AMD FidelityFX SDK v1.1 Now With FSR 3.1 Support: Enhanced Upscaling Quality, Vulkan-Ready & Decoupled Frame-Generation Works With DLSS & XeSS

AMD has just announced the FidelityFX SDK v1.1 which adds FSR 3.1 support along with decoupled frame-gen to work with NVIDIA DLSS & Intel XeSS.

Today is a huge day for AMD's gaming software side of things as the company announces its latest FidelityFX SDK v1.1 which brings support for several new features such as FSR 3.1. Launched last year, AMD's FSR 3 has seen great support in several games & even the new FSR 3.1 technology has seen integration in a range of AAA titles such as the recently announced PC ports from Nixxes. The new SDK update brings the following major changes:

Starting with the big one, developers can now harness FSR 3.1 (FidelityFX Super Resolution) which is the updated version of the FSR 3 upscaler, adding increased image quality with fewer artifacts and less temporal instability. AMD states that they have also added new features to FSR 3.1 such as direct support for letterboxing while also improving quality in cases where items are excluded from reactive mask inputs.

Another major update is that AMD's FSR 3 Frame Generation is now decoupled from FSR upscaling which means that you are no longer required to use FSR upscaling to have frame generation work. The new "Decoupled" approach will allow FSR frame generation to work with third-party solutions such as NVIDIA's DLSS and Intel's XeSS which is great news for gamers owning an NVIDIA or Intel GPU.

With FSR 3.0 frame generation, we required FSR upscaling be performed earlier in the graphics pipeline. This was because the frame generation algorithm required processed motion vector and depth data that was already created as part of FSR upscaling – and so the resources were simply used from there as a performance optimization. The downside of this was that it locked our frame generation to only work with our upscaling.

We now have a Frame Generation Prepare function, which takes motion vector and depth scene data pre-upscale, and it generates the required inputs required for Frame Generation. This allows Frame Generation to operate with any upscaler, including third party solutions.

via GPUOpen

(Note: AMD does not suggest using frame generation on products lower than the recommendations above. How frame generation performs will depend on the capabilities of your GPU, and on older hardware you may not have an optimal experience and may see little to no improvement in performance.)

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 40 GPUs are the only ones that feature support for DLSS 3 frame-gen and Intel has yet to introduce its frame-generation solution so for those running an RTX 30 (or older) or an Intel Arc GPU, you can take full benefit from FSR's frame generation capabilities to boost your frame rates.

When using AMD FSR 3 and FSR 3.1 frame generation, it is highly recommended to be always running at a minimum of ~60 FPS before frame generation is applied for an optimal high-quality gaming experience, and to mitigate any latency introduced by the technology. Consequently, we suggest you adjust game graphics settings, resolution, and upscaling quality modes to achieve this, based on the capabilities of the graphics hardware being used and your overall system specs.

If you have an AMD FreeSync compatible display, ensure AMD FreeSync is enabled in the AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition Application display settings.

On AMD Radeon RX 7000 Series graphics cards when using the Microsoft® Windows® 11 2022 Update, Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) should be enabled in Windows under Settings -> System -> Display -> Graphics Settings.

AMD Radeon Anti-Lag should be disabled in the AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition Application control panel to avoid any issues with frame pacing smoothness or stuttering. This can be done in the specific game profile in the driver setting. We are working to fully enable AMD anti-lag technologies with AMD FSR 3 frame generation, which we will provide more details on in the future.

It is not recommended to use AMD FSR 3 and FSR 3.1 frame generation in combination with AMD Fluid Motion Frames. Frame Pacing smoothness may also be impacted by using other driver-based technologies and the use of third-party graphics overlays.

via GPUOpen

AMD's FSR 3.1 added to the FidelityFX SDK v1.1 also includes various frame generation fixes to ensure frames presented to the users are of higher quality and there are also new frame pacing updates that will allow for smooth gameplay. AMD says that anti-Lag should be disabled in the AMD Software suite for an optimal frame-pacing experience.

Other updates include AMD FSR 3.1 frame generation support for Vulkan API and an updated FSR 3 plugin for Unreal Engine v3.1 while also adding support for Unreal Engine 5.4. The red team has also introduced its new Global Illumination and Ambient Occulsion suite known as Brixelizer which aims to be an alternative to hardware-accelerated ray tracing for lower-end GPUs. The new method allows for faster performance (tested on an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU) while delivering similar image quality.

AMD sums up the following takeaways for Brixelizer:

There is also AMD FidelityFX Breadcrumbs library which will allow developers to track workloads on the GPU and also allow them to create a report on the current state of GPU work execution if there is a crash. You can find the full Breadcrumbs documentation here. As for the FidelityFX SDK v1.1, it can be downloaded here.