Gamers enable FSR 4 on RDNA2, prefer image quality despite performance drop

Gamers are experimenting with AMD’s leaked FSR 4 files to run the upscaler on older Radeon RX 6000 (RDNA2) graphics cards. Early reports confirm that while image quality improves compared to FSR 3, the tradeoff comes with a measurable performance hit.

On forums such as Chiphell and Reddit communities, users documented FSR 4 running on GPUs like the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6600. The feature is enabled through modded INT8 DLL files, originally derived from the leaked FSR SDK commits. In Stellar Blade tests, a RX 6800 XT achieved over 110 FPS with FSR 3 Quality mode, but performance dropped to around 100–107 FPS under FSR 4 Quality. That equates to a 10–20% reduction, though players say the improved upscaling makes the loss acceptable in titles already running above 100 FPS. Comparisons with XeSS show AMD’s upscaler holding its ground visually, despite efficiency gaps.

RX 6800 running FSR4, Source: Chiphell

The higher penalty on RDNA2 stems from missing WMMA (Wavefront Matrix Multiply Accumulation) hardware, forcing these GPUs to fall back on less efficient integer or DP4a operations. Officially supported Radeon RX 9000 (RDNA4) cards see only a small hit of 2–4% in FSR 4, while RDNA3 users report around 7–10%.

Apparently running RDNA2 with FSR4 is possible not just on Linux, but also on Windows, but Redditors mention that it requires older 23.9.1 drivers to have better support.

ComputerBase ran some tests on RX 7000 and 9000 series. They confirm the performance penalty on both architectures:

Source: ComputerBase

We have reached out to AMD for an official statement on whether RDNA2 and RDNA3 architectures will eventually receive FSR 4 support through drivers or the upcoming FSR Redstone release. Redstone is said to be designed for broader GPU compatibility, which may explain why AMD has not yet rushed to integrate FSR 4 into older hardware. For now, community mods remain the only option, but demand from users suggests AMD could expand official support in the future.

Source: FSR4 on RDNA2 Guide (Reddit) , FSR3 on RDNA3 Guide (ComputerBase) , Wccftech