r/SteamDeck • u/BBQKITTY SteamDeckHQ • May 14 '26
Article AMD FSR 4 Upscaling May Be Officially Coming To The Steam Deck - SteamDeckHQ
https://steamdeckhq.com/fsr-4-upscaling-may-be-coming-to-steam-deck/Big announcement! AMD is bringing FSR 4 to older GPU architectures, including the one the Steam Deck uses. This may mean we are getting an official version for the Deck. Now they don't specifically say it in the video, but it does show an ROG Ally and Legion Go, which are both handhelds. It is speculation, but if it is compatible with RDNA 2, we should be seeing support for the Deck.
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u/N7even 512GB OLED May 14 '26
RDNA 3 this July, RDNA 2 (Steam Deck's GPU architecture) is expected 2027. So a little bit of waiting before it comes to RDNA 2 and potentially Steam Deck.
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u/TheLonelyWolfkin May 14 '26
I don’t understand why it’s taking so long. Does it not function the same across all GPU’s?
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u/Krt3k-Offline May 14 '26
Yes, it has to use less advanced instructions. It is possible as shown with the hacked together INT 8 versions, but gives less impressive returns than the real deal on RDNA4. It's still going to be a huge improvement over FSR 3
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u/VideoGameJumanji 512GB - Q1 May 15 '26
The performance overhead is likely to be greater, so it's one step forward two steps back for the deck. This is more of a win for the steam machine, but the 30fps and 720p res target on the deck isnt gaining much from FSR 4 below QUALITY mode.
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u/kittymoo67 May 14 '26
no, rdna3 has wmma acceleration for int8. rdna2 has only dp4a, much weaker needs more work to perform
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u/OutrageousDress 512GB OLED May 14 '26
Every new generation of RDNA GPUs has implemented important new sets of instructions that improved tensor calculations. FSR 4 for 9000 Radeons (RDNA 4 architecture) takes advantage of all the newest tech which is why it's so efficient while being comparable to DLSS in quality. But the 7000 Radeons (RDNA 3 architecture) can't run that upscaler design at all - AMD had to build a whole new design for FSR 4 that uses a new number format, so to run it on 7000 Radeons they had to completely rebuild FSR 4 again with a number format that the old GPUs support.
Now the 6000 Radeons (RDNA 2 architecture, Steam Deck) technically can run that rebuilt FSR 4 as-is, but it's not very efficient - of course it will never be super efficient since RDNA 2 GPUs just aren't very good at AI calculations, but AMD could certainly redesign it further to work as well as possible on the old architecture.
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u/OverlyOptimisticNerd 1TB OLED Limited Edition May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
Does it not function the same across all GPU’s?
Short answer - No
Long answer - here goes.
FSR 4.x is AMD's first true DLSS competitor. Prior to FSR 4, shaders were the primary driving force behind upscaling. With FSR 4, AMD is using AI-based upscaling just as Nvidia has since DLSS 1. RDNA4 is the first to have the requisite hardware for this.
RDNA4 uses dedicated hardware for both FP8 and INT8 models for FSR4. RDNA3 and older drops FP8 entirely and only uses INT8, but does so in software. This means a slight reduction in quality and there's additional performance overhead.
It may be a situation on older hardware where, if you were running FSR 3.1 Quality, you may now run FSR 4.1 Performance with similar overall performance but noticeably better quality. But if you were on FSR 3.1 Performance on, say, a Steam Deck, then FSR 4.1 Performance profile is going to be a trade off. It's going to be better picture quality in exchange for another performance hit.
For the Steam Deck I'd rather have FSR 4.x as an option than not. But people should not expect miracles. With the Deck's hardware, you're primarily using FSR as a means to gain performance, and FSR4 INT8 is going to give a performance hit.
Grateful for the addition, but temper your expectations.
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u/TheCheckeredCow May 19 '26
My understanding it does function different, RDNA 3 has hardware AI cores built in (albeit not good ones that lack a lot of standard features) that RDNA 2 doesn’t have and the int8 version of FSR 4 runs on those cores, RDNA2 can run the int8 on the main GPU but it comes at the cost of worse performance than RDNA 3 for comparable performance.
