What is AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution and why you should consider using it?

Early last year, AMD announced its FidelityFX Super Resolution technology, creating quite a flutter in the gaming industry. It came as a godsend for PC gamers who are always seeking better performance from their games. At its heart, it’s an image-upscaling technology that’s aimed at improving the overall performance of your games. Earlier this year, the company also released version 2.0 of this technology with new tools for developers to take advantage of. Over 110 games are now supported by AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution and the list just keeps growing. Let’s take a deep dive into its offerings to understand why gamers are so thrilled about it.

What does AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution actually do?

For any gamer out there, performance is king, whether they are enjoying intense battles in God of War or navigating crazy time loops in Deathloop. But going for high settings usually means a drop in the framerates. This has made high-performance upscaling and reconstruction a necessity. FidelityFX Super Resolution from AMD has been developed with the help of a cutting-edge spatial upscaling algorithm that delivers super high-quality edges and distinctive pixel detail while greatly improving performance, especially when demanding effects like ray tracing are turned on.

There are four quality modes that gamers can choose from to suit their image quality demands. With AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution, gamers can expect an average of 2.4x increase in performance when running select games at 4K. A great thing about this technology is that it’s not just limited to AMD CPUs and GPUs. Multiple platforms and graphics cards can take advantage of it to render splendid visuals.

How does it work?

The first step in this process is that it lowers the render resolution of the game you’re playing. This surely improves performance but what about the lower resolution? Well, concurrently, the engine is also upscaling the input back to your target resolution with its own unique algorithm. This brings the super-resolution output up to near-native resolution image quality. As you can see, the magic lies in the upscaling process, which includes an analysis of the source image, the detection of edges, and the reconstruction of the frames in high definition at the target resolution.

And these are not the only processes happening in real-time. In order to polish the final output, FidelityFX Super Resolution also applies sharpening to further improve the image quality by enhancing pixel detail. The resultant visuals hence have super high-quality edges and distinctive pixel detail that will not be found in any traditional upscaling technology. From a normal viewing distance, the image quality of a game running with FidelityFX Super Resolution is indistinguishable from the original picture, and plus, you are also getting the benefit of highly improved performance.

What are the different modes of FidelityFX Super Resolution?

This AMD technology does its own work seamlessly but also keeps a little bit of control in your hands. There are four quality settings to choose from, depending on whether you want to achieve the best image quality with a still significant performance boost, or keep performance above all else. The first such setting is Ultra Quality, which is adept at producing virtually indistinguishable image quality with good performance, so don’t expect really high framerates here. The second is the Quality mode, which delivers better performance along with image quality that’s very close to native rendering.

The third mode is called Balance and as you’d expect, offers the best of both worlds. The final FidelityFX Super Resolution mode that you can take advantage of is Performance, which visibly impacts image quality but delivers the ultimate performance that your hardware can handle. As you can see, each of these modes offers different levels of performance boosts along with multiple image quality options.

Bottom line

One of the biggest advantages of AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution is its flexible nature. It works on Ryzen processors and Radeon graphics cards as well as Nvidia graphics cards. Not just that; it has really low hardware requirements as well. The technology can run on any graphics card that supports Shader Model 5.0 or higher. And then there’s the always-growing list of games that support it. Right now, these include AAA games like God of War, Deathloop, Marvel’s Spiderman Remastered, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Ghostwire Tokyo, Hitman 3, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and many more. AMD has already had a massive impact on the gaming industry lately and FidelityFX Super Resolution is one more innovation that speaks volumes about the company’s efforts in the space.