[GameSpot] - Valve's Steam Deck Will Have AMD FSR Support For All Of Its Games

[343iBot]

Steam Deck users will be able to enjoy a solid performance boost on their games when the handheld gaming PC arrives, as it'll have integrated support for AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution upscaling tech out of the box. That technology will work in tandem with SteamOS, although if you mod the console to use Windows, you'll risk losing access to it as FSR is connected directly to the default operating system.

"FSR is already available for some applications that support it. Games that already include FSR will work as is, but also FSR support will be included as part of an OS future release. Once that happens, games could potentially make use of FSR even if the games themselves don't natively support it," the Steam Deck FAQ added.

If you're unfamiliar with the FSR software, it's a technique that renders frames at a lower resolution and then uses an open-source spatial upscaling algorithm to make the game look as if its running on a higher resolution setting. It's similar to Nvidia's DLSS technology, but the key difference here is that while DLSS is exclusive to RTX-equipped graphics cards, FSR can in theory work on any GPU.

As spotted by Phoronix, OS-integrated support for AMD FSR came about through an update to Valve's SteamOS compositor Gamescope, the software that helps make gaming possible on chunky handheld.

This means that the Steam Deck's entire library of games should be able to make use of FSR to deliver high frame rates at the console's native 1280 x 800 resolution. How this impacts the gaming experience on the console or when it's tethered to a monitor, is something that remains to be seen. But at the very least, it looks like the FSR integration will be a solid reason to avoid wiping the Steam Deck memory clean in favor of a custom solution. That, and the other life-endangering reason that Steam has previously mentioned.

The Steam Deck officially launches on February 25 in limited numbers, and if you're looking to do some research, here's everything that we know about the Steam Deck so far.

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