FSR 4 on RDNA 3: Useful for Steam Machine, Transformative for the RX 7800 XT and RX 7900 XTX

AMD has followed through on its plan to bring FSR 4, its machine-learning-based super-resolution technology, to RDNA 3 hardware, marking a meaningful new phase in the upscaler's rollout. This expansion reaches all the way down to Valve's Steam Machine, which uses a scaled-back version of the Navi 33 processor found in the RX 7600 and RX 7600 XT.

As soon as FSR 4 arrived for Windows discrete GPUs, a Proton Experimental update for Steam Machine followed, seamlessly replacing the existing FSR 3 option with FSR 4 across many games. For the Steam Machine specifically, FSR 4 is best described as a genuinely useful addition rather than a complete transformation.

Looking more broadly at RX 7000-class desktop GPUs, however, FSR 4's impact looks considerably more significant, particularly on the RX 7800 XT and RX 7900 XTX.  Steam Machine represents an interesting test case given its relatively limited horsepower.

Compared to existing AMD hardware, it runs roughly 10% to 11% faster than an RX 6600, itself not a particularly fast GPU, while the RX 7600 runs about 15% to 17% faster than the Steam Machine.

Crimson Desert Benchmarks on Steam Machine

Crimson Desert serves as a demanding early test case. At native 1440p using optimized settings, the Steam Machine averages just 28.7 fps, rising to a more workable but still limited 38.7 fps using FSR 3 quality mode, a 34.7% improvement over native. FSR 4 quality mode delivers a smaller 21.8% improvement, rising to 30.2% with balanced mode, and landing at a 37.4 fps average.

Switching to FSR 4 performance mode pushes the average to 41 fps, a 42.8% improvement over native, a solid result considering this particular test sequence is notably more demanding than most of the game from a GPU standpoint.

Using Pearl Abyss's own PS5-equivalent balanced mode settings adds roughly an 8% performance increase across the board, bringing FSR4 performance mode up to a 44.5 fps average.

While FSR 3 quality mode offers higher raw performance at lower image quality, FSR 4 claws back much of that performance gap through more aggressive upscaling while still delivering noticeably better image quality, even with a significantly lower internal resolution before upscaling.

Resident Evil Requiem Benchmarks on Steam Machine

The case for Resident Evil Requiem is a lot less difficult. Steam Machine achieves a native 1440p average of 56.7 fps in this test scene, using settings optimized for an 8GB GPU with as few trade-offs as possible. This is already a good result. If you use the FSR3 quality mode, the frame rate increases by 44.7%, but the picture quality isn't any better than in Crimson Desert.

The FSR4 quality mode provides a 19.5% boost, rising to 30% in balanced mode and 42.5% in performance mode. This closes the gap with the 44.7% boost seen in the FSR3 quality mode while providing better picture quality across the board.

Moving beyond Steam Machine, FSR 4's impact on desktop RDNA 3 GPUs shifts considerably as additional horsepower changes the balance between hardware capability and rendering demand. Testing Resident Evil Requiem fully maxed out with ray tracing enabled at 1440p on an RX 7800 XT shows FSR 3 quality mode running only 10% faster than the FSR 4 equivalent, with balanced mode about 2.5% faster than FSR 3 quality.

These gains are considerably larger than what appeared on Steam Machine, largely because ray tracing is active here, and reductions in input resolution have a much greater performance impact under ray tracing than under the rasterization-only settings used in Steam Machine testing.

Crimson Desert on Desktop RDNA3 Without Heavy Ray Tracing

Crimson Desert uses ray tracing far less aggressively, so its frame rate gains on desktop RDNA 3 hardware track more closely to what was seen on the Steam Machine. Testing cinematic settings on the RX 7900 XTX at 4K shows a 55% performance boost in performance mode over native, a smaller gain than seen in the ray-tracing-heavy Resident Evil Requiem test, but still meaningful.

FSR3 quality mode here runs only 13% faster than its FSR 4 equivalent, while FSR 4 performance mode both looks better and runs slightly faster, reaching 66 fps compared to 63 fps. In addition to controlled benchmarks, testing these GPUs with games corroborates the benchmarks.

Alan Wake 2 at 4K, high settings, on the RX 7900 XTX with low ray tracing enabled: this setting still offers better ray tracing quality than the PlayStation 5 Pro version while delivering most of ray tracing's visual impact. The resolution needed to be lowered from 2160p to 1800p to maintain a stable 60 fps, with only a few frame drops during a difficult forest test scene.

The 60 fps performance was a little less consistent, but overall it was solid. It's clear that ray tracing significantly slows down this type of gear. FSR 4 works well on RDNA3 hardware across the board.  While AMD's rollout has arguably taken longer than it should have, the underlying INT8-based super-resolution technology is a valuable addition to any RDNA 3 device.

The same test was done on an RX 7800 XT without ray tracing, but at 1800p output and high settings.

FSR 4 performance clearly exceeds FSR 3 under equivalent settings, and in most cases, FSR 4 performance mode delivers better image quality than FSR 3 quality mode while matching or exceeding its frame rate.  On higher-end RDNA 3 cards, the gains become considerably more pronounced under heavy ray tracing, addressing a scenario in which FSR 3's image quality trade-offs were previously more difficult to accept.

Returning to test the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7800 XT with FSR 4 enabled makes both cards feel meaningfully refreshed. The main remaining criticism is that FSR4 adoption across game titles continues to lag behind Nvidia's DLSS rollout.

Relying on third-party tools like Optiscaler to fill that gap isn't an ideal solution, and getting it working properly, particularly on Linux-based Steam Machine hardware with Unreal Engine 5 titles, can be genuinely difficult.

Continued collaboration between AMD and developers to bring FSR4 support to more titles would meaningfully improve the situation, and developers themselves have little excuse not to support FSR 4 in any title that already includes a DLSS implementation.