AMD transforms FSR 4 with its “Redstone” update

AMD’s ready to battle Nvidia in the path tracing arena

At Computex, AMD has unveiled its “Redstone” update for FSR 4 that would transform how AMD does ray tracing. With this update, AMD aims to bring itself in line with Nvidia when it comes to path tracing. In other words, AMD finally has a response to Nvidia’s biggest technological achievements.

Even with the birth of hardware-accelerated ray tracing, path tracing in games remains slow. Brute force path tracing isn’t viable, and game/hardware developers need clever solutions to get the most out of today’s graphics cards.

With FSR 4 “Redstone,” AMD is making path tracing more efficient. Using the company’s latest AI innovations, path-traced games will become viable on Radeon RDNA 4 hardware.

AMD FSR 4 Redstone – Off VS On!

Without AMD’s AI enhancements, path tracing can look ugly. Without denoising, images can look grainy and lack detail. Tracing more rays can combat this, but that requires a monumental leap in raw ray tracing power. Instead of waiting for future generations of GPU hardware, AMD is using AI to achieve higher levels of detail.

Step 1 of AMD’s FSR “Redstone” transformation is the addition of “Neural Radiance Caching,” which predicts and stores indirect lighting data. This technique allows AMD to artificially increase its ray counts while retaining accuracy.

Step 2: Ray Regeneration. This technology is AMD’s answer to Nvidia DLSS Ray Reconstruction. It uses a trained neural network that acts as a smart denoising solution. Unlike traditional denoisers, it can accurately generate pixels using data that traditional techniques would discard. This creates more accurate final images and allows for sharper details without higher ray counts.

AMD’s FSR 4 is getting an upgrade

Finally, we have AMD’s standard FSR 4 upscaling and frame generation techniques. With “Redstone” AMD is promising an “enhanced ML model” that can predict and reconstruct frames at higher resolutions. Does this mean AMD’s FSR 4 AI upscaling technology will soon be enhanced with a new AI model? That’s uncertain. AMD kinda glossed over that aspect at Computex, though we should hear more about “Redstone” later this year.

Next, AMD has confirmed that FSR 4 Frame Generation will soon have a new “ML Model” version that delivers higher-quality results than AMD’s existing non-ML Frame Generation solution. This will allow users of compatible GPUs to achieve higher levels of image quality using Frame Generation. While Nvidia has focused on quantity with DLSS Multi-Frame Generation, AMD has focused on quality.

With “Redstone,” AMD now has answers to Nvidia’s most advanced ray tracing technologies. These techniques should enhance the quality of future games and give more reasons for developers to invest in advanced ray tracing in their games.

Note that AMD has unveiled FSR 4 Redstone, but has not released it. AMD plans to release FSR 4 “Redstone” later this year. Until then, Nvidia remains ahead of AMD when it comes to advanced ray tracing/path tracing.

You can join the discussion on AMD’s “FSR 4 Redstone” technology on the OC3D Forums.