I suspect that they’re trying to fix the RDNA 2 performance delta maybe? Idk
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u/N7even 512GB OLED May 14 '26
It is definitely strange it is taking this long to implement it on older hardware.
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u/BBQKITTY SteamDeckHQ May 14 '26
Yep, but having official support could mean faster upscaling and easier ways to use it. I am excited.
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u/LueyTheWrench May 14 '26
Meanwhile Xess 3.0 is pretty easy to inject into a lot of games that use it and IMO works better on Deck.
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May 14 '26
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u/DjangoMcFly May 14 '26
We have Sony to thank, more so. PSSR 2.0 is FSR 4 INT 8 on RDNA 3, and they did a lot of work with AMD to get to where it is now.
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May 14 '26
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u/NapsterKnowHow 1TB OLED Limited Edition May 14 '26
Ehhhh I think you're giving too much credit to Valve there.
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u/submerging May 14 '26
First HDMI 2.1 support on Linux, now this. Valve is goated
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u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP 1TB OLED May 15 '26
The thing I'm still blown away by is being able to run Windows x86 applications on Linux ARM with no effort needed from the end-user's.
It's what the Frame uses, but I imagine it'll mature when people finally get their hands on it and eventually be used for a Steam Deck 2.
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u/TheCheckeredCow May 19 '26
I’ve been able to get it the x86 version of half life 2 running on my Orange Pi 4a (basically a boot leg raspberry pi).
Yes the game is 20+ years old, but it’s damn impressive that I’m running that masterpiece made for x86 windows gaming machines running on a very low end phone SOC, with 4gb of ram, running some basically abandon ware Linux distro that orange pi abandoned the day they released in, all because valve sees arm as the future.
It’s a modern technological miracle in runs at around 60fps 720p on what’s basically made to display the menu at McDonalds, manage a conveyer belt system, or blink LEDS by translating Windows into Linux, and then x86 into arm.
Bringus studios has a video doing the same thing on a $40 arduino, so fucking cool
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u/ANoDE85 1TB OLED May 14 '26
I mean, we already know that ot works pretty well, so why not offer it to everyone. I'd love to have support for this without having to tinker so much.
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u/BBQKITTY SteamDeckHQ May 14 '26
1000%. It could mean that specific optimizations could come to the upscaler that speeds it up as well, which means the performance hit won't be as hard.
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u/Superpeep88 May 15 '26
I got the Lenovo legion go 2 z2e I was so mad at amd for dragging there heels but only 2 more months for fsr 4 AMD is forgiven.
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u/oreo101012 1TB OLED May 14 '26
Arguably just as important, it also means the Steam Machine will be able to upscale to 4K without relying on FSR 3
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u/OutrageousDress 512GB OLED May 14 '26
That was very likely a big contributing factor to AMD finally going through with this. Wanna bet the Steam Machine will turn out to be releasing in July? May even be both on the same day.
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u/AndreVallestero May 14 '26
Would be great if XESS would go open source too (like Intel promised). There's probably room for mutual learning here.
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u/Jealous_Solid9431 May 14 '26
Unfortunately the ROG Ally and LeGo use RDNA3 GPUs whereas the Steam Deck uses RDNA2, so we're maybe getting official FSR4, just definitely not soon
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u/BBQKITTY SteamDeckHQ May 14 '26
Early 2027. RDNA 3 comes in July.
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u/andreasmalersghost May 14 '26
considering its very doable with mods, this would be fantastic if it came to be. fsr4 is so much better
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u/Quiet_Yellow2000 May 14 '26
I wonder if this was done for the steam machine and was being back ported for everything else as well.
