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If you're the owner of a recent Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics card, you probably won't have given much thought to the fact that all the big game releases this year support the majority of the DLSS AI technology suite. On the other hand, if it's an AMD Radeon or Intel Arc card in your gaming PC, you're probably wondering why today's games seem to be short-changing you, and for 007 First Light, it's another one to add to the list of 'Where's my FSR 4/XeSS?'
Now that IO Interactive's new Bond adventure is out in the wild, I've finally had the chance to dig into what upscaling and frame generation systems it supports. Well, as Nvidia notes in its latest GeForce blog, you get DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution and Multi Frame Generation.
The game's options interface is somewhat clunky, but you can easily switch between DLAA for pixel-perfect anti-aliasing or scale the frame all the way down with Ultra Performance upscaling.
That's not the case with AMD FSR, though. You get Quality, Balanced, and Performance modes only: no native AA or Ultra Perf to be seen. Oh, and no FSR Frame Generation, either. More importantly for RX 9000-series owners, you don't get FSR 4, just version 3.1.5. And Intel's XeSS is notable by its complete absence.
007 First Light isn't the only 2026 game to have such limited options. Forza Horizon 6 does have a decent spread of FSR and XeSS upscaling modes, including Native AA, but it too is only FSR 3.1.5, and there's no sign of AMD or Intel's frame gen algorithms.
Pragmata does have FSR 4.1 but no frame gen, and no XeSS whatsoever. Resident Evil: Requiem is a little better with the full suite of FSR (3 and 4) and DLSS 4 (4.5 via the Nvidia App), but it's another game without XeSS support.
And let's not even begin to mention being able to use path tracing or any kind of AI-based ray tracing denoiser on an AMD or Intel GPU. Sure, the latter doesn't have the high-end hardware nor the software to cover both, but the latest Radeon cards certainly do (though AMD still hasn't released its FSR Redstone denoiser yet).
The more conspiratorial among us may think that this is some kind of deliberate plot by Nvidia, contractually requiring developers to exclude implementing competitors' technologies. Well, you can doff your tinfoil hats, because that's not the case.
"Nvidia does not and will not block, restrict, discourage, or hinder developers from implementing competitor technologies in any way," says Keita Iida, vice president of developer relations. "We provide the support and tools for all game developers to easily integrate DLSS if they choose and even created Nvidia Streamline to make it easier for game developers to add competitive technologies to their games."
The decision not to fully support the latest version of FSR or XeSS, incorporating the full set of performance-enhancing features, is one that's entirely down to the developers. IO Interactive and Playground Games chose to skip FSR 4 and AMD's frame gen in 007 First Light and Forza Horizon 6, respectively.
One could argue that Nvidia's sheer dominance of the discrete graphics card market means that it makes sense for a game studio to only target the most common GPU feature set, but if you've already done some of the work to implement FSR or XeSS, then why not the full suite?
Yes, FSR 3.1 frame generation isn't the best out there, with every other system available producing noticeably superior results. But I'd argue that it's better to let gamers choose for themselves as to what they want to use; if they'd prefer to have superior frame rates over perfect graphics, that's fine. Just give them the option.
As things currently stand, only one group of PC gamers has that freedom, and it's the RTX crowd.
1. Best overall: AMD Radeon RX 9070
2. Best value: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB
3. Best budget: Nvidia RTX 5050
4. Best mid-range: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT
5. Best high-end: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090
