저자: Vex · 외국인
요약 보기
AMD FSR 4.1이 RDNA 3(RX 7000)에 7월 지원, RDNA 2(RX 6000)에 내년 초 지원 예정이라는 소식을 다룸. 이전에 RX 9000 전용이던 FSR 4는 int8 버전이 유출돼 구형 카드에서도 작동했음. AMD의 늦은 대응과 장기 지원 미흡에 대한 비판이 주된 내용이며, 주식 투자 관련 예측 발언은 없음.
다듬은 글
Good news. In times like this, this is a story of how consumers have pushed a $730 billion company to listen to consumers and give us what we need to be able to just play games and enjoy ourselves. AMD has finally fixed their graphics cards in a way that honestly puts them like damn near on parity with Nvidia graphics cards.
Okay, but how? I got to explain DLSS super resolution. This is a technology that upscales your games in order to make them run better, run faster, and be more responsive. Honestly, it's a really good technology and with the latest releases of DLSS with like 4.5, this upscale looks amazing. Like you can run it at 50% resolution scale, so that's upscaling from 720p up to 1440p and it looks so damn good, it is crazy.
And the clear success of this has led to so many developers relying on upscaling just to get games to run. Now, cool thing that Nvidia has done it, they've been able to make that backwards compatible with all of their old graphics cards. As long as it has tensor cores on it, which is everything from like 2018.
And it wasn't just a simple task for Nvidia, they did have to make a specific version of the new DLSS models to make it compatible to run on the older ones. And it does come with some performance costs, but Nvidia gives you the option to run it on the older graphics cards, which is freaking sick. So, DLSS has set the standard for this.
So, AMD at the beginning of 2025 was in this shitty position. This is the RX 7800 XT. Now, this graphics card is really good. It has 16GB of VRAM and honestly, it's still pretty fast compared to the newest stuff that's out there. But the problem is it doesn't really have good upscaling cuz we're on Expedition 33 right now.
We're at 4K, granted. If we turn on AMD FSR, which is the one that AMD offers and turn it on performance mode, while our FPS has increased significantly, I can see a clear difference between quality of it. It looks so much more unstable. The whole image looks more blurry. Obviously, we're upscaling from a large amount, but yeah, I don't think this really works.
Like, I wouldn't play on this. And this is probably one of the better cases for FSR. If you're at a lower resolution and upscaling more aggressively, then it's just going to look even worse. What's funny, too, is that Intel offers XeSS, which is a machine learning-based upscaler, kind of like DLSS, but you can run this on other graphics cards.
And if you were to put this at the same resolution scale, the game looks significantly better. Like, it looks way more stable. Yeah, it looks a little smooth, but this is running Intel technology on an AMD GPU. So, FSR 3 was in a pretty bad spot, and that made AMD GPUs in a pretty bad spot, too. DLSS is genuinely a big selling point.
And that's why they come in 2025, AMD released FSR 4, which is a machine learning-based upscaler, and it looks so god damn good, man. It is clean as hell. Now, comparatively to the absolute newest stuff, DLSS 4.5, stack up as well, but it's still really solid. And that put AMD GPUs almost at feature parity of what people care about.
People care about upscaling. And today, if you look at sales data, AMD GPUs, at least at Mindfactory, this is a retailer in Germany, they're making up 55% of the sales, and Nvidia's making up 40%. AMD GPUs, at least as individual GPU sales, are a higher percentage than Nvidia ones. And that's a good thing.
We got some damn competition in the space. The problem is AMD did not support their older graphics cards. If you check out their compatibility chart on their website, we see AMD FSR Redstone, which is basically all the new stuff. They changed FSR 4 in naming from FSR 4 to machine learning based upscaling, which is just so generic and lame.
This was only supported on the newest RX 9000 series graphics cards along with their machine learning based frame generation, too. But AMD at the time was saying Does that mean that FSR 4 is going to be exclusive to the 9000 series? Right now it has to be. It requires a lot of compute. We are looking at can we optimize the algorithm so that it can run leaner and it can run on more devices?
So there was a chance that it's going to be backwards compatible. And the reason why this apparently is so difficult is because FSR 4 is based on floating point 8 AI operations. Whereas older AMD graphics cards like RDNA 3, which only came out in 2022, it's not even that old. These ones in RDNA 2 as well can only support integer 8 AI operations.
So they cannot utilize FSR 4. Which gets you wondering is like can AMD just make an integer 8 version of FSR 4 even if it's a little worse? And that's exactly what they were doing behind the scenes. When they open sourced FSR 4, this leaked out. We were able to use the integer 8 version of FSR 4. What's funny is I just showed you Expedition 33 and on that same RX 7800 XT, I've played through quite a bit of the game using the integer 8 version of FSR 4 and it looks so much better.
