FSR is a relief for low-budget gaming GPUs

The gaming scenario in Bangladesh has massively changed in the past 5-6 years. Gaming is now more popular than ever among the younger generation. 

But the global chip shortage, the additional 15 per cent tax on electronics items and the presence of syndicate in the overall computer market have made the already dire pricing situation a living nightmare. 

A graphics card (GPU) that cost Tk 23 thousand in June of 2020 is getting sold at Tk 46 thousand in 2021. So buying a new GPU has become unrealistic for gamers on a budget.

But there might be some good news, as the tech giant AMD announced their image upscaling technology FidelityFx Super Resolution or FSR at the Computex 2021. 

Successful implementation of their technology could mean gamers will get better performance from their GPU and this might just mean gamers won’t have to break their bank for gaming in 2021. FSR is available on a number of both AMD and Nvidia GPU.

The Steam Hardware Survey shows that 1080p is still the most popular gaming category (67 per cent) around the globe, so is the case in Bangladesh. And there are many gamers using older generation graphics cards like the GTX 1050ti or the RX 580. 

As the modern AAA games have become increasingly graphics-intensive, the older GPUs are struggling to keep up with them without additional software support. This is where FSR could play a vital role. 

Usually, for casual gamers, getting a conservative frame rate of 50-65 frames per second (fps) would be more than a fine gaming experience. With FSR support, the GPUs that are currently struggling to provide higher than 35-40 fps, could easily provide up to 60 fps in modern games. 

The popular Youtube channel Hardware Canucks came up with some interesting benchmark results.

 
Source: Hardware Canucks

These are the results from two recent games - Godfall and Terminator: Resistance. We can see that both RX 580 and the GTX 1060 were struggling to provide playable frame rates and with FSR, just with the ultra quality preset, both the GPUs provided playable framerates and even higher in the latter presets. 

Interestingly enough, they have found that the GPUs from even older generations that do not officially support FSR, had performance boosts when FSR was enabled. A benchmark is shown below.

Source: Hardware Canucks

This is amazing news for gamers who are currently using 6-7-year-old GPUs and want to play modern 2021 games. 

Although FSR works best on higher resolutions like 1440p and 4k, according to a report by Digital Trends, a tech information website based in America, FSR can work well at 1080p or even lower resolutions-- potentially enabling some of those older GPUs it supports, to play games that would otherwise have been impossible to get working.

The potential of FSR is huge and its successful integration in the upcoming popular games will dictate its true success. 

As for us Bangladeshi gamers, we can only hope that this consumer-friendly gesture from AMD becomes a huge success, enabling us to enjoy even the latest titles with modest setups.

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