AMD has launched its latest iteration of FidelityFX Super Resolution technology, now rebranded simply as FSR with the “Redstone” suffix. This update combines new and existing innovations aimed at enhancing image quality, improving frame generation via machine learning, and introducing ray regeneration to boost ray tracing performance. Although some features are not entirely new, the rebranding combined with the additions brings fresh capabilities, particularly for AMD’s latest RX 9000 series GPUs.
Understanding FSR Redstone and Its Components
FSR Redstone represents the next step in AMD’s upscaling and frame generation technology stack. The core offerings include:
- Machine Learning-Based Frame Generation: The new model replaces earlier analytic methods, enabling smoother motion by predicting intermediate frames based on previous and current frames, depth, and motion vectors.
- Ray Regeneration: This feature uses a neural network denoiser to clean up noisy and sparse ray tracing data, enhancing reflections, lighting stability, and reducing artifacts. Unlike traditional methods requiring a high number of rays per pixel, ray regeneration infers clean visuals with fewer rays.
- FSR Upscaling: Retained from previous versions but now integrated within the Redstone umbrella for consistency.
- Future Radiance Caching: Announced for 2026, this machine learning-based method aims to intelligently cache light interaction data to reduce ray tracing computational load further.
While existing RDNA architectures can run earlier FSR versions, these latest ML-powered features are officially supported only on RX 9000 series GPUs as of launch.
Image Quality and Frame Generation Comparisons
Tests in games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 showcase FSR Redstone’s ability to deliver image quality competitive with NVIDIA’s DLSS Frame Generation. In side-by-side comparisons, Redstone frame generation produces smoother motion with fewer ghosting artifacts than its predecessor, FSR 3.1, although some issues with doubling and slight blurring remain.
Specifically, ray regeneration clearly enhances ray-traced reflections and surface details, such as water and glossy surfaces, providing sharper and cleaner visuals than when ray regeneration is disabled. This is notably demonstrated in Black Ops 7 multiplayer benchmarks, despite the community’s lukewarm reception of using this technology in such competitive environments.
Marvel Rivals tests reveal subtler differences between FSR 3.1 and Redstone frame gen models, with Redstone slightly reducing shadow jitter and some visual distortion in fast motion, indicating a modest improvement in motion stability.
Latency Benchmarks and Performance Impact
While frame generation smooths frame output and boosts frame rates, it does introduce latency overhead. In Marvel Rivals, base latency sits around 15.7 ms end-to-end without frame generation, but enabling Redstone frame generation increases this latency by approximately 22% to around 20 ms. Similar latency trends occur in Cyberpunk 2077, with frame generation pushing latency from roughly 34 ms to about 40 ms or higher, hurting responsiveness and consistency.
AMD’s latency reducing features such as Anti-Lag show minimal effect when frame generation is activated, suggesting that frame generation’s computational load offsets latency optimizations. Overall, while latency increases noticeably with frame generation, the tradeoff is smoother motion and significantly higher effective frame rates.
Performance Gains and Future Outlook
FSR Redstone offers impressive performance uplifts, often in the range of 3.3x on high-demand ray-traced titles at 4K resolution. For example, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 benefits from a leap from 23 FPS native ray-traced rendering to over 100 FPS when using the full Redstone suite of features. This marks a considerable boost for gamers looking for RT visuals with playable frame rates on AMD hardware.
While the Redstone launch reveals some rough edges and stability issues, ongoing updates and developer deployment of Redstone SDK tools are expected to refine the experience. The awaited integration of radiance caching in coming years promises further efficiency improvements in ray tracing.
In summary, AMD FSR Redstone is a significant evolutionary step in AMD’s gaming graphics technology, blending machine learning advances to enhance frame generation and ray tracing. Despite some latency tradeoffs and mixed initial reception, the technology holds potential to broaden ray tracing accessibility and elevate visual fidelity on supported GPUs.
