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LeoNatan
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Location: Israel
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 Posted: Fri, 9th Jan 2026 16:50 Post subject: FSR vs XeSS |
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This is a discussion for non-nVidia gamers, where DLSS is the gold standard, as much as soft image can be considered a gold standard. 
I'm trying to understand why so many people with AMD hardware care so much about FSR. FSR until 4 is absolutely terrible in motion, especially if you use a preset less than quality. I am a "never again" AMD user but unfortunately, handhelds seem to be AMD only at this moment, and upscaling is crucial to get decent framerates in shit modern games. But even on a 7", FSR 3.x is absolutely terrible (mostly in motion but not just).
Intel's XeSS is accelerated on their own hardware, but the upscaler also works on non-Intel hardware, and to my eyes, is far superior than FSR 3.x. It does have a slightly higher performance cost, but the jump in quality is worth it. And the kicker is that the balanced and even performance XeSS presets looks better than the FSR 3 quality preset so performance delta can be accounted for that way.
Now I am trying to understand how FSR 4 looks and runs on non-RDNA 4 hardware (which is most handhelds with the exception of very expensive exotics). It seems to look good enough, but performance seems to be even lower than XeSS on RDNA 2.5 and 3 hardware. So, again, I am trying to understand why there is so much excitement for FSR 4, when it is still an inferior solution on the same hardware.
Intel has also updated XeSS 2.1 to allow frame generation on non-Intel hardware. Not a fan of fake frames, but again, on my handheld, XeSS frame generation (using an updated DLL to override support in games) looks far better than FSR 3 frame generation at, again, a slightly higher cost (very slight). Not sure how performant FSR 4 FG is on non-RDNA 4 hardware.
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LeoNatan
☢ NFOHump Despot ☢
Posts: 73773
Location: Israel
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| Posted: Fri, 9th Jan 2026 22:04 Post subject: |
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I've been out of the loop. So apparently, FSR 4 on non-RDNA 4 hardware (RX 9xxxx cards only) is a hack that comes from a leaked FSR 4 source code and not officially supported or released by AMD?  The fact that there is a code path in there that supports older hardware but the management clowns decided not to expose it is just … Good ol' AMD right there, for sure! How long before AMD drops RDNA 4 for their next arch?
Some speculation out there that the RDNA 3 codepath in the leaked source code is intended for Sony to use in their PS5 Pro. But PS5 Pro has some custom AI acceleration units that are different from those found in RDNA 4, but are still more than what RDNA 3.x offers (RDNA 2 has no AI acceleration hardware), so that might not be true. It could just be good old AMD greed. 
Steam Machines are using RDNA 3 hardware, so even bigger " ". What a shame that Intel is not yet a viable alternative and Valve has to put all its eggs in the AMD basket.
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| Posted: Fri, 9th Jan 2026 22:13 Post subject: |
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FSR 4 in RDNA2 / 3 is possible and superior in quality to XeSS, using the leaked IN8 dll file. With optiscaler you can also force framegen in lots of ways depending each game. In my experience, FSR4 with XeFG looks the best. (RX 6950 XT)
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LeoNatan
☢ NFOHump Despot ☢
Posts: 73773
Location: Israel
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| Posted: Fri, 9th Jan 2026 23:04 Post subject: |
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That could be, I haven't played around with FSR 4 on my handheld, but the fact that it's relying on a leaked codebase does not give me confidence in its future on non-RDNA 4 hardware. There are rumors that AMD might open source FSR 4, but who knows. On RDNA 3.x, XeSS provides better performance to FSR 4 from what I've seen (important on handheld hardware at 15-35W TDP), and is using it as intended, rather than from a leak of an old code snapshot.
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