AMD hopes to launch DLSS challengers in 2021

It is already known that AMD is working on an alternative to Nvidia’s upscaling technology DLSS called FidelityFX Super Resolution. Where earlier rumors spoke of a launch already this spring, AMD’s graphics director Scott Herkelman now takes to PC World’s podcast The Full Nerd where questions related to the launch of the Radeon RX 6700 XT were answered live.

According to a report by Videocardz, some of the questions were about FidelityFX Super Resolution, where the complicated name first and foremost gets an official abbreviation from AMD’s side – FSR. However, it does not look like there will be a launch in the near future, as Herkelman says that a lot of testing and evaluation of the technology remains.

Even though it’s progressing well, we still have more work to do and not only internally but with our game developer partners. We want to launch it this year. We belive we can do that this year, but at the same time we a lot more work ahead of us. We need to make sure the image quality is there. We need to make sure it can scale from different resolutions. And at the same time that our game developers are happy with what we are producing.

In addition to talking about hopes for a launch later in 2021, Herkelman refrains from making real promises. Instead, he states that the solution will not be launched until the image quality is good and that the game developers must be satisfied with FSR before it is released to the public. All the more interesting is the technology that will form the cornerstone of the FidelityFX Super Resolution.

You don’t need machine learning to do it, you can do this many different ways and we are evaluating many different ways. What matters the most to us is what game developers want to use because if at the end of the day it is just for us, we force people to do it, it is not a good outcome. We would rather say: gaming community, which one of these techniques would you rather see us implement so that this way it can be immediately spread across the industry and hopefully cross-platform.

Previous reports regarding FSR have indicated that AMD will not use DirectML, the add-on for machine learning in DirectX – which Herkelman partly backs up. Since AMD’s graphics cards lack dedicated tensor cores for technology like Nvidia’s chipsets, a DirectML – based solution would probably cost more than it tastes in terms of performance.

In other words, AMD still looks to be in the evaluation phase regarding its DLSS challenger. True to habit, the company simultaneously hits the accessibility drum, as Herkelman wants an implementation that is quickly adopted by game developers and also on the latest generation of game consoles. Exactly when FSR will be launched remains to be seen – but it will not be as soon as in the spring.

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