AMD’s New Gaming Upscaler Is Here to Knock Nvidia Off Its Throne

AMD, eschewing a number in favor of an esoteric moniker, is now positioning the new version of its upscaling tech, dubbed “Redstone,†as a true competitor to Nvidia’s DLSS (deep learning super sampling) software suite. You’ll need the latest AMD GPUs to get most of these updated features, but even if you don’t game on PC, you should be paying attention. This kind of software will inevitably change how we experience gaming on consoles and beyond.

The reason why most of your games remain playable at 4K resolutions is because of AI. Specifically, AI upscaling technology takes frames rendered at a lower resolution and bumps them up to a higher resolution, all while keeping the enhanced performance. That’s the simplified explanation of how this works. There are a multitude of other software working in tandem with upscalers to make these games look better without relying solely on native GPUs. “Redstone†is merely the barn where all these various software enhancements now roost.

What does ‘Redstone’ even do?

But upscaling may not be enough to give some games the true frame rate boost that some players demand. To that end, AMD is now pushing a new machine learning-powered version of frame generation. Yes, that’s another version of the infamous “fake frames.†The software uses an AI pipeline to insert frames in between each rendered frame, artificially increasing frame rates in games. AMD’s older version of FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) 3.1 and later also included a frame generation feature. The Redstone update promises to provide better visuals and lower latency for each generated frame. For instance, AMD showed a scene from F1 24, where the shadows produced odd flickering on the old version. The Redstone frame gen appeared much smoother.

Nvidia’s DLSS 4 was the first to make multi-frame generation technology popular. Though “popular†may be an incongruous word considering many PC gamers didn’t appreciate Nvidia’s focus on upscaling software to make up for less-stellar performance boosts from the RTX 40-series GPUs to the RTX 50-series. Multi-frame generation, also called frame interpolation, is also a major feature of the upcoming XeSS 2 update. However, compared to AMD and Nvidia’s options, Intel’s version will be supported on whatever hardware you’re using.

It’s why benchmarking games using frame generation becomes more awkward than it needs to be. AMD promises that with frame generation and Redstone on “performance†settings—which means it’s upscaling from a low resolution up to 4K—you can go from 23 fps in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 to 109 fps. Of course, AMD recommends users already have at least 60 fps after upscaling to make sure there aren’t any odd artifacts. So all this technology does is take already playable games and push them to the max of what they can do.

In addition to the enhancements to AMD’s FSR upscaler, the chipmaker is also pushing extra features like “Radiance Caching,†which is supposed to enhance ray tracing performance in supported games by using a machine learning model. Ray tracing features enhance lighting for scenes in games, making them reflect off surfaces more realistically. The new “Ray Regeneration†feature works in tandem to restore details in scenes after you apply ray-traced effects. To enable these features, users need to dig into their AMD Software app on a per-game basis. You also need to enable the FSR 4 features within each title.

FSR AI upscaling could come to consoles

Some of these Redstone-specific features are available natively in a little more than 200 PC games, like Warhammer 40K: Darktide and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 (those games are the only ones to feature Radiance Caching and Ray Regeneration, respectively). That number is comparable to Nvidia’s DLSS 4, with around 175 supported games going back to August. AMD promised Redstone will be inside more games coming in 2026. Just how many will depend on how hard AMD can lean on publishers to include this tech.

AMD previously announced its plans for an upgraded FSR at Computex back in August. The update is locked to the current RDNA 4-based GPUs, specifically the Radeon RX 9000 series GPUs such as the RX 9070 and the RX 9070 XT. There’s a reason you should care even if you’re a console gamer. PlayStation worked with AMD on crafting FSR 4, which was released back in March. Leaks show Sony’s gaming brand is prepping an update to its PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) that could enable better performance on PS5 Pro. The company has already stated it was working to get FSR 4 onto the console as well, though that will prove a challenge considering the original PS5 is using older RDNA 2 microarchitecture.

Instead, Redstone could prove a milestone for the rumored PlayStation 6. Upscaling technology benefits lower-end systems much more than top-end gaming hardware. That means future handhelds, whether PC or PlayStation, would benefit even more from RDNA 4-based internals. Either way, your next gaming system could be more reliant on software than any of its novel hardware.