AMD has just released a new graphics driver that enables FSR 4.1, the latest edition of its upscaling technology for RDNA 4 GPUs. The Adrenalin 26.3.1 driver, released this week, carries significance beyond typical updates. It represents a convergence of AMD's PC gaming technology with Sony's PlayStation engineering, delivered through a focused push on visual fidelity.
The headline feature is FSR Upscaling 4.1, which improves the quality of AMD's AI-enhanced upscaling, with games that could previously be upgraded to FSR 4 via driver override now using the upgraded 4.1 model. The new model appears to offer more detail in objects in motion, especially foliage, with AMD showing examples where grass looked significantly sharper and less blocked-up like with FSR 4.0, where such finer details usually become subject to artifacting or blurriness with less advanced upscaling approaches.
What makes this update particularly noteworthy is its technological heritage. FSR 4.1 uses the same underlying AI model as PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) 2, the second iteration of which has just come out for the PS5 Pro, with PlayStation lead system architect Mark Cerny confirming the two technologies share a common underpinning. PSSR 2 is based on FSR 4.1 and is part of Project Amethyst, Sony and AMD's joint effort to advance AI tech in gaming.
The second major component is an upgrade to FSR Ray Regeneration to version 1.1, AMD's way of denoising a limited number of ray-traced samples and rebuilding them into a higher-quality final image similar to Nvidia's DLSS Ray Reconstruction, with AMD showing Ray Regeneration 1.1 producing better contrast in scenes, more realistic shadows, alongside potential benefits of ray tracing for global illumination and enhanced reflections.
The Ultra Performance Mode is now faster too, delivering higher FPS than before. The driver also adds support for Crimson Desert and Death Stranding 2, positioning the release as both a game-ready and quality refinement update.
Yet beneath the performance gains lies a familiar constraint. For all its improvements, FSR 4.1 remains limited to RX 9000-series GPUs only, in contrast to Nvidia's DLSS 4.5 upscaler which works on much older GeForce GPUs, with unofficial community support for FSR 4 on older Radeons appearing not to have moved AMD's official position on availability yet, so owners of those older cards will continue to miss out.
This limitation creates an interesting tension in AMD's strategy. Latest drivers clearly mention support only for the Radeon RX 9000 series, though there were rumours that AMD might unlock FSR 4 for older architectures. The company appears to be using cutting-edge AI technology as a key differentiator for its newest hardware, even as community developers have demonstrated that older RDNA 3 and RDNA 2 cards could technically run the technology through workarounds.