AMD"s Radeon driver team could be launching its major annual driver update in the spring or later, according to a report from a Hungarian website "Prohardver!". Team Red started the annual trend of launching this annual major driver revision back in 2015 when it decided to overhaul its previous Catalyst drivers and launched a much more modern and sleek looking AMD Radeon settings Crimson edition. The practice has continued since then, however, the update was missed last year for some reason and may be attributed to the global pandemic situation.
The report from Prohardver claims that the driver revision will bring a new version of the Radeon Boost algorithm which will incorporate Variable Rate Shading (VRS), a DirectX 12 Ultimate feature and part of AMD"s FidelityFX graphics suite.
Radeon Boost, in its current state, dynamically adjusts the in-game resolution of a frame so that you do not go below your desired set frame rate. It, however, drops the resolution of the whole image making it very noticeable in static portions of the screen. The upcoming implementation of Radeon Boost with VRS baked-in will only apply the effect in places where the motion is higher on-screen or that portion of the image is less visible, for example.
Below is a demo (from YouTube channel Tech ARP) of an early version of Radeon Boost with VRS running Borderlands 3:
The report also alleges that AMD"s FidelityFX Super Resolution - a competing solution to Nvidia"s DLSS - will not be a part of this driver suite and instead will be implemented within games separately. The FidelityFX Super Resolution will be using Microsoft"s DirectML API which indicates that it will not require dedicated hardware like in the case of Nvidia"s solution.