What actually shipped
ASUS announced that the new FSR version was coming to the ROG Xbox Ally X and X20, with a preview update on October 23rd. The standard ROG Xbox Ally gets a GPU driver update "coming soon". VideoCardz also noted that the original ROG Ally and ROG Ally X are not part of this rollout announcement.
AMD's own announcement, dated October 20, covers more than handhelds. It lists support for Radeon RX 6000 GPUs, Ryzen AI Max processors, Ryzen AI 9 laptops and the Z2 handheld chips. Xbox Series X|S is marked "coming soon". The release is part of the Adrenalin Edition 26.10.1 driver.
AMD says it built a more efficient version of the model for Ryzen AI 9 and Z2-class chips. ASUS puts a number on the handheld version. On the Ally X and X20 it runs a new model less than half the size of the original INT8 model. That context matters when you read the results below. This is a trimmed-down model aimed at low-power hardware, not the full-size one.
How to turn it on (ROG Xbox Ally X20)
- Open Armoury Crate SE and go to Update Center > Preview Updates.
- Install the new AMD Radeon graphics driver. Tom's Guide says it should be dated October 23 or newer.
- Restart.
- Open Command Center, enter edit mode and add the AMD FSR Upscaling tile. ASUS says to press Y to customize the layout. Make sure the tile is switched on.
- Launch a supported game and enable FSR in its graphics settings. ASUS says you may need to restart the game for this to take effect.
Some caveats:
- Tom's Guide says you can't flip the toggle mid-game. Enable it first, then launch.
- ASUS says the Command Center toggle can apply the ML model to older games that support FSR 3.1 or newer. It puts this at over 400 titles.
- ASUS warns against stacking FSR with RSR. RSR is the system-level upscaler meant for games without FSR support.
- This is a preview. ASUS says it may contain bugs or instability. If you want stability, wait for it to reach the Official Updates tab.
- On Strix Halo laptops, Tom's Guide says you only need current Adrenalin drivers.
The numbers: same preset, no free lunch
Tom's Guide tested the Ally X20 and an ASUS TUF Gaming A14. Same-preset results (Balanced on both sides) were mixed, and mostly slightly lower with FSR 4:
| Device | Game | FSR 3 | FSR 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| TUF Gaming A14 | Cyberpunk 2077 (RT low, 2560×1600) | 76.33 | 68.13 |
| TUF Gaming A14 | Pragmata (2560×1600, High) | 69 | 73 |
| TUF Gaming A14 | Dying Light: The Beast (frame gen) | 82 | 76 |
| Ally X20 | Spider-Man: Miles Morales (1080p) | 58 | 56 |
| Ally X20 | God of War Ragnarök (1080p) | 39 | 38 |
| Ally X20 | Forza Horizon 6 (1080p, Medium) | 54 (7 stutters) | 53 (3 stutters) |
The reviewer's explanation is that FSR 4 is a heavier machine-learning model. It needs more compute than the older spatial approach. AMD confirms the ML design. Nothing in the material I reviewed measures the model's runtime cost, so treat "heavier" as a plausible explanation and not a measured one.
Pragmata went up, and Forza showed fewer stutters. "Mostly slightly lower" is more accurate than "slower everywhere".
The reframing: Performance is the new Balanced
The more useful finding compares FSR 4 at Performance against FSR 3 at Balanced:
| Device | Game | FSR 3 Balanced | FSR 4 Performance |
|---|---|---|---|
| TUF Gaming A14 | Cyberpunk 2077 | 76.33 | 79.92 |
| TUF Gaming A14 | Pragmata | 69 | 77 |
| TUF Gaming A14 | Dying Light: The Beast | 82 | 83 |
| Ally X20 | Spider-Man: Miles Morales | 58 | 63 |
| Ally X20 | God of War Ragnarök | 39 | 43 |
| Ally X20 | Forza Horizon 6 | 54 (7 stutters) | 55 (2 stutters) |
Performance renders at a lower internal resolution, so it should be faster. The claim is that FSR 4 rebuilds the image well enough that you aren't giving up much. The reviewer describes sharper foliage and stonework, cleaner fur and hair detail, crisper wet-road reflections and cleaner edges. He says FSR 3 at Performance looked blurry, especially in motion.
Here is how I'd read it:
- The gains are modest. Dying Light and Forza are within a frame or so.
- The best cases are Pragmata (+8) and the Ally X20's Spider-Man and God of War (+5 and +4).
- The image-quality judgments are subjective. Tom's Guide offers no objective metric.
- The settings column in the source's second table still reads "balanced". Don't assume every other variable was held perfectly constant.
Limits worth keeping in