Arm Unveils "Accuracy Super Resolution" Based on AMD FSR 2

[AleksandarK]

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.


View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[bug]

When official images showcasing the tech are nothing but a smudge-fest, I have zero expectations from the tech.
Maybe those smudges are not noticeable on a phone screen, but the tech itself is nothing to write home about.

 

[Vayra86]

Still rather unconvinced this whole thing is going places. I mean sure, if you want to accept a substantial quality hit for better FPS, its nice. But do you? More often than not, I'm very comfy looking at native. Its a bit of a fallacy to say 'games can look better now' when in fact the whole image lost detail. So you can make more complex images now, but the overall picture lacks fidelity. Yay? I think that idea only flies with a much higher resolution and screen - and accompanying processing power.

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.

 

[john_]

Many will accuse FSR of being inferior quality to DLSS and might be right, but at least it gives the option to ALL gamers to get higher frame rates in games. With Nvidia having the performance advantage and DLSS on top of that, imagine a world where DLSS would have been the only option.
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. .

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

Many will accuse FSR of being inferior quality to DLSS and might be right, but at least it gives the option to ALL gamers to get higher frame rates in games. With Nvidia having the performance advantage and DLSS on top of that, imagine a world where DLSS would have been the only option.
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. .

Agreed. At the end of the day, the people who badmouth FSR are badmouthing something that is OPEN SOURCE and FREE for all and now it's being used on ARM devices. I for one am thankful for anything that is free to use in this climate or corporate price gouging.

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"

 

[john_]

I think a lot of people who dismiss it have good hardware

Many of them also have smartphones and while it will be called ASR or MetalFX upscaling, so they can pretend it is something else, more advanced, in the end in it's core it will be FSR.

 

[Chrispy_]

Something very fishy with that last bar graph:

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!

 

[TumbleGeorge]

I definitely don't want fake frames and fake resolutions. No matter if they are open source or closed source. I urge companies to pick up their trash and dispose of it safely, in the appropriate waste bin.

 

[bug]

Many will accuse FSR of being inferior quality to DLSS and might be right, but at least it gives the option to ALL gamers to get higher frame rates in games. With Nvidia having the performance advantage and DLSS on top of that, imagine a world where DLSS would have been the only option.
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. .

The problem is, if the upscaler isn't really good, you're better off lowering the settings yourself. You can enhance performance and control the IQ sacrifices you're willing to accept that way.

 

[john_]

The problem is, if the upscaler isn't really good, you're better off lowering the settings yourself. You can enhance performance and control the IQ sacrifices you're willing to accept that way.

It could be just marketing. People without any technical knowledge could think that upscaling takes a 720p resolution image and creates a REAL 1080p image. Just remembering those TV shows where they can enhance a low quality pixelated image to a high resolution incredibly detailed image. If viewers of those Tv shows can believe this, then they can surely believe that upscaling will offer them trully higher resolution, perfectly detailed image.

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.

 

[bug]

It could be just marketing. People without any technical knowledge could think that upscaling takes a 720p resolution image and creates a REAL 1080p image. Just remembering those TV shows where they can enhance a low quality pixelated image to a high resolution incredibly detailed image. If viewers of those Tv shows can believe this, then they can surely believe that upscaling will offer them trully higher resolution, perfectly detailed image.

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.

This has literally nothing to do with what I said. I was talking about adjusting the quality settings in a game, you're talking about changing resolutions.

 

[john_]

This has literally nothing to do with what I said. I was talking about adjusting the quality settings in a game, you're talking about changing resolutions.

Adjusting settings and changing resolution are two ways to get better framerates. You can lower resolution and keep some settings on higher quality, or lower the quality of some settings and keep the higher resolution. It's literally related with what you said. Upscaling is a solution or the illusion that someone can have both higher quality settings and higher resolution enabled while getting acceptable framerates.

 

[bug]

Adjusting settings and changing resolution are two ways to get better framerates. You can lower resolution and keep some settings on higher quality, or lower the quality of some settings and keep the higher resolution. It's literally related with what you said. Upscaling is a solution or the illusion that someone can have both higher quality settings and higher resolution enabled while getting acceptable framerates.

