A recent technical analysis has uncovered a curious situation in the AMD ecosystem. The RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 architectures appear to show a significant performance decrease when the FSR 4 INT8 feature is enabled, the company's latest development in upscaling techniques. 📉
The drop, which is around ten percent according to initial measurements, equally affects current and previous generations of graphics cards. This presents a technological paradox where a feature designed to improve performance ends up noticeably harming it.
An optimization that de-optimizes, the vicious cycle of technology.
Understanding the Performance Problem
The issue seems to be related to how these architectures handle the INT8 precision operations required by the latest version of FSR. While other similar technologies show improvements, in this specific case the opposite effect occurs.
The practical consequences for users include:
- decrease in frames per second in games
- higher system resource consumption
- less fluid gaming experience
- inefficiency in energy usage
Comparative Analysis Between Architectures
The most surprising aspect of the case is that both generations of RDNA behave similarly, suggesting a design problem at the architectural level. From the 6000 series to the current 7000 series, all share this particularity that sets them apart from the competition.
Among the scenarios where the impact is most evident are:
- 1440p and 4K resolutions with high settings
- games with intensive FSR implementations
- high graphical load situations with RT enabled
- scenes with multiple post-processing effects
Solution Prospects and Alternatives
The technical community expects AMD to address this behavior through driver updates or software revisions. Meanwhile, affected users have the option to use previous versions of FSR or explore other available upscaling technologies.
And so we find that, in the midst of the era of artificial intelligence and advanced rendering, technological progress sometimes takes two steps forward and one step back. Or in this case, ten percent back. The irony of optimizing to the point of de-optimizing. 🔧