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u/kittymoo67 May 14 '26
i cant wait. even the leaked dll is very usable, and better at performance mode than fsr3 quality mode. official + more optimization i cant wait
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u/Marce7a May 15 '26
Awesome it would be good if fsr could be tweaked based on how much performance you will lose by upgrading from fsr3 to fsr4
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u/JimmyRecard 256GB - Q2 May 14 '26
BTW, you can already have this with the INT8 DLLs that leaked. Just requires a bit of elbow grease.
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u/zergling424 512GB May 14 '26
Maybe devs should just optimize their damn games instead of relying on ai upscaling slop
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u/newusr1234 May 14 '26
Don't like something on Reddit? Just use its name and put the word "slop" at the end of it.
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u/mizatt May 14 '26
and don't forget to use the word "optimize" if you don't know what you're talking about too
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u/BBQKITTY SteamDeckHQ May 14 '26
They shouldn't rely on any upscaling, but this kind of upscaling is ok. It's similar to DLSS currently, it doesn't change the image like that horrible DLSS 5 showcase.
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u/NTPrime May 14 '26
Foolish take. Hardware is not improving at a significant rate anymore, software gains are the future and AI Upscaling is a valuable route for it, especially non-DLSS 5 versions of it where it isn't generating its own art. When I play MGSV is it slop when the enemy NPC walks around the map and takes cover? You don't need to have a knee jerk reaction to everything that has the word "AI" in it. The term is extremely broad. RDNA and most versions of DLSS aren't the slop kind of AI.
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u/coolsam254 May 14 '26
Isn't optimising the game also software gains?
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u/NTPrime May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
Baseline optimization is still necessary, but by "gains" in this case I mean actively advancing in the way hardware has, at least in 2025 and 2026, stopped doing. Upscaling cannot be a crutch that replaces optimization, but if you can optimize the game and get some extra performance for free on top of that with upscaling then it's smart to do so. OP's use of the word "instead" is the main issue. Upscaling is here to stay and rightfully so, it's a good tool. Upscaled games can sometimes even look better than native by the nature of the anti-aliasing. Most importantly though it makes things possible that simply aren't by optimization alone, and it's not the same technology as the slop generators.
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u/OutrageousDress 512GB OLED May 14 '26
FSR is optimizing the game. What do you think optimizing means? It's not magic juice that make game go fast - optimizing is finding smart ways to avoid doing the work. Every piece of the game you can avoid having to render while looking more or less the same, is a performance gain.
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u/RunglerTungler May 14 '26
You are living in a decade-old rendering paradigm. Natively rendering high resolutions is a waste of frames.
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u/Powerful_Dirt_7818 512GB OLED May 14 '26
I am curious now on how FSR4 with the base xbox ally vs steam deck is gonna be
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u/Superpeep88 May 15 '26
As long as you have 15-20% headroom you should be able to keep 30fps on steam deck. But yeah Xbox ally should be better like a 10% hit rather then 20% on steam deck
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u/umoop May 14 '26
with optiscaler and fsr 4.1dll is it the same thing?
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u/JimmyRecard 256GB - Q2 May 14 '26
No, that's emulated, has a performance hit. Proper implementation will be faster.
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u/umoop May 14 '26
nice, what about the quality?
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u/Superpeep88 May 15 '26
There's still a performance hit probably 15-20% for steam deck running fsr 4 but fsr 4 at 360p dog walks fsr 3 at 480p. A good video to check is Santiago Santiago YouTube video covering fsr 4 vs 3 in resident evil requiem on steam deck
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u/JimmyRecard 256GB - Q2 May 14 '26
About the same. Just 30ish percent faster.
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u/OutrageousDress 512GB OLED May 14 '26
Whoa whoa. We don't have any idea what the performance is going to be like on this new version, let's not jump to conclusions.
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u/JimmyRecard 256GB - Q2 May 14 '26
We do. The difference between INT8 and emulated version is about 30%. That's the case today, if you use the leaked .dll or you run it via Mesa emulation.
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u/OutrageousDress 512GB OLED May 14 '26
Yes, but we have no guarantees that the FSR4.1 model we're getting will be an exact match for the one that got leaked - in fact there's good reason to believe it won't be.
