AMD is set to finally join Nvidia with FSR 4, using AI to power frame generation, though no word on upscaling yet

FidelityFX Super Resolution, AMD's answer to Nvidia's DLSS, has been around for a little over three years now and it's been a real boon to all kinds of GPUs, including Nvidia's GeForce models. The latest version, FSR 3.1, offers a shader-based upscaler and frame generation system but the tech world hyped on AI, AMD has decided it can't ignore it any longer and has announced that the next iteration will be AI-based, for frame generation at least.

In an interview with Tom's Hardware, AMD's senior vice president Jack Huynh was talking about some of the frustrations about playing on handheld gaming PCs and that enjoying a high frame rate greatly limited how long you could game for.

«On the handheld side, my number one priority is battery life. If you look at the Asus ROG Ally or the Lenovo Legion Go, it’s just that the battery life is not there. I need multiple hours. I need to play [Black Myth] Wukong for three hours, not 60 minutes.»

He's not wrong. Even with the huge battery in the ROG Ally X, I rarely get more than an hour of gaming in performance mode and while you don't need to have the chip inside running at full speed for every game, you certainly do for anything new with high-end graphics. The solution, Huynh reckons, will be in the form of the next version of FideltyFX Super Resolution.

«This is where frame generation and interpolation [come in], so this is the FSR 4 that we're adding. [W]e completely pivoted the team about 9-12 months ago to go AI-based. So now we're going AI-based frame generation, frame interpolation, and the idea is increased efficiency to maximize battery life. And then we could lock the frames per second, maybe it's 30 frames per second, or 35.»

That's all that Huynh had to say about it all so we're left with a whole bunch of things to ponder and speculate on. Let's start with what seems to be the primary motive for making FSR 4 AI-based: improving battery life. Admirable but I rather hope that the use of AI also helps to solve FSR's