Optiscaler updated to support FSR 4 on older AMD RX 6000 GPUs without the need for driver mods
We reported recently that Optiscaler, the community tool for enabling AMD's latest FSR 4 upscaling technologies on older GPUs, had added support for Vulkan games. Now comes news that the tool enables FSR 4 on AMD RX 6000 GPUs, also known as RDNA 2 and now two generations old, without the need for driver mods.
The situation prior to this latest update was that RDNA 2 GPUs, like the AMD Radeon RX 6800, could run a version of FSR 4 via Optiscaler, but that doing so required the use of modified versions of old GPU drivers. Part of the consequence of that was extensive image ghosting with FSR 4 enabled.
As announced on Optiscaler's Discord server (you can get an invite via the Gitbhub link posted above), this new update addresses those issues. "Fixes RDNA2 ghosting (or at least significantly improves it)", the announcement says, adding, "works now on latest drivers" and "should remove the need for RDNA2 running old modified drivers on Windows."
The announcement of the latest release of Optiscaler also emphasises that, for now, there is no prospect of support for AMD's very latest FSR 4.1 release on older RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 GPUs. "Please don't ask about FSR 4.1, INT8 is never happening unless AMD does it," the post says.
Also, for clarity this update changes nothing for RDNA 3 GPUs. They already worked with more recent drivers and that hasn't changed.
As before, we remain in the odd situation where AMD's official line is that FSR 4 isn't supported by older RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 generations of GPUs, but all of this is happening thanks to a leak of the FSR source code that included alternative INT8 as opposed to FP8 libraries. The latter are intended for AMD's latest RDNA 4 GPUs, such as the RX 9070 XT, and are the basis of the official FSR 4 release but are not supported by older generations of RDNA graphics.
Optiscaler works by automatically searching for the relevant upscaling DLLs and swap in the replacements of your choice, in this case FRS 4 INT8 for RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 GPUs. You can access the Optiscaler GUI from within the game with a keyboard shortcut. It's a pretty technical looking interface, but it's still easier than doing all this manually with file swaps and command line inputs.
Arguably, the INT8 version of FSR 4 isn't entirely comparable with the official FP8 version. But the overall upshot is that Optiscaler gives RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 owners access to at least a version of AMD's latest machine-learning based FSR 4 upscaling, which is generally regarded as far superior to previous iterations of FSR.
For now, AMD won't commit to officially supporting this leaked INT8 version of FSR 4. AMD has indicated that quality control and the user experience are the main concerns regarding official support. But it has left the door very slightly ajar for some kind of support in future.
User experiences thus far with the new update seem to be generally positive, if the Reddit hive mind is to be believed, with both performance improvements and reduced ghosting reported. So, while we understand AMD' reservations up to a point re quality and ensure a sufficient level of experience, it also feels like there must be a way that AMD could put some official support behind all this, even if only in some kind of beta form.