EXCLUSIVE: Is AMD FSR 2.0 worth the hype in 2022?

AMD has launched the new Fidelity FX Super Resolution 2.0 for quite sometime now, however, now you are getting to see in more games than ever. We were able to see it in action in some of the games including God of War, Deathloop, Farming Simulator 22, currently available to test.

We did test the new FSR 2.0 on both God of War and Farming Simulator 22, but extensively tested on the former because of its rich graphics quality, helping us to compare. The test was done using our Ryzen 7 5800X paired with MSI Radeon RX 6600 XT GPU, this combo will give a good idea about FSR 2.0 and the improvements you can expect.

FSR 2.0 in God of War

As we know Sony’s God of War is one of the best titles that has launched on PC recently with support for both DLSS and FSR. It has also become one of the first games to integrate new FSR 2.0 into the game and as its easy to do so, AMD Radeon gamers will now enjoy better upscaling from now.

As you see you can enjoy best upscaling when FSR 2.0 is set at Quality but as the difference in performance between native and FSR 2.0 (at Ultra settings) is very less, I would choose to game at native, giving you rich details.

When you dip the settings a bit, here use High settings, and then use FSR 2.0 even if it is a Quality the performance upscaling is significant. If you see, the difference in both modes are very nominal and for a gamer who is playing the game it’s very hard to judge naturally.

At native, you enjoy great reflections, textures of the stones in the environment but with FSR almost the details are retained at Quality and if you are playing at say 1440p you won’t notice much of a difference. However, if you closely compare both you will see the stones, reflections at the sides do fade a bit, but any gamer will take almost a 30% increase in performance even at Quality.

Now coming to Original settings in God of War, the frame rates as you see we are getting 90FPS on average and the game is more than playable as well as enjoyable if you have a high refresh rate monitor. Now, if you use FSR 2.0 at Quality you can get over 120 FPS and that’s again welcome but you will see the sharpness fade a bit but still the differences are neglible for any person to recognize at a single go.

Here’s a entire video that will show you the actual game footage as we play God of War at 1440p Ultra Quality settings and we hover through the various FSR 2.0 modes the game offers:

As you see, at native and FSR Quality mode, the boost in performance is nominal especially at Ultra or High settings, so using the native mode makes the gameplay even more rich and detailed. If your GPU has the capability to handle the native quality then its best to enjoy the details of the game as it is but say if you need more frame rates then using FSR makes sense.

However, immediately as you turn on FSR 2.0, you will see slight improvement in the quality when compared with FSR 1.0 and that’s natural. The upscaling technique used this time around is improved from last year but the upgrade is in terms of maturity of the upscaling and not the performance.

FSR 2.0 in Farming Simulator 22

Coming to this game, readily available to play on Xbox Game Pass, is quite popular among fans who love to simulate farming. The comparisons in this game with native doesn’t make a lot of sense because here, the details are not so rich but here we will show you how much improvement you can expect.

As you see the difference in quality when you turn FSR 2.0 is very identical if you use the Quality settings and in games like Farming Simulator 2022, the need for Performance mode as such makes no sense. So, in basic games like this if you need some more frames per second, use FSR 2.0 at Quality else using it makes no sense.

Is AMD FSR 2.0 a gamechanger?

Well, as of now, giving a judgement on basis of few games like this will be very stupid but as far as you can see AMD has drastically improved the FSR 2.0 and it does help even on a low-end iGPU or say an old GPU like RX 580. We are yet to see a lot of games adopt the new upscaling technique and as we know the process is much simpler than DLSS, so in the coming days a plethora of games will adopt it.

However, I feel the difference between FSR, a free technique on any GPU, compared to DLSS, a matured tech for only RTX GPUs, is closing in. For an average gamer, the difference is very hard to perceive in real-time, so, FSR 2.0 solves the purpose for most gamers and with improvement in overall quality in more games, AMD seems to be the right track.