Hi All,
I need some help understanding FSR and how to use it.
Until recently, my only piece of gaming hardware was the Steam Deck. On this, the native (OS level) FSR easy to understand: drop the in-game resolution to something less than the display's native 1280×800 and enable FSR, which then upscales the image. This makes sense to me.
Recently, I got myself a dedicated gaming PC as well (running 6700 XT). I've been playing around with the FSR option using Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice as a benchmark, running DX11 mode and without ray tracing. I'm using a 1080p display.
From AMD's control software, a 'Radeon Super Resolution' (RSR) mode can be enabled, which I understand is basically the same FSR as is running natively on the Steam Deck. It does nothing if the in-game resolution is the same as the display's native resolution, but as soon as the in-game resolution is lowered, it applies spatial upscaling. So I drop my in-game resolution to 720p, enable RSR, and I can see the upscaling at work. This also makes sense.
Where I get confused is how in-game FSR fits into the picture. So Hellblade has native (in-game) FSR implemented. When running at 1080p resolution with no FSR and all settings maxed, I typically have close to 100% GPU utilization. Now, when I enable FSR in-game, still running at 1080p resolution, the GPU utilization drops to 75-80% with almost no visual impact (slight sharpening it seems, but wouldn't notice without side-by-side screenshots). Framerates are of course more stable with the lower utilization.
So I don't quite understand how this works. Does the game automatically render at a lower resolution (without having to adjust the in-game resolution) and upscales? Or why is it not necessary here to change the in-game resolution? Do all games implement native FSR in this manner?
Also, should the two be used mutually exclusively? I tried enabling both (so enabling SRS in AMD's control software, dropping in-game resolution to 720p, and enabling in-game FSR). It worked, but certainly looked strange; not sure how to explain, almost like this watery effect. I'm assuming in this instance upscaling was applied twice?
Anyway, some insight would be much appreciated!
You set FSR on, and then a level of it usually called something like Balanced, Performance, Quality, etc. Sometimes its a % slider of a render scale. Then the game is like you were experiencing with your previous set up, rendering internally at a lower resolution, and then within the production of that frame it is being upscaled to 1080p and sharpened. You set in game resolution to your display resolution, and then the quality setting for FSR determines what the render resolution is. Sometimes there will also be a setting for sharpening.
I wouldn't use any other upscaling if you're already using in game FSR. The in game version is also the best to use as it's better implemented within the game to cause less issues with things like HUD elements.