AMD has confirmed that a new version of its FidelityFX Super Resolution upscaling, FSR 3, will launch in 2023. The new version will incorporate something called Fluid Motion Frames technology and will deliver massive gains in the realms of 2x higher fps.
Not much was said on the specifics regarding FSR 3 during AMD's RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT announcement stream, but we know it will incorporate what AMD's dubbed Fluid Motion Frames technology.
According to Radeon GM Scott Herkelman, this may be in some way similar, at least in purpose if not in how it actually works, to what Nvidia calls DLSS Frame Generation. That technology infers information from motion vectors and rendered frames to generate entirely new frames and dramatically improve FPS in supported games.
"It's frame generation, that's for sure," Herkelman says during a Q&A.
The 2x performance claim was tested using Unreal Engine 5's City Sample application, versus FSR 2 running in quality mode. I would assume it will likely be a bit closer if you were to run FSR 2 in Performance mode.
What we don't know is whether FSR 3 will require certain acceleration on the GPU to deliver these much improved frame rates. When asked about this, AMD coyly suggested more info would come at a later date, presumably next year.
AMD's Frank Azor also noted that "current generations of FSR do not require machine learning."
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It's absolutely a stretch to take that statement as anything other than simply reaffirmation of FSR's current state in regards to AI acceleration, but the way it was phrased doesn't preclude future versions of FSR using AI, either.
One thing that AMD has incorporated into its next-gen RDNA 3 graphics cards is much improved AI hardware. Up to 2.7x faster AI performance with the top cards, in fact. Hopefully we will see more ways to take advantage of that capability inside our gaming machines with the coming months and years.
There are currently 216 games supporting FSR in some capacity today, and AMD says that the number adopting newer versions of FSR is growing. That's good to hear from a gamer's perspective, as the technology is open to owners of graphics cards from all major GPU manufacturers.
