AMD's FidelityFX SuperResolution Coming to Xbox Series X|S

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft is interested in enabling AMD's performance-enhancing FidelityFX SuperResolution technology on its latest Xbox Series X|S consoles. AMD's FidelityFX SuperResolution is a resolution upscaling technology designed to improve performance in games while offering a higher level of quality that's close to high resolutions (e.g., 2560×1440, 3840×2160, etc.).

"At Xbox, we are excited by the potential of AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution technology as another great method for developers to increase framerates and resolution," a Microsoft spokesperson told IGN . "We will have more to share on this soon."

The technology offers four modes on the PC: ultra-quality, quality, balanced, and performance. AMD claims that even the ultra-quality mode renders frames in a close-to-native resolution (e.g., 4K) and can improve performance by around 60% in optimized cases. Other modes can increase performance even more, but game developers have to implement the tech into their game engines.

(Image credit: AMD)

Game consoles have fixed hardware configurations, so improving image quality without a performance drop, or improving performance without image quality degradation, is just what the doctor ordered. That's why it is understandable that Microsoft, whose Xbox Series X|S consoles are powered by AMD's RDNA 2 architecture, is so eager to support it.

It remains to be seen is whether Sony's PlayStation 5, which also uses an RDNA 2-powered GPU, will also support the technology.

Earlier this year, AMD made select capabilities of its FidelityFX package available to Microsoft Xbox Series X|S developers, like FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS) , Variable Shading , and ray-traced shadow Denoiser technologies. Those features are already supported in numerous PC games, but there's no word about when we can expect to see the first titles that support SuperResolution.