AMD FSR 4.1 DLL leaks and gamers are already getting it to run on older RDNA 3 GPUs

With FSR 4, which is currently exclusive to the RDNA 4 lineup of Radeon RX 9000 Series GPUs, AMD closed the image quality gap between FSR and DLSS in a major way. And as we've seen with NVIDIA's release of DLSS 4.5 earlier this year, which is yet another game-changer for image quality and detail, it's no secret that we're going to see an FSR 4.1 or 4.5 at some point.

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Well, it seems that day is today, as an FSR 4.1 DLL from an unreleased AMD Software Adrenalin Edition 26.3.1 driver release has appeared online. The leak arrives via AMD's Radeon 'Vanguard' driver testing program, and as seen with gamers applying workaround methods (aka OptiScaler) to get it running, FSR 4.1 offers a notable improvement to image quality when compared to FSR 4.0.3 - the current official version.

Using FSR 4's aggressive 'Ultra Performance' profile, thanks to the OptiScaler Discord (via Reddit), we get to see the difference in Hogwarts Legacy. Per the comparison screenshot, FSR 4.1 delivers more detail in foliage and an overall sharper and cleaner image. It bodes well for FSR 4.1, delivering an image quality improvement for Radeon RX 9060 XT and Radeon RX 9070 XT gamers. However, this screenshot and this screenshot were captured from FSR 4.1 running on the RDNA 3-generation Radeon RX 7900 XT.

Yes, this is yet another example of fans getting FSR's new AI upscaler to run on older Radeon hardware, even though it's technically not officially supported. The reason for this is that the FP8 AI model used by FSR 4 isn't supported on RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 hardware. The Hogwarts Legacy screenshots were captured using FP8 emulation on Linux, once again showing that AMD could release a version of FSR 4 for older Radeon GPUs, but it's choosing not to for unknown reasons.

As for FSR 4.1, we should expect it to arrive in an upcoming Radeon driver release.