AMD, big driver update in spring? Super Resolution and a revamped Radeon Boost in development

As in a boxing match, an action corresponds to a reaction: we can describe with this metaphor the months that await us in the video card sector. Nvidia will introduce by the end of this month the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB, but not only: let’s not forget, on all RTX 3000, the support a Resizable BAR, the PCI Express feature that allows the CPU to directly access the entire graphics memory to further increase gaming performance – AMD coined the term Smart Access Memory (SAM).

AMD, for its part, is preparing the mid-range video cards which should be part of the RX 6700 series, designed to better manage the resolution 1440p, after placing various models of the RX 6800 and 6900 series within the 4K. The new GPUs based on RDNA 2 architecture designed to succeed the RX 5700 proposals, could however not to be the only news of the company led by Lisa Su.

At the launch of the first Radeon RX 6000s late last year, AMD assured us it was working on a response to Nvidia’s DLSS, a technology known as Super Resolution, part of the FidelityFX feature collection. Well, according to the rumors of the site Prohardvare, we will have to wait for the spring (starting March 20) for the debut of this solution.

AMD has kept its mouth sewn on what is cooking, but as we have seen in recent months by testing the new GPUs, a technology that helps in some way to increase performance, especially with active ray tracing, is necessary. This technology is rumored to use the API DirectML from Microsoft, which could also be useful from an Xbox perspective, but there is no absolute certainty. Officially AMD stands working with game developers to implement the technology in various titles.

It is perhaps for this reason that AMD has the traditional publication of a major release of its drivers at the end of the year was broken, so as to take longer to actually arrive with more meat on the fire. Indeed, it seems that Super Resolution will not be the only novelty, but there will also be a major revamp of Radeon Boost, a technology that dynamically changes the resolution at which the game is rendered based on the player’s movement.

In a nutshell, if you play a very hectic title, where the images change rapidly, there is no need to render all aspects of the game at particularly high resolutions because, due to the movements, the human eye does not perceive differences in those areas. This allows you to optimize performance considerably, up to 40% in certain situations according to AMD.

Radeon Boost then monitors your actions: when you move the character in such a way as to cause a sudden movement of the camera, it activates instantly reducing the rendering resolution, to restore it when the movement ends. From Radeon Software it is possible to set the resolution reduction rate on some levels.

At the moment it is not clear how Radeon Boost will change, but the hypothesis that it is AMD has found a way to ensure a performance increase while preserving as much image quality as possible. We’ll see, we just have to wait for official information.