Magpie allows AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution support in any Windows game — not really as good as native FSR but seems to get the job done

AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is an NVIDIA DLSS alternative that aims to reduce GPU load by rendering at a lower resolution and then upscaling the image at higher frame rates. Currently, a handful of titles have announced support for AMD FSR, but a Chinese developer has now released an upscaling tool that works with any game. 

Created by developer Blinue on GitHub, Magpie has been around since March and has supported various upscaling techniques such as Lanczos, Anime4K, ACNetGLSL, Rapid and Accurate Video Upscaling (RAVU), a TensorFlow implementation of the Fast Super-Resolution Convolutional Neural Network (FSRCNN). With the 0.5.2 release, Blinue added support for an initial version of AMD FSR.

Magpie isn't designed to offer great performance improvements. It is primarily a tool to upscale any window to native resolution and comes in handy when running the app in full-screen results in a blurred image. Lossless Scaling (which has now added FSR support as well) and IntegerScaler are some of Magpie's alternatives, but the developer claims Magpie is much more powerful and it's technique of covering the screen with a full-screen window does not restrict the scaling algorithm. 

Implementing FSR via Magpie is quite simple. Simply grab the release on GitHub (or build it yourself), run magpie.exe, select FSR in the mode box, WinRT Capture in the Capture field (needs Windows 10 1803 and above), and a suitable injection mode (Runtime injection seems to work for the most part). Then highlight the window you want to upscale and press Alt+F11.

One catch here is that currently there is no option to change the upscale resolution. Magpie will upscale the window to the native desktop resolution, so you may want to run the game in windowed mode at a lower resolution such as 720p to see significant differences. 

Currently, users on Reddit have been reporting mixed results with the tool, particularly at resolutions above 1080p. But a few could manage FHD to 4K upscaling with higher fps albeit with increased frametimes and input lag. Apparently, significantly increased CPU usage has also been observed.

The tool is currently in Chinese, but developer Prefix has posted an English fork on GitHub for those who wish to try it. A word of caution, though. It always pays to be careful with relatively unknown repositories. NotebookCheck hasn't tried the tool and cannot vouch for its stability or security.

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