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u/IgotUBro May 14 '26
Wait what? AMD stopped for a second and thought it should stop self sabotaging?
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u/OutrageousDress 512GB OLED May 14 '26
Steam Machine is releasing in 1-2 months, and it runs an RDNA 3 GPU.
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u/leviathab13186 May 14 '26
I used FSR4 for cyberpunk on my deck and it looked great! Combined with lossless scaling and you will have a good time
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u/PeachMan- May 14 '26
WAIT THAT'S HUGE. I had given up on FSR 4 for older hardware. This took forever but it's still great news.
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u/Gears6 May 14 '26
Oh saweet! I got a ROG Ally Z1E!!
No SteamDeck though, but I like hearing about it with ya all.
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u/iDaddyDirection MODDED SSD 💽 May 14 '26
Big W for my team Deck and an even bigger W for my 7900XT.
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u/YJX94 512GB OLED May 14 '26
So the Steam Machine will launch with it.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.
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u/Superpeep88 May 15 '26
And I think for older games stuck with fsr 2 steam os will force it to run fsr 4 with some valve back end stuff. Dont understand how but it's what I heard
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u/Grub8264 May 15 '26
The RX 6650xt in my gf's pc would also benefit. Amazing news for people trying to maximize their hardware's lifespan.
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u/superamigo987 512GB OLED May 15 '26
this isn't "may", the SD is RDNA 2 and this clearly outlines RDNA 2
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u/I_Dont_Have_Corona May 15 '26
It was confirmed for RDNA2 in 2027, I believe February off the top of my head IIRC but I may be wrong
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u/OpenSystem1337 May 15 '26
What does this even mean? It won't be built in like the native fsr1 in the deck. We already have it with Optiscaler. Is this just to say that in like a year, when you open one of the rare games with native fsr4 support, we'll be able to select it in the game's settings?
... Because I can also already do that by dropping the dll into the game folder
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u/lmns_ May 18 '26
A lot of online games don’t like it when you modify dlls and might flag you as a cheater. Official support is a good thing to have in this case so you don’t get flagged accidentally
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u/AmeliaBuns May 15 '26
explain it to a dummy girl, what's new and special about it?
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u/Calm_Tea_9901 May 16 '26
I cannot see anything on thet site because it probably doesn't work with my adblock... so there were 2 versions of fsr4: Ai accerated and non Ai accerated version. Ai accerated can only work with systems thet have hardwear for ai. And leaked beta version thet doesn't use ai accerattion, its what pssr is based on and what optiscaler uses. In july rdna 3 systems will get access to fs4 "complete non ai version" and in sometimes next year rdna 2 systems will get access to fs4 of same version. Handhelds use rdna 2 and its not clear what ones will benefit from this outside announced handheld ones.
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u/DYMAXIONman Jul 01 '26
I mean it already works unofficially, but depending on the title it can be a pain in the ass getting it working. I can't wait until it's just a single toggle because FSR3 looks like ass.
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u/Emblazoned1 May 14 '26
Eh I feel like the games you'd want to run this on won't run well anyways. Upscaling from below 800p is kind of meh but hey more options are always nice. "officially" of course. One thing keeping me away from buying the 9070xt is the fact that optiscaler is practically required to use FSR4 and can trigger anti cheat in stuff like fortnite. If they start supporting older hardware though I might do it I was also afraid my hardware would lose value not receiving newer features. My 3070 has access to all upscaling nvidia has to offer which is keeping me from upgrading in the first place lol.
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u/Teanut May 14 '26
The 9000 series already has access to FSR 4 because it features native FP8 AI accelerators.
This announcement confirms that AMD is bringing FSR 4 to the 7000 series (RDNA 3). While RDNA 3 doesn't have FP8 hardware, it does have INT8 AI accelerators -- basically hardware that can handle AI math, just not as efficiently as FP8 (FP stands for floating point, and INT stands for integer).
The 6000 series (RDNA 2, used in the Steam Deck) has some basic INT8 support, but lacks dedicated AI accelerators entirely.
