With the launch of its RDNA 4 GPU architecture and FSR 4, AMD leveraged the power of machine learning to improve its upscale and frame generator. However, even if you rushed out to buy a new RX 9070 graphics card, your chance at checking out FSR 4 depended entirely on devs adding it to their games. With the release of the latest FidelityFX SDK, though, it appears that you can just do it yourself, by using one little app and a spot of file renaming.
That's according to the developer of DLSS Swapper, who remarked that a visitor to the app's GitHub stated that they managed to swap the FSR 3 files in a game and have it use FSR 4 instead. DLSS Swapper is a neat little tool that lets you change the DLL (dynamic linked library) files in a game's folders, so you can test out different versions of DLSS, FSR, and XeSS to your heart's content.
If you fancy giving it a go yourself, here's what you need to do (as instructed by beerdamore, DLSS Swapper's creator):
- Download and install DLSS Swapper
- Download AMD's latest FidelityFX SDK
- Extract the archive into a new folder
- Navigate to the Kits\FidelityFX\signedbin\ folder
- Rename amd_fidelityfx_upscaler_dx12.dll to amd_fidelityfx_dx12.dll
- Fire up DLSS Swapper, then click on the Library icon, and select FSR 3.1 DirectX 12 at the top
- Click the Import button in the top corner
- Navigate to the folder that has your newly renamed amd_fidelityfx_dx12.dll in it and import it
- You should now see v4.0.2.44888 in the list of FSR options
The latter might be in parentheses because if you don't have a Radeon RX 9000-series graphics card, the best version of FSR your GPU is likely to support will be FSR 3.1.5. After all that, it's then a question of selecting the game you want to apply the new DLL to, and in the options for FSR, click the version number and select 4.0.2 in the long menu. Once you've swapped the DLLs, you're done, and in theory, the game will fire up and show FSR 4 in its upscaling options.
However, one thing that I'm not certain about is whether the game is actually running FSR 4 or just displaying the DLL version. It's also important to note that none of this will force your GPU to use FSR 4 if it's not physically capable of running it. Oh, and so far, this has only been verified on a handful of FSR 3.1 games.
The good thing about all of this is that DLL swapping is easy to do, and as long as you source the files directly from AMD, Nvidia, etc, it's perfectly safe to do. If it turns out that the game isn't running FSR 4 or you just don't like how the new FSR upscaling looks in action, you can just swap back to whatever it was using before.
With luck, this all works as hoped, and RDNA 4 GPU owners can now enjoy FSR 4 in a lot more games than those that officially do support it. We're going to explore this ourselves in more depth with some RX 9000 cards and various FSR 3.1 games, and we'll be sure to let you know how we get on.
Ah modders, is there anything they can't do?
1. Best overall: AMD Radeon RX 9070
2. Best value: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB
3. Best budget: Intel Arc B570
4. Best mid-range: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti
5. Best high-end: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090
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