AMD has finally pulled out the big FSR guns and given gamers the means to enable FSR 4 in nearly any game that already supports FSR 3.1, resulting in a substantial leap in image quality if you own an AMD Radeon RX 9000 GPU. If you download the latest AMD Adrenalin 25.9.1 driver update, you’ll be able to toggle AMD FSR 4 on and off for these games in the driver, rather than having to wait for a driver whitelist and official game support.
AMD is proudly saying that FSR 4 is now supported in 85 games, which is a decent selection, but comparatively, over 175 games now support the latest Nvidia DLSS 4 tech with multi-frame generation. Clearly more work needs to be done here in terms of game support, but we’ve been really impressed by AMD FSR 4 in our tests – as we found in our AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT review, games look significantly better using this tech than earlier versions of FSR, with a much sharper image, and less digital noise around the edges of moving objects.
AMD has been saying that FSR 4 can basically work as a drop-in replacement in games that support FSR 3.1 since it was first announced, but not every FSR 3.1 game has implemented it, and there has been no official way for gamers to enable FSR 4 in these games themselves. Now, in a similar way to how Nvidia’s DLSS Override system works, you can now toggle FSR 4 on and off in these games using the driver application – you just need to make sure FSR 3.1 is enabled in the game before you start.
There are a few exceptions, however. AMD notes that FSR 4 won’t work on FSR 3.1 titles that use the Vulkan API. The company also says that FSR 4 is incompatible with any of your games that “use non-standard methods of integration of FSR 3.1 into their games, such as using third-party plug-ins or methods that do not use the signed FSR 3.1 DLL.” Basically, you’re only looking at games that support DirectX 12 and feature an integrated, signed FSR 3.1 DLL file.
FSR 4 saw AMD finally making the move to an upscaling model based on machine learning, using the AI cores on the company’s latest RDNA 4 GPUs. Nvidia has been using the Tensor cores to perform this work on its GPUs for its DLSS tech for a number of years now, but it’s taken AMD a long time to catch up, with its RDNA 1 and 2 GPUs not having any AI hardware at all, and its last-gen RDNA 3 GPUs having much more limited AI hardware than the AI cores on its latest GPUs.
AMD still doesn’t have a frame gen system based on machine learning to rival Nvidia’s latest DLSS tech either, and the current implementation of FSR frame gen has given us mixed results in our tests, with the frame rates in some games, such as Doom The Dark Ages and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, jumping all over the place. However, AMD Redstone looks set to change this situation in the near future, possibly enabling AMD to finally catch up with Nvidia in this area.
If you’re thinking about upgrading your GPU, check out our guide to buying the best graphics card. Some of AMD’s latest offerings are genuinely excellent, and if you’re on a tight budget, I recommend reading our Radeon RX 9060 XT review to see why this card is one of our current favorites.
Is this new FSR 4 driver feature enough to persuade you to buy an AMD GPU over an Nvidia one? Let us know your thoughts on our community Discord server.