Friday, July 12th 2024
Arm Unveils "Accuracy Super Resolution" Based on AMD FSR 2
In a community blog post, Arm has announced its new Accuracy Super Resolution (ASR) upscaling technology. This open-source solution aims to transform mobile gaming by offering best-in-class upscaling capabilities for smartphones and tablets. Arm ASR addresses a critical challenge in mobile gaming: delivering high-quality graphics while managing power consumption and heat generation. By rendering games at lower resolutions and then intelligently upscaling them, Arm ASR promises to significantly boost performance without sacrificing visual quality. The technology builds upon AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 (FSR 2) and adapts it specifically for mobile devices. Arm ASR utilizes temporal upscaling, which combines information from multiple frames to produce higher-quality images from lower-resolution inputs. Even though temporal upscaling is more complicated to implement than spatial frame-by-frame upscaling, it delivers better results and gives developers more freedom.
This approach allows for more ambitious graphics while maintaining smooth gameplay. In benchmark tests using a complex scene, Arm demonstrated impressive results. Devices featuring the Arm Immortalis-G720 GPU showed substantial framerate improvements when using Arm ASR compared to native resolution rendering and Qualcomm's Game Super Resolution (GSR). Moreover, the technology helped maintain stable temperatures, preventing thermal throttling that can compromise user experience. Collaboration with MediaTek revealed significant power savings when using Arm ASR on a Dimensity 9300 handset. This translates to extended battery life for mobile gamers, addressing key concerns. Arm is releasing ASR under an MIT open-source license, encouraging widespread adoption and experimentation among developers. Below you can see the comparison of various upscalers.
Here are the comparisons between quality, performance, and balanced mode.
Source:
Arm
This approach allows for more ambitious graphics while maintaining smooth gameplay. In benchmark tests using a complex scene, Arm demonstrated impressive results. Devices featuring the Arm Immortalis-G720 GPU showed substantial framerate improvements when using Arm ASR compared to native resolution rendering and Qualcomm's Game Super Resolution (GSR). Moreover, the technology helped maintain stable temperatures, preventing thermal throttling that can compromise user experience. Collaboration with MediaTek revealed significant power savings when using Arm ASR on a Dimensity 9300 handset. This translates to extended battery life for mobile gamers, addressing key concerns. Arm is releasing ASR under an MIT open-source license, encouraging widespread adoption and experimentation among developers. Below you can see the comparison of various upscalers.
36 Comments on Arm Unveils "Accuracy Super Resolution" Based on AMD FSR 2
Maybe those smudges are not noticeable on a phone screen, but the tech itself is nothing to write home about.
When I put a native older game side by side with newer engines/games that upscale stuff I feel much better looking at the native image that has no artifacts whatsoever. Just as little as I like any kind of blur/motion blur/vignetting/bokeh bullshit, I think I'm also quite sensitive to any pixels travelling along with the image. I pick them up immediately and immersion gets broken. OTOH I'm actually fine looking at jaggies, they're predictable, expected, and respond normally to movement.
Let's be real, its quite a brain struggle to resolve any kind of facial hair on that ARM-ASR version of the image here. That's exactly what happens IRL. The image feels unnatural, fake, and always slightly washed out.
Hope all these FSR 2.0 based solutions that come out from left and right get combined to one open source solution that works in everything. 3D, 2D, video, low power consumption modes for mobiles etc. .
I think a lot of people who dismiss it have good hardware, which is good for them, but far, far from the norm for the overwhelming majority of people everywhere. I for one think it's neat that someone out there with a GTX 1060 and who has been abandoned by Nvidia can use an AMD technology to get some more life out of their gpu, and that's NEVER a bad thing.....especially if FSR means the difference between having the ability to play a game at a playable framerate versus not, in those situations I think the user is fine with a little "blurriness"
How is FSR2 at 1.5x upscaling SLOWER than native?!
There's no way upscaling from 960p is 4% slower than natively rendering at 1440p!
There could be some truth in this. Probably an upscaled image from a 720p displayed on a 1080p monitor to be somewhat better than displaying 720p resolution on the same monitor without any upscaling algorithm messing with the final image. And I am talking about FSR here, not DLSS that does have some advantages.
In the end the typical user might not know how to change a resolution or might not want to change the resolution. There are psychological reasons. Me, about 10-12? years ago I was playing Borderlands on a 32'' 1080p TV with the resolution set at 720p, 30-40fps and enjoying it(9800GT or HD4870 main + GT620 I think for the physx). Others wouldn't enjoy it. Even the thought that the resolution is lower than what the monitor can provide, could lead them to order a much faster GPU/CPU/system.
You see FSR as the "illusion" of having quality and resolution, so you prefer to not use it but lower settings. That's what YOU prefer, not what everyone will use. Having the option to have both, higher resolution and higher settings is what makes people enable solutions like FSR. Even if the quality of these solutions are not up to your standards. Even if they are "illusions" and not "solutions".
Cause if you have to with fight with father time to create realistic/better video quality, then perhaps you should rethink your strategy...
I wonder if anyone's tried to analyze if shimmer problems of FSR are more pronounced or less pronounced depending on the color depth involved. That's something I'd be rather curious to see looked at. I know with Valheim at higher PPI the pixelated textures don't look as bad like on a Samsung Galaxy S20 you can't even tell the textures were pixelated due to the PPI being a huge amount higher.
This tech would also be useful on the ghetto Chromebooks out there too; allowing their limited SoCs to at least pump up an artificially better-looking image while trying to run an Android game on them.
Not that AMD is fast, but at least you can just toss it in there.