Modders have leveraged the recently published FSR 4 source code, which is believed to have been uploaded by mistake, to manually compile DLL files. These files have been used to enable FSR 4 on older hardware, including AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 and Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30 Series, offering an unofficial alternative to users wanting a higher upscaling quality.
Officially, FSR 4 is exclusive to AMD’s latest RX 9000 GPUs, as it requires FP8 operations support to accelerate calculations and deliver better performance. However, AMD has seemingly worked on implementing the technology on older hardware using the Int8 format, but its results have yet to materialise. Part of this work was published by AMD on its open-source GitHub repository before being removed shortly after, leading many to believe it was a mistake.
Nevertheless, this allowed some modders to download said files and compile them to make FSR 4 DLLs that can be implemented in games using many methods. Unsurprisingly, some Reddit users have downloaded these DLLs and integrated them into Cyberpunk 2077, thus enabling FSR 4 on incompatible GPUs such as the RX 7900 XTX, and funnily enough, the RTX 3060 Ti.
According to these reports, the image quality of this Int8 version is superior to FSR 3.1, able to resolve hair and distant objects at higher detail, and subjectively better than Intel’s XeSS, which also runs an Int8 model. Others have highlighted a reduction in flickering and blurriness. And the best part is that all of this is on Windows, not Linux, meaning that many more gamers will be able to have fun with it. This positive experience pushed some to wonder if a properly optimised version made by AMD could beat Intel’s XeSS both in image quality and performance, which is a thing that we may never find out.
As you may have guessed, there is a drawback to this, otherwise, AMD would have implemented FSR 4 on RDNA 3 and RDNA 2 GPUs. That drawback comes in the form of performance, where the Int8 technique takes around 1.9ms more time to process compared to the 0.6ms of FSR 3.1. To many, this is an acceptable trade-off, as it resulted in around a 7% performance hit for noticeably superior image quality. The good news is that going down to FSR 4 Balanced mode should negate this performance loss, while retaining good image stability.
If you fancy giving it a try, @AthleteDependent926 on Reddit has shared a link to the relevant DLL file, which can be injected into the game using tools such as OptiScaler. Just avoid forcing it on online games to avoid being detected as a cheater and getting banned.
Now, the question is whether this positive reception will encourage AMD to release FSR 4 despite the performance impact. We surely hope so. If anything, at least it gives users a choice, so they can select performance or image quality, depending on each game’s demands.
