It was first announced way back at Computex 2025, but finally, AMD has launched FSR Redstone — its own platform of AI trickery to make supported PC games perform even better. This is Team Red’s effort to close in on the reigning champ of resolution scaling and frame generation: Nvidia’s DLSS 4.
So what does FSR Redstone do exactly? And how does it stack up to what Nvidia has cooked up? Let’s get into it.
What is AMD FSR Redstone?
- FSR Redstone is now available via an AMD Adrenalin driver — available only on RX 9000 GPUs (like the RX 9070 XT I reviewed recently).
- AI/machine learning-aided resolution scaling, ray tracing and frame generation.
In a way, Redstone is AMD realizing its initial approach wasn’t working — a plan B approach. You see, previous versions of FSR didn’t use machine learning/AI to do all of its performance optimizations. Instead, it would rely on preset algorithms for resolution scaling and frame generation.
This always meant it was a step behind what Nvidia was doing with DLSS, fully embracing AI. FSR Redstone is the all-important transition point, as AMD is now all-in on similar machine learning capabilities to do the following things:
- FSR Upscaling: This is the same machine learned resolution scaling that you saw in FSR 4 on any AMD Radeon RX 9000 series GPU so far. Basically, it renders the game at a lower resolution, then uses an upscaling model trained on the game itself to boost the resolution back up — easing the pressure of intensive games.
- FSR Frame Generation: AMD’s adding some machine learning sauce to its frame generation, too. A neural network running under the hood will analyze every rendered frame and the underlying game data, and merge it with generated frames to provide a smoother frame rate.
- FSR Ray Regeneration: Ever looked at ray tracing in a game and thought something was ever so slightly off? Maybe it’s way too shiny or too noisy. That’s what Ray Regeneration aims to resolve, by using machine learning to denoise ray-traced reflections and a neural network to do it efficiently (rather than testing your GPU’s limits through raw rendering).
- FSR Radiance Caching: Another neural network at play here, but for the complexities of ray tracing and path-traced lighting. All of that indirect lighting is such a challenge — even for the latest and greatest hardware, so machine learning is here again to calculate the radiance of illumination within the level you’re playing.
The end result of all of this is a less clunky process flow for optimizing game performance. Using neural networks, particularly for frame generation, virtually eliminates ghosting compared to AMD’s past efforts.
Plus, it will make the calculations for ray tracing and upscaling far less GPU-intensive, delivering sharper textures and smoother frame rates at higher levels of detail (at least that’s what I’ve seen from my friends testing it out).
How many games support AMD FSR Redstone?
- Over 200 games will support FSR Redstone by the end of 2025, including Arc Raiders, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and God of War Ragnarök.
- But 32 games are currently listed to support FSR Frame Generation (machine learning)
One look at the list on AMD’s website shows a whole lot of titles that support FSR Redstone technology. Specifically, Team Red claims over 200 games will support it by the end of 2025.
But scroll down this list a little bit, and you see it's not that simple. There’s a secondary list at the bottom titled “AMD FSR Frame Generation (ML) Support.” This seems like the neural frame gen part of Redstone is only coming to 32 games.
How does it compare to Nvidia DLSS 4?
- DLSS 4 has a lot of the same features as FSR Redstone, but has been around a lot longer to grow those features.
- The Transformer AI used in DLSS 4 is more mature, providing a stable output.
- DLSS Frame Gen is now multi-frame generation — two additional frames for every one rendered frame than FSR Redstone.
- DLSS 4 supports older GPUs, whereas FSR Redstone is locked to AMD’s newest cards.
- They are seemingly tied to Ray regeneration/reconstruction and neural radiance caching.
- But AMD can catch up.
DLSS 4 has been around for a while now and has had much more time to mature into its new feature set. It offers pretty much all the same features as AMD’s FSR Redstone does, but Nvidia seems to be doing these a little bit better, given they’ve been around the block a while.
First up, the Transformer AI used in DLSS 4 has been around a lot longer than FSR upscaling (even when it was called FSR 4 for a couple of months before). That means you should get a more stable game output from Team Green.
Second, frame generation. While the frame interpolation of FSR Redstone is 1 new frame for every 1 rendered, DLSS 4 has multi-frame generation — giving you a 3:1 ratio. And third is compatibility: you can use DLSS 4 features on cards all the way back to RTX 30-series, but AMD is locking Redstone just to Radeon RX 9000 cards and newer (when they’re launched).
The big disadvantage here to FSR Redstone is game support. Nvidia maintains a massive game compatibility lead with over 800 games benefiting from DLSS 4 automatically. AMD’s made an admirable effort with over 200 titles by the end of the year (and they can catch up from that), but it’s a huge gulf.
My take: This could be part of a killer Steam Machine build
So here’s my take on it. In the Windows PC gaming space, Nvidia should be a little worried. Its top competitor has finally got its act together with FSR Redstone for its GPUs, which are a better value for money for gaming. And while there is still a clear lead in terms of game support, that’s a gap AMD can close.
But I see a far bigger threat coming in somewhere else: SteamOS. While the Steam Machine looks set to disrupt both the console market and PC gaming in a big way next year, that hasn’t stopped people from building AMD-laden machines and installing SteamOS.
The outgoing FSR 4 is supported on the underlying Linux after all — it should only be a matter of time before the Proton layer for translating DirectX 12 code used in Windows games gets updated for Redstone.
Imagine a super-powered Steam machine with all of this new AI-aided gaming goodness, but without the bulk of Windows 11… To me, that sounds like a mighty exciting proposition, and if I were in any post-release planning meeting in AMD’s HQ, I’d be shouting for a closer tie with Valve to make something like this happen.
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