AMD has confirmed it's working closely with Activision to bring the FSR 4 upscaling tool to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 in 2025 - further clarifying the purported shift to AI for FSR.

This comes from Team Red’s Vice President, Jack Huynh, in a video that unveils the new Ryzen 7 9800X3D (spoiler: the rumors and spec leaks we reported earlier this week were accurate). In addition to the new chip, Huynh confirmed AMD’s plans to optimize FSR 3.1 further in Black Ops 6. Following this, the AMD VP mentioned a collaboration with Activision to bring the ‘next generation of ML-based FSR’ to the long-running shooter franchise next year.

We’re still waiting to hear more about how the newly AI-driven FSR 4 will work - especially versus DLSS and now PSSR, both of which notably use AI for resolution upscaling, while AMD has avoided the use of AI for FSR thus far. According to Huynh, handheld gaming PCs will enjoy a significant battery life improvement stemming from AI-based frame interpolation.

While this could drastically improve power efficiency for handhelds, it’s also potentially great news for desktop PC gamers who use mid-range GPUs. Fluid Motion Frames (AMD’s frame-gen software) has already improved smoothness and reduced latency across multiple games, and with AMD fully focusing on machine learning for FSR 4, we can expect a performance leap in both FMF and the resolution upscaling tool itself.

Will this help AMD GPUs compete with Nvidia’s?

It’s clear that frame generation and AI upscaling are becoming prominent factors in producing smooth gaming experiences on PC. Nvidia’s DLSS has consistently outperformed AMD’s FSR, which is more than likely one of the RTX 4000 series’ pull factors for PC gamers (since the next-gen DLSS 3 is only available on RTX 4000 cards).

With a new generation of upscaling tech on the horizon, this is a great opportunity for Team Red to compete in the GPU market - high-end GPUs are no longer its focus, so FSR 4 may be the savior needed to lock in strong but affordable performance for its mid-range and budget cards.

If AMD’s leaked CES 2025 lineup is accurate, we could see the brand put up a great fight within the GPU department but also deliver a complete landslide across multiple other next-gen hardware arenas… watch this space, folks.

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