AMD FSR 4 upscaling shows much improved image quality, fewer artifacts, but it will be exclusive to newer GPUs

Overall picture: With FSR 4, AMD has finally integrated machine learning into its upscaler, following in the footsteps of Nvidia DLSS and Intel XeSS. Previous versions relied on spatial and temporal upsampling, which supports most hardware but ultimately produces inferior results. Our good friends at Hardware Unboxed have provided an early look at FSR 4 running Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Although the analysis is preliminary, visual improvements over FSR 3.1 are immediately noticeable.

Although AMD has not yet provided detailed specifications for Radeon RX 9070 GPUs presented at CES 2025, various retail outlets received access to the systems managing them on the exhibition hall. One such exhibition highlights how the company’s FSR 4 upscaling technology is significantly superior to its predecessor.

In Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart FSR 3.1 is struggling with ghosting, transparency issues and other visual artifacts. To showcase the improvements in FSR 4, AMD used two monitors to run the game side-by-side in 4K performance mode – a setting where FSR traditionally struggles with DLSS.

Although Hardware Unboxed captured the footage by recording monitors, which is far from ideal, the improvements are quite noticeable, even when viewed through YouTube compression. Visual elements such as particles, transparent surfaces, Ratchet’s fur, and distant details appear much sharper in FSR 4. The artifacts that plagued FSR 3 have been almost completely eliminated.

Unfortunately, the demo did not include frame rate counters, so a thorough examination of any performance impact will have to wait until we can thoroughly test FSR 4.

However, AMD has confirmed one major limitation: FSR 4 requires a Radeon RX 9000 GPU. When AMD releases the RX 9070 and 9070 XT in the coming weeks, these cards will compete with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 50 series and DLSS 4 technology.

Recent preview from Digital Foundry showed Noticeable improvements in DLSS 4 relate to image quality and frame generation. The new Transformer-based AI model reduces visual imperfections, and multi-frame generation can triple or quadruple the frame rate with relatively little impact on latency.

While Nvidia’s new multi-frame rendering technology is exclusive to the RTX 50 series GPUs, all owners of GeForce RTX graphics cards will benefit from improved image quality in games that support DLSS. Meanwhile, AMD’s vague details about FSR 4 suggest that the update could apply to any game using FSR 3.1.

At TechSpot, we plan to provide detailed comparisons of FSR 4, DLSS 4, and their predecessors when the time comes, that is, after we get our hands on the new GPUs and are able to fully test them. Until then, the only third-party performance data we have comes from Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. referencewhich suggests the RX 9070 could compete with Nvidia’s RTX 4080 Super – and perhaps the RTX 5070/Ti.