AMD has announced that a new version of its FidelityFX super-resolution upscaling, FSR 3, will be available in 2023. The new version will incorporate what is called Fluid Motion Frames technology, which will more than double the fps.

During AMD's RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT (opens in new tab) announcement streams, not many details about FSR 3 were given, but we do know that it will incorporate what AMD is calling Fluid Motion Frames technology.

According to Scott Herkelman, GM of Radeon, this could be somehow similar, at least in purpose if not actual operation, to what Nvidia is calling DLSS Frame Generation. The technology infers information from motion vectors and rendered frames and generates entirely new frames, dramatically increasing the FPS of supported games.

"It's frame generation for sure," Herkelman said in the Q&A.

The claim of 2x performance was tested using Unreal Engine 5's City Sample application compared to FSR 2 running in Quality mode. If FSR 2 were run in Performance mode, the value would be a bit closer.

What is unclear is whether FSR 3 requires specific acceleration on the GPU to significantly increase the frame rate. When asked about this, AMD coyly suggested that more information would come at a later date, perhaps next year.

AMD's Frank Azor also stated that the current generation of FSR does not require machine learning.

While it is absolutely unreasonable to take this statement as anything other than a mere reaffirmation of the current state of FSR with respect to AI acceleration, this phrasing does not preclude future versions of FSR that use AI.

One of the things AMD has incorporated into the next generation of RDNA 3 graphics cards is a significant improvement in AI hardware. In fact, AI performance is up to 2.7x faster on the top-of-the-line cards. Expect to see more ways to take advantage of this feature within gaming machines in the coming months and years.

There are currently 216 games that support FSR in some form, and according to AMD, the number of games adopting newer versions of FSR continues to grow. This is a welcome development from a gamer's perspective, as the technology is open to owners of graphics cards from all major GPU manufacturers.