The latest update to Gears 5 and Shadow of The Tomb Raider adds a new AMD sharpen feature called FidelityFX technology. When enabling the feature, it results in a sharper and clearer image on PCs equipped with either a Radeon or Nvidia GeForce graphics card.
The AMD FidelityFX is essentially an open-source image-enhancing toolkit available to developers. The FidelityFX works by combining the Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS) algorithm and Luma Preserving Mapping (LPM), which results in a clear image. Since the technology is open-source, it can work with all GPUs and is not limited to AMD GPUs only. AMD has also stated that FidelityFX does not have a significant impact on game performance.
According to AMD, “FidelityFX automatically collapses multiple effects into fewer shader passes to reduce overhead and free up your GPU for the visceral experience you demand. This, in turn, frees up your graphics card to experience sharper visuals at virtually no performance loss.”
AMD has also posted a comparison slider on its website, showcasing the effects that FidelityFX has on games. Enabling the feature reduces blurriness in games and makes details and colors pop more. The technology helps in bringing out the finer details in-game without introducing artifacts that are quite common with post-processing techniques.
If you would like to test this new feature in your game, simply fire up Gears 5 and look for the sharpening option. The option also gives you a brief explanation about what technology is and how it works.
AMD FidelityFX is similar to Nvidia’s Image Enhancement feature that was recently introduced with the GeForce R440 drivers. While the Image Enhancement feature only works for users with GeForce GPUs, AMD FidelityFX is Open GPU technology and works with both Nvidia and AMD GPUs.
