FSR 4.1 for Radeon RX 7000: Benchmarks, VRAM Cost, Conclusion
How much does FSR 4 cost on RDNA 3 graphics cards, and is it worth it?
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Everything comes with a cost. We've tested the performance-to-cost ratio based on three RDNA 3 graphics cards: the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, RX 7800 XT, and RX 7600. This covers the entire RDNA 3 spectrum, from Navi 33 with 8 GiByte of VRAM, through Navi 32 with 16 GiByte, all the way up to the top-of-the-line Navi 31 with 24 GiByte. Is FSR 4 significantly more expensive than FSR 3?
FSR 4.1 vs. 3.1: Benchmarks
For the benchmarks, we selected three popular games with fundamentally different engines: Crimson Desert, Forza Horizon 6, and Gothic Remake. Each RX 7000 GPU runs the tests at its optimal resolution, once with FSR 4.1 and once with FSR 3.1. We test all available presets for each: Native AA, Quality, Balanced, Performance, and Ultra Performance. Let's get right to the results:
As you can see, in the vast majority of cases, the expected outcome holds true: FSR 4.1 is more resource-intensive than FSR 3.1 due to its more complex calculations. The difference varies depending on the game, graphics card, and settings. The Ultra Performance (UP) mode is particularly notable, as it is significantly more resource-intensive with FSR 4.1 than with FSR 3.1. In other words, the performance boost from the saved pixels isn't as significant as one might expect. It's noteworthy that this isn't due to the cost per pixel, since "Native Mode" is almost just as expensive in FSR 3.1 as it is in FSR 4.1. The gap between versions 3 and 4 only widens when you increase the upscaling factor.
In addition to frame rates, we also logged memory usage for all benchmarks. This is where it gets interesting:
AMD's optimization efforts are clearly paying off: FSR 4 Int8 results in slightly lower memory allocation than FSR 3.1 in nearly every test. While the differences aren't earth-shattering, they can tip the scalesfor example, on the memory-constrained Radeon RX 7600 or the new Steam Machine. With 8 GiByte VRAM, every free megabyte counts.
FSR 4.1 for Radeon RX 7000: Conclusion
AMD has kept its word and officially released FSR 4.1 for older Radeon graphics cards—that's how good product support looks like. Compared to FSR 3.1, the performance demands can be relatively significant; the AI-assisted upscaling clearly incurs higher computational costs. FSR 4 is therefore slightly less effective as a speed boost than FSR 3; however, the image quality is significantly cleaner and more stable. As a temporal upscaling method that balances both performance and image quality, FSR 4 generally offers a much better balance between quality and performance.
While FSR 4 tends to be a bit more resource-intensive on RDNA-3 graphics cards, our initial experiences and tests indicate that the significantly improved image quality compared to FSR 3 is almost always worth the cost. Even owners of a Radeon RX 7000 can enjoy the greatly improved upscaling performance—definitely give it a shot!
RDNA-2 owners, on the other hand, will have to be patient for a while longer. According to AMD, Radeon RX 6000 users won't have access to FSR 4.x until 2027. If you don't want to wait, you can use a workaround like the Optiscaler. With just a few clicks, this tool lets you enable FSR 4.0.2c even on RDNA 2 cards.
