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AMD promises a lighter version of FSR 4 for gaming handhelds before 2027

By the ComputerScout team ·

AMD's AI-powered upscaling has so far required a Radeon RX 9000 graphics card. A slimmed-down version is on the way for handheld PCs.

AMD says it will bring a lightweight version of FSR 4, its AI-based upscaling technology, to handheld gaming PCs before the end of the year. The company also says it's working on frame pacing issues that some players have reported with FSR frame generation.

What is FSR 4?

Upscaling lets a game render at a lower resolution and then rebuild a sharper image, boosting frame rates. FSR 4 uses machine learning to do this, and it is a big step up in image quality over earlier versions. But it has so far needed the AI hardware in AMD's Radeon RX 9000-series cards, such as the RX 9070 XT and RX 9060 XT. Handhelds built around AMD's Ryzen Z-series chips have had to make do with the older, less sharp FSR 3.

AMD promises a lighter version of FSR 4 for gaming handhelds before 2027

Why it matters

Handhelds are exactly where good upscaling matters most: their small, low-power chips need every trick available to run demanding games smoothly. A version of FSR 4 tuned for that hardware could noticeably improve how games look on handheld PCs without costing battery life.

AMD hasn't said which handhelds will get it or how it will compare with the full desktop version, so we'll report back once it's available. Notably, AMD has still not mentioned support for multi-frame generation, a feature NVIDIA offers on its RTX 50-series cards.

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