And overall, it's really easy to put it in there. So this is FSR 4 int 8. Copy this over. And it says FSR 4.0.2 is just running right now. Um looks fine to me. People in the AMD GPU community are absolute demons on the keyboard. We're able to get FSR 4 integer 8 also working on RX 6000 series cards, which are even older.
Now quality-wise, this version of FSR looks really damn good. But the problem with it is on these older cards using integer 8, it's not as efficient as the new versions of floating point 8. This is a 7800 XT and it needs like balance mode at least to match quality mode when using FSR 3. Now swapping over to the RX 970 with the FP8, FSR 3 data and FSR 4 data are a lot closer.
But a lot of the times, especially if you're at a higher resolution, it can make sense to use this upscaler because the performance benefits are just worth it. The game looks good, too. And over time the frustration has been building. AMD has still not released FSR 4 machine learning variant for RDNA 2 or 3 users even though we still have seen the leaked version does work in some usable capacity.
There is no doubt that AMD should release the int8 version of FSR 4. And AMD kind of just stayed silent on this. My Radeon experience in a nutshell. I like my RX 970 XT because the 970 XT can support the newest versions of the upscalers. Everybody who's been on AMD feels absolutely cheated. You look over at Nvidia and they're supporting all their old [ __ ] And what even built up more on this is the PlayStation 5 Pro.
Now this uses PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, otherwise known as PSSR. And it actually runs on integer 8 operations. Clearly have a version of it working. And PSSR with the integer 8 version looks very good. And yeah, people are frustrated about this. But it goes even deeper. This is a clear message that you shouldn't buy an AMD graphics card and expect long-term support.
If you can't get the latest features, what is there telling with like the new features with FSR Diamond that's going to be coming up on the new consoles and stuff? What is there telling that AMD wouldn't even support their RDNA 4 graphics cards with those new features? And what made it even worse is AMD was floating the idea or they did publish the idea that they wouldn't be supporting their RX 6000 and 5000 series graphics cards anymore with new game optimizations.
It would only be for basically security updates. And some of these cards, like the RX 6600, was still selling at the time. This was terrible. There was just no long-term support for their older cards. Like why would you buy a card from AMD when Nvidia supports their products for like 7 to 8 years plus?
But obviously AMD, with all the negativity on that as well, backtracked. They could not get away with that [ __ ] It's crazy. So seeing all those moves, how AMD is behaving, we need competition in the space. I mean, I know Jensen and Lisa Su are freaking cousins, so I don't know how much they're really want to compete with each other, but we want to see competition in the GPU space.
And now, AMD finally reversed another decision. FSR 4, with it being so important for the future of games, AMD is finally bringing FSR 4. What's my cat meow? What's up, bro? AMD is finally bringing FSR 4.1, the newest version, to RDNA 3, which is RX 7000. And coming next year, early next year, they're bringing it to RDNA 2, RX 6000.
Now this [ __ ] is a long overdue. It's not going to be coming to RDNA 3 until July of this year, which makes it like 18 months or so. And judging by like the images they show us, it looks pretty damn good. Obviously, we've already tested the integer 8 version, but that was on FSR 4.0.2, not FSR 4.1.
Now, Hardware Unboxed has tested FSR 4.1 and I'll show you some of that footage up here, but this is the FP8 version, not the integer 8 version. So, I don't know if it's going to look the exact same, but generally speaking, what we've seen with integer 8 FSR 4 is it does look pretty damn good. Now, I expect the FSR 4.1 version just to look even better.
And people have been pretty positive about this. They have redeemed themselves. First thing in the morning, I open my phone and I see this. AMD did well. Also, thank you for all the criticism. You did an amazing job to make this happen. AMD would not have released this if it wasn't good for their business, basically.
They are a company at the end of the day, and before it seemed like they were deciding that they didn't want to support the older cards, but now, finally, they're going to support the older cards. Obviously, it's been possible. I emailed AMD to see why they didn't already support them and if there is a performance hit, like how in the integer 8 version we have tested, what kind of performance hit we could be looking at for this 4.1 version.
They haven't responded to me yet, but I'll let you guys know if they do. Just scrolling down to the comments here. People just say, "Finally. Better late than never. I wish it would apply now. I don't want to wait until 2027 to get the most out of my 6950 XT." It is still rough. The 6000 series cards are getting until Q1 2027.
I don't know why, but generally, people are pretty positive about this. Like, thank God, at least we're getting it. AMD has also finally realized that it does impact future sales of AMD GPUs because people see that they haven't supported their current stuff or even their slightly older stuff when they have the ability to, and they're going to look at it and be like, "Is this a good card to buy or should I just opt for the Nvidia option?" Another cool thing about this is the Steam Machine is on RDNA 3.
