AMD's FSR 4.1 runs slower than FSR 3.1 on RDNA 3 cards

AMD's FSR 4.1 upscaler is live for RDNA 3 GPUs, but it's slower than the FSR 3.1 it's meant to replace. German outlet ComputerBase tested the RX 7900 XTX, RX 7800 XT, and RX 7600 with both versions across nine games at 4K. The geometric mean shows a measurable regression on all three RDNA 3 cards when switching from 3.1 to 4.1.

The RX 9070 XT (RDNA 4) matches the 7900 XTX at native 4K but pulls ahead with FSR 4.1 enabled. That's the intended behavior — FSR 4.1 is ML-based and tuned for the new architecture. RDNA 3 gets it as a compatibility add, not an optimization target.

This matters if you're on a 7900 XTX or 7800 XT and banking on FSR 4.1 for a free performance bump. You're better off sticking with 3.1 until AMD patches the performance gap. The 9070 XT crowd gets the real benefit.

If you're tweaking upscaler settings and want to see how FSR stacks up in your library, run a fresh playbook on BetterFPS and compare quality modes head-to-head.