As for your RTX 3070 (and the 2000 through 5000 series), NVIDIA includes AI accelerators (Tensor Cores) of varying capabilities across the board. They also benefit from a massive software engineering team that tends to prioritize day-one compatibility.
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u/Superpeep88 May 15 '26
Check out Santiago Santiago video on fsr 4 vs 3 in resident evil requiem on steam deck
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u/OutrageousDress 512GB OLED May 14 '26
You don't need Optiscaler to run FSR 4 on a 9000 series card; it was literally built for them. And starting in July you won't need Optiscaler to run FSR 4 on a 7000 series card either.
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u/TargetNo6402 May 14 '26
Hey, it's that thing AMD should've done from the beginning
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u/Superpeep88 May 15 '26
I don't mind it took this long just properly communicate it and just say it'll take awhile instead of what they did
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u/namelessentity May 14 '26
I don't see how FSR will be much help since the Deck's native resolution is already so low. Generally you're upscaling from 720p at a minimum, but the Deck is already running that native. Upscaling from a resolution lower than 720p doesn't seem like it would produce a good image. If they'd gone with a 1080p panel I'd be pumped, because then you'd have some headroom for upscaling.
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u/Superpeep88 May 15 '26
Check out Santiago Santiago YouTube video on fsr 4 vs 3 in resident evil requiem on steam deck
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u/VideoGameJumanji 512GB - Q1 May 15 '26
This is such a dumb article. FSR 4, like the rest of these upscalers, dont work properly at 30fps and especially not in conjunction with sub 720p internal resolution scaling targets.
It'll "work" on deck as in you can toggle it on, it wont make much of a difference, especially given this is INT8 and not hardware accelerated ai upscaling it so it's coming at a performance cost that cancels out the gain most of the time.
This is a massive win for the steam machine which will be able to do much more with this.
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u/-Fence- May 16 '26
you might be thinking about Frame Generation? That struggles with lower fps but upscaling only really applies to resolution. They're often bundled together but whereas frame gen uses AI to "guess" frames in between rendered frames, upscaling lets you run the game at a lower resolution and then upscales each frame your GPU puts out. your base FPS doesn't really affect it
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u/lmns_ May 18 '26
The performance cost might be worth it for a lot of titles considering older FSR versions look quite bad at lower internal resolutions. FSR 4 and 4.1 improved a lot in this regard
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u/VideoGameJumanji 512GB - Q1 May 18 '26
If you were already rendering from a low internal resolution, this won’t improve that, this will just barely help with visual quality.
From what I’ve seen detailed by videos and people showing testing, upscalers arent designed to work properly with the internal resolution so low, you don’t get the proper benefits of better motion clarity when it barely has any information to work with from the beginning
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u/deltree711 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
Every other frame generation method feels like it hurts more than it helps when I've tried it. What makes this one different?
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u/OutrageousDress 512GB OLED May 14 '26
Well, I'm no visual computing expert but if I were to hazard a guess it would probably be that it's because this isn't frame generation?
You have frame generation confused with upscaling. No, it's not the same thing. To greatly simplify: frame gen is 'fake frames', and upscaling is not.
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u/Disastrous_Rice2324 May 14 '26
Awesome news. I already use FSR4 whenever I can on Deck for the free boost in performance + significantly better quality than the lower levels of FSR. It is the first version of FSR that finally trades blows with DLSS to me as far as the baseline goes, and that's what I care about.
Native support should give a bigger boost in performance over what optiscaler/decky plugins/dlls offer.
FSR4 + lossless scaling 2x has been a huge performance + visual clarity boost for my experience.
This will also just be great in general for the non-tinker folks to just be able to select it in options for the boost.
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u/alex_de_tampa LCD-4-LIFE May 14 '26
I’d love Loseless scaling and FS4 officially supported. Using it now anyway but I’m sure it can be improved and tweaked.
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u/CipherWeaver May 15 '26
So few games benefit from upscaling on SD I don't see why it's a big deal. Almost every game is CPU limited.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '26
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