Sony has confirmed that a significantly upgraded version of its PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) AI upscaling technology is on its way to PS5 Pro owners, with the rollout beginning now and a broader system-level update expected in March. For the consumers who paid a premium for Sony's mid-generation hardware refresh, it is welcome news. For PC gamers running AMD's previous-generation Radeon graphics cards, the announcement is a pointed reminder of what they are not getting.
Sony confirmed the upgraded PSSR will be rolling out globally to PS5 Pro players in the coming weeks. PSSR is an AI library that analyses game images pixel by pixel as it upscales them, and it has already been used to boost the effective resolution of more than 50 titles on PS5 Pro. The technology is central to the PS5 Pro's value proposition: it allows games to render internally at lower resolutions, reducing the computational load, while delivering visuals that appear sharper on screen.
The first game to use the new technology is Resident Evil Requiem, which launched alongside the announcement. Capcom highlighted improved handling of fine details such as hair and other intricate textures that can be difficult to upscale cleanly as a direct benefit of the new algorithm. PS5 and PS5 Pro lead architect Mark Cerny had confirmed in July 2025 that Sony was working on a major PSSR update, and had indicated it would arrive in 2026.
A system software update will add an "Enhance PSSR Image Quality" toggle in PS5 Pro settings, which will apply the updated upscaler to any PS5 Pro title that already supports PSSR. That is a meaningful convenience: owners will not need to wait for individual game patches to benefit from the improvement in most titles. Sony has indicated that multiple existing games will upgrade to the improved PSSR in March.
The AMD Connection
The algorithm and neural network underpinning the new PSSR stem from Sony and AMD's Project Amethyst partnership. Through AMD's FSR 4 upscaling technology, PC gamers have already seen the benefits of that collaboration, and Sony says the updated PSSR delivers the very latest of that co-developed technology with a further six months of refinement. In other words, PSSR and FSR 4 share a common lineage, even if they are not identical implementations.
This is where the story becomes uncomfortable for AMD. FSR 4 upscaling is only officially supported on AMD's latest Radeon RX 9000 series GPUs, which use the RDNA 4 architecture. These GPUs launched about a year ago, and FSR 4 debuted alongside the hardware as a key software feature. Owners of the previous RDNA 3 generation, including cards like the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, and those on the older RDNA 2 generation, including the popular RX 6800 XT, are officially excluded.
AMD's stated justification is that FSR 4 relies on hardware-accelerated FP8 Wave Matrix Multiply Accumulate instructions on RDNA 4, which are not available on earlier Radeon architectures. It is a technically coherent argument, at least in part. The PS5 Pro's GPU, meanwhile, does have units for processing matrix instructions, enough for the chip to hit 300 TOPS in INT8 data format, which helps explain how it can run the co-developed upscaling algorithm.
The Leaked Code That Changed Everything
The situation shifted when AMD accidentally published source code for a version of FSR 4 that used INT8 instructions instead of FP8, as part of the FidelityFX SDK 2.0 release on August 20, 2025. The code was quickly pulled, but by then it had already been downloaded and circulated. Within weeks, a Reddit user had compiled an FSR 4 INT8 DLL from the leaked source and shared it for testing. Since FSR 3.1 introduced support for upgrading FSR via DLL swaps, enabling FSR 4 on RDNA 3 GPUs became as straightforward as dropping the file into a game's directory, and with additional driver tweaks, it was found to work on RDNA 2 as well.
Testing confirmed that FSR 4 INT8 not only works on RDNA 3 and RDNA 2 GPUs but works well, with image quality significantly improved and often looking comparable to the full FP8 implementation. Analysts concluded that AMD should release the INT8 version officially. AMD released a major FSR update in December 2025 called Redstone, which added features including machine-learning-powered frame generation and ray regeneration. FSR 4 INT8 was not included, and as of February 2026, it remains absent.
There is a clear commercial logic behind AMD's approach. From a business perspective, FSR 4 helps sell RX 9060 and 9070 cards, and given AMD's relative share of the discrete GPU market, every advantage to shift additional units is likely to be taken. Keeping FSR 4 exclusive to new hardware gives consumers a concrete, tangible reason to upgrade. That is a defensible product strategy, but it sits uneasily with AMD's long-standing positioning of FSR as an open, broadly accessible technology, particularly relative to Nvidia's DLSS.
The counter-argument from AMD's defenders is not without merit. RDNA 3 does not have native support for stacked 8-bit floating point instructions, meaning the INT8 version runs with rounding errors that cause it to look slightly worse than the full RDNA 4 implementation. Releasing a noticeably inferior version under the FSR 4 brand could damage consumer perception of the technology. Once AMD enables FSR 4 INT8 officially, the company will face questions from gamers about why the technology runs differently on some systems. AMD's caution here, even if frustrating for existing Radeon owners, is not entirely irrational quality management.
A Divided Ecosystem
The broader picture here is one of a graphics industry grappling with a familiar tension: the commercial incentives driving companies toward feature exclusivity, set against consumer expectations of continuity and value from existing hardware. AMD's FSR technologies page still promotes FSR's wide compatibility as a core value. That message is harder to sustain when a significant portion of the Radeon install base cannot officially access the most recent generation of the company's own upscaling tech.
For PS5 Pro owners, none of this friction applies. Once the system update installs, PS5 Pro owners will be able to enable "Enhance PSSR Image Quality" in settings and apply the new upscaler to any supported game, with Sony suggesting some titles may show noticeably sharper results. Sony's closed-platform approach, for all its limitations on user choice, at least allows the company to deliver a consistent and coherent software update to every PS5 Pro in one move. Sony's PlayStation Blog post confirmed the full rollout timeline.
It appears increasingly unlikely that AMD will update FSR 4 to add official support for pre-RDNA 4 GPUs. There are rumours that AMD plans to bring FSR 4 support to RDNA 3 graphics cards, and the company has reportedly allocated additional resources to implementing the technology on that architecture. But rumours are not roadmaps, and AMD reportedly has no plans to bring FSR 4 support to RDNA 2 and older GPUs. Owners of those cards face a clear choice: accept FSR 3.1, pursue unofficial workarounds, or buy new hardware.
The reasonable position here is one of pragmatic realism. Technology generations move forward, and it is unrealistic to expect every new software feature to run on hardware several years old. At the same time, AMD's conduct in this episode, particularly the accidental leak that confirmed a working implementation existed, has done genuine damage to its credibility with loyal customers. The company owes those customers a clearer, more honest account of where FSR 4 support on older Radeon architectures actually stands, and when, if ever, it might arrive. AMD's Radeon graphics page offers product details but no such clarity on this question. In the meantime, PS5 Pro owners have every reason to look forward to March.