AMD nearing launch for FSR Redstone

AMD has just released FSR 3.1.4, and while on the surface it looks like another iterative update with bug fixes and a new SDK, the strategy behind it appears to be far more ambitious. This latest version is reportedly the foundation for “FSR Redstone”, AMD's upcoming suite of AI-powered graphics technologies, which could be enabled in existing games running the latest FSR via a future driver update without direct developer intervention.

First teased at Computex, the FSR Redstone suite is AMD's answer to Nvidia's DLSS 4. This new suite includes four key components: ML Super Resolution (effectively FSR 4), ML Frame Generation, ML Ray Regeneration (a competitor to Ray Reconstruction for improving RT quality), and Neural Radiance Caching (accelerates path tracing). These AI-driven features are designed to boost both performance and image quality in the most demanding games.

The foundation for this new tech is being laid with the recent FSR 3.1.4 update. In the blog post, AMD's Alexander Blake-Davies confirmed that this version includes a “signed, easily upgradable DLL” that supports a driver-based upgrade path. This means games that implement FSR 3.1.4 can potentially have Redstone features enabled by AMD via a simple driver update in the future, without requiring a new patch from the game developer.

The not-so-good news is the hardware requirements. AMD has stated that FSR Redstone will only be officially supported on the RX 9000 series. This will likely be disappointing news for RDNA 3 and older card owners, who have come to expect wide hardware support from FSR. Of course, given the history of the PC modding community, it may only be a matter of time before someone finds a way to make it work on unsupported hardware.

In addition to the launch of FSR 3.1.4, AMD also released a new Unreal Engine 5.6 plugin to make it easier for developers to integrate the latest FSR into their games. Lastly, the red team also updated its Radeon Anti-Lag 2 plugin to support Unreal Engine 5.6.

KitGuru says: Do you think FSR Redstone will be able to compete against DLSS 4?

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