Let me try this again: if you just have to use a given resolution, that your GPU can't max out, you can upscale or you can tinker with the game settings. Instead of a subpar upscaler (like this one right here), I'd rather go the settings route.

 

[john_]

Let me try this again: if you just have to use a given resolution, that your GPU can't max out, you can upscale or you can tinker with the game settings. Instead of a subpar upscaler (like this one right here), I'd rather go the settings route.

No need to explain what you said again. I know what you meant from your first post, I am just saying that your way is not the only way. The opposite solution is where someone sacrifices resolution to keep game settings at maximum. Upscaling is the solution, or illusion, that you can have both. Can't explain it further than that. Hope you understand what i mean.

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".

 

[Vya Domus]

Most games run sub native on mobile devices anyway, who cares if they're upscaled.

 

[theouto]

"Accuracy" "super" "resolution"

 

[bonehead123]

Arm ASR utilizes temporal upscaling

Does this mean that they are participating in the Temporal Cold War, hahahaha

Cause if you have to with fight with father time to create realistic/better video quality, then perhaps you should rethink your strategy...

 

[Franzen4Real]

Still rather unconvinced this whole thing is going places. I mean sure, if you want to accept a substantial quality hit for better FPS, its nice. But do you?

I was reading as more of-- it is increasing performance at the same power draw, but they are shooting for lower thermals and longer battery life, so FSR would be used to maintain the same performance at lower heat/power draw.

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.

View attachment 354887

I also agree with you here that it is much worse, but, we are looking at an ultra zoomed still shot. What does the facial hair look like zoomed out to the actual view, on a 5" screen at arms length, and in motion? At that point I think the question becomes, is it even perceivable enough to justify not using it to extend the battery life/heat savings? In the case of a larger tablet, maybe there is more of an argument against using it, but I still come back to the fact that these are mobile games. Quite different graphical expectations from that targeted audience compared to what desktop enthusiasts have.

 

[TheDeeGee]

Why on earth would you base anything of FSR...

 

[InVasMani]

I was reading as more of-- it is increasing performance at the same power draw, but they are shooting for lower thermals and longer battery life, so FSR would be used to maintain the same performance at lower heat/power draw.



I also agree with you here that it is much worse, but, we are looking at an ultra zoomed still shot. What does the facial hair look like zoomed out to the actual view, on a 5" screen at arms length, and in motion? At that point I think the question becomes, is it even perceivable enough to justify not using it to extend the battery life/heat savings? In the case of a larger tablet, maybe there is more of an argument against using it, but I still come back to the fact that these are mobile games. Quite different graphical expectations from that targeted audience compared to what desktop enthusiasts have.

Alongside higher PPI there is a good chance that over time with new display technologies improved color depth quality and just better color reproduction of panel technologies in general is going to benefit FSR's approach to a greater extent than XESS/DLSS that already muddy color details to a larger extent. I guess it doesn't matter though as it's open source and readily available to everyone.

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.

 

[Minus Infinity]

Can't even recall the last time I played a game on my phone. Maybe it was sudoku, can't wait for upscaled version.

 

[TechLurker]

The rare times I play a mobile game while actually mobile (instead of a desktop/laptop version), I don't care much about the graphical quality so much as the battery life. So having better upscalers seem like a reasonable compromise, esp. as screens become more pixel-dense but more energy intensive. I'm not looking for 7900XTX or 5090 levels of quality on a 6" screen technically capable of 4k 60FPS, but I would like my occasional mobile game session to at least look less like smears or pixel blocks when I'm aiming to preserve battery life and running it at lower settings.

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.

 

[qlum]

Something very fishy with that last bar graph:

View attachment 354894

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!

Upscaling itself takes gpu power, on weak mobile gpu's this is relevant, games on switch using fsr 2 tend to use a sinplified version for that reason. I will say they probably took a workload that made the difference more noticable

 

[AusWolf]

Let's be honest - it looks absolutely dogshit. A perfect match for the mobile gaming experience in general, I guess.

 

[Nostras]

On mobile this admittedly makes a lot of sense, the ppi is so stupidly high on most devices you're not even going to be able to tell it's upscaling in the first place.