So, this could mean that the The Machine might be getting FSR 4.1. Now, I would be interested if they're targeting Valve, if they're targeting that July release window. It wouldn't be in the first half of 2026 like they promised, but would this be launching on a Steam Machine 2? Would it be available on Linux in general, which the Steam Machine runs on?
But this was a huge fear with the Steam Machine because the upscaler that it has, FSR 3, does not look that good at all. And it is going to be relying on it. Valve has said it themselves. Enabling 4K gaming at 60 frames per second with FSR. With FSR. Yeah, the newest generation of AMD GPUs have been pretty good.
Like you look at like the RX 9060 XT at 8 GB of VRAM, that part does suck, but it's one of the more affordable graphics cards right now. And if you compare it to the Nvidia options that are about the same price at the moment, it is faster and it does support machine learning upscaling. And if you were to go up to the higher price point, say like the RX 9070, this is about the same price as an RTX 5070, and it's faster.
It has more VRAM. AMD's offering more VRAM at cheaper price points compared to Nvidia. And into the future, games want more VRAM like this. It's just a clearly better move, which makes it so cool that now with this whole FSR 4 coming to these older cards, these cards on the market, say like the RX 7800 XT, you can get them on the used market with 16 GB of VRAM.
I think this is still kind of expensive, to be honest, but $465 is not bad in today's market. It holds up really well to the newer graphics cards out there, especially if it can use machine learning upscaling and make it upscale look good. Along with that, I found a deal on an RX 6800, which come 2027 will officially be supporting FSR 4.1.
This card is only $350 while having 16 gigs of VRAM, and it still holds up pretty damn well today in terms of the performance. I haven't been recommending people to buy these cards because who the hell would want to get a card that can't upskill the same way. So, overall this does put AMD cards in a much better position.
We love the competition. I just hate how we got here. It seems like we forced AMD to do this and they didn't want to do this out of their own volition. [sighs] AMD is not this courageous underdog company. They make business moves and for some reason they didn't think pleasing their customers was the thing to do in this case.
I just don't really understand. And that does make it where the whole reception of this isn't entirely positive. After the backlash, you try to paint it as doing us a favor by allowing FSR 4.1 on RDNA 3. Too little, too late. Far too late based on how we've been able to get it up and running for months and months, meaning it's been possible for far longer.
I'm buying any more Radians in the future, that's for sure. And I think this while you might disagree with this and just say be grateful, at the same time this is a completely valid take. Like if AMD is not too concerned with supporting their products in the future when they obviously can, it does make you question if you would ever want to buy one of their graphics cards again.
Some people are also making this argument. Okay, but what about the exclusivity of the RX 9000 series? They already removed 4.1 as an RX 9000 series exclusive feature and made it available for all GPUs. Fine, but what about exclusive advantage is left for our series? Nothing. That's just crazy to me.
Like I bought this card, I wanted the exclusivity. I wanted to make sure FSR 4 ran on my GPU, that's the only reason I bought it. Okay. Okay, buddy. These are the exact consumers you do not want speaking out about anything. And people were rightfully [ __ ] on them in the comments, too. So, everything just makes sense.
Also, there is a point to that the FP8, the floating point one, does look better than the integer eight version. Now, obviously, this isn't coming until July, and we don't really have that many image quality comparisons that we can test out there, but I'm assuming it's going to look a lot better than FSR 3 did on these GPUs.
And AMD has basically saved their GPUs and in turn also allowed us to get good value on the used market because now all of these older AMD cards with more VRAM capacity are genuinely viable without having to mod the game and like add the DLL file in it. It's not like it was hard, but most people aren't going to be modding their games and putting in [ __ ] like that.
And now we can avoid some of those awful prices on the new GPU market. So, I'm really glad to see this. I'm glad we're getting it. I hate how we got here. Now, they've had to change their stance on that stuff, which is so weird from AMD cuz they don't have that much GPU market share. So, I don't know why were they're flexing their muscles like they do whatever the [ __ ] they want.
That's just not the position they're in. I don't know who they think they are. So, let me know what you guys think about this. Are you on these older cards? I'm excited cuz I was going to make a video on the RX 7900 XTX how AMD has abandoned this graphics card, but now you know, they kind of abandoned it.
They like kind of shoved off to the side for a while, neglected it for a good like year and a half, but at least they're taking it back in and giving it some new feature support. Like, thank god, bro. Let me know what you guys think about it. I'm going to see you guys in the next video. We got some damn good news. All right. Peace.
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