(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
AMD's FSR 4 is a very capable upscaling algorithm, but it doesn't beat Nvidia's DLSS 4.5. FSR 4.1, however, might make it more of a toss-up between the two, especially at lower-quality settings, according to a new leak.
The FSR 4.1 DLL is not out yet, but a Guru3D Forum user known as The Creator posted a beta DLL alongside screenshots and performance numbers, and early testing suggests there are significant image-quality improvements, TechSpot reports.
Monster Hunter Wilds, Cyberpunk 2077, Last of Us Part II, and Stellar Blade show FSR 4.1 resolving much more detail than previous versions of FSR did at the same quality settings. It's particularly noticeable with foliage and thinner textures.
In some cases, the quality difference is so dramatic that the Ultra Performance mode can look as good as Quality mode with FSR 4. Better yet, these changes are most apparent at lower resolutions, like 1080p, where this kind of technology is most needed. As much as it's nice to get more FPS at 4K, the majority of gamers are still playing on lower-end cards at 1080p resolution (with a growing contingent of 1440p gamers), so boosting performance and image quality there is much more impactful.
The only downside is that most of these improvements are available only on RX 9000-series graphics cards. Although some Reddit users have managed to get it working on RX 7000 graphics cards like the 7900 XT and 7900XTX, it's much less stable, and performance results aren't guaranteed. There's a lot of bad blood between AMD and the gaming community over this. RX 7000 GPU owners would love to utilize these new algorithms effectively, even if the benefits aren't as great as on newer cards.
While Nvidia's frame generation might be locked to newer cards, its ancient RTX 2000-series can use DLSS 4.5.
If you want to try out the DLL file yourself, proceed with caution. PCMag cannot vouch for the veracity or safety of any files from a random internet forum user. However, if you do, the process is relatively simple to get it working. Download the file, locate the "amdxcffx64.dll" in your System32 folder, and replace it with the one from the downloaded file.