aspect ratio as your native screen resolution and make sure the game is in fullscreen mode with no windows or borders.
3. RSR is now automatically active. You can check the status in Radeon Software (Alt + R) or enable and disable RSR directly via the Alt + U keyboard shortcut.

We started with F1 2021 games, GTA V and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. We did this on an AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT, a slightly older mid-range card that could use the extra performance in some games. Screenshots still show the difference in quality between native rendering and upscaling via RSR. Also, the native resolution is 3440×1440 pixels, and we configured RSR to go from 2560×1080 pixels to the native resolution.

F1 2021

The image quality with RSR is very similar to what we were used to with FSR when it comes to in-game images. For many objects in the screenshot, there is almost no difference between the rendered native and RSR. Only with thin lines does RSR sometimes fall short of pixels, as you can see, for example, with the cables running on the left side between the tent points. The tire profile on RSR is more present than expected, which leads to sharp edges. Whether you like it or not is really a matter of taste, but that’s what AMD means by “sometimes even sharper than native”.

Interface elements and especially text are not as crisp as with Native Rendering, or FSR, where such things are rendered natively unlike in-game images. This is especially noticeable when navigating through menus, for example. It looks a bit like the result when first smoothing applies it to a text and then accentuates it again: for example, the letters become a little rounder.

In our test, RSR leads to a performance gain of 20 fps, or almost a third. That’s only 5 frames per second slower than native rendering at the lower resolution of 2560×1080 pixels. F1 2021 is also one of the FSR supported games and with that we are seeing a drop in performance. However, neither RSR nor FSR (in this particular game) have an adjustable quality level, and we suspect that the built-in FSR option aims for slightly better image quality than RSR. Also, rendering and post-processing the native interface, as is the case with FSR, but not RSR, will cost performance.

GTA V

Also in GTA V, the difference in image quality is generally limited. We see that RSR chokes again on a few straights. For example, the record player in Franklin’s bedroom suddenly bulged. Some details make RSR look a bit sharper than it does natively, like the books on the hall closet.

RSR in GTA V only costs a few frames compared to rendering at the lower resolution, but makes the game much more playable than at native 3440×1440 pixels.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider we find the least difference in image quality. With long range objects, such as towers right of center, RSR provides extra sharpness that the native image does not have. The stone wall in the enlarged version is missing a small shadow detail here and there.

RSR’s performance boost is huge in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. We measured 70 fps with RSR scaling from 2560×1080 to 3440×1440 pixels, only 3 fps less than when rendering at 2560×1080 pixels and 24 fps more than at native resolution.

Our experience during RSR testing was largely smooth. Sometimes after closing the game, the Windows desktop would freeze at the lower resolution, which we had to increase to get back to native resolution in the settings screen. There were also times when we had to restart the GPU driver before AMD Software “knew” that a game was running at a lower resolution: the driver insisted that the game’s resolution be lowered first.

Finally, be aware that RSR will not work in games running in borderless mode. During our quick test, we encountered this in Cities: Skylines, for example, which doesn’t have an exclusive full-screen mode by default and therefore doesn’t work with RSR.

Preliminary conclusion

Radeon Super Resolution is the big-step-fast version of FSR. RSR works in many more games than FSR, but less refined, as it doesn’t exclude elements that don’t lend themselves well to process scaling. The text in particular therefore looks less beautiful than with a good FSR implementation. The in-game image is of comparable quality to FSR: generally quite good, but with the same fine points, such as emphasizing patterns and artifacts with thin, straight lines. You’ll need to consider whether you’d rather buy it than other methods of improving your performance, such as lowering the game’s quality settings.

An obvious drawback of RSR is the limited hardware compatibility. It only works from RX 5000 series, in other words one generation back. Upscaling can also be interesting if you have an even older card, which you can use a little longer in newer games, especially with the level still high video card prices† However, with an RX 580, for example, you fall outside of the RSR boot. It’s a shame, because FSR works on such cards, but then you’re limited to selected games that support it.

Bottom line, RSR is mostly a compromise, which still provides many of the benefits of FSR in games that don’t support it. It doesn’t get any easier for the average user. He can also get his chest wet for another alternative from the AMD stable, namely FSR 2.0, which will be released the following quarter. We’re already dipping our pen in ink for a roundup article of all the scaling techniques you can choose from, because we’re ready for it.