AMD has released its Software Adrenaline 26.6.2 drivers, adding FSR 4.1 support to the company’s last-gen GPUs based on its RDNA 3 architecture. With this update, Radeon RX 7000 users will finally be able to enjoy the improved image quality of FSR 4.1 natively, all while benefiting from further performance optimisations.
Adrenaline 26.6.2 marks the first step towards deploying FSR 4.1 across several of AMD’s previous-gen, including RDNA 3.5, RDNA 3, and RDNA 2. FSR 4.1 is the brand’s most advanced form of upscaling technology, offering vastly superior image quality to FSR 3. And now, all you need to take advantage of it is to update your GPU drivers; no more third-party apps or game file modification.
In case you’re wondering why this has taken so long, AMD’s RDNA 3 GPUs (such as the Radeon RX 7900 XTX) lack support for the FP8 data type, which is required by the original FSR 4.1 implementation. Due to this, AMD had to redesign/translate FSR 4.1’s code to run on RDNA 3, which only supports the INT8 data type.
AMD’s Senior VP Jack Huynh said that FSR 4.1 was optimised in this new form to maintain the same image quality offered by the FP8 implementation on RDNA 4 GPUs, such as the Radeon RX 9070 GRE, all while keeping the performance boost you expect from upscaling.
In fact, AMD claims that its FSR 4.1 implementation is faster than the community-made mods, which used leaked FSR code. The company says its own FSR 4.1 implementation on RDNA 3 is about 7% faster than the community mods based on FSR 4.0.2c in Forza Horizon 6 and Crimson Desert. Compared to native rendering, AMD claims that you can expect around a 49% frame rate boost, although it didn’t share the upscaling setting.
In parallel to this release, AMD has also indicated that, due to their weaker iGPUs, RDNA 3-based Ryzen APUs will need additional performance optimisation. To get FSR 4.1 running on these GPUs, the company will be developing lightweight machine learning models, bringing the upscaling tech to more devices.
In the meantime, FSR 4.1 is now available on Radeon RX 7000 and RX 9000 GPUs in over 300 games. Support for RDNA 2 (Radeon 6000) is still scheduled for next year, but no exact date has been shared.
FSR 4.1 aside, the Adrenaline 26.6.2 drivers also add optimisations for Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced and Doon: The Dark Ages | Revelations, while fixing a couple of bugs related to RoadCraft and VR headsets. AMD Adrenalin 26.6.2 is available to download here.
That said, if you are on Windows 10, note that the current installation file appears to have a bug, causing the GPU to not be recognised, showing a yellow exclamation mark with code 43 in Device Manager. Hopefully, this issue will be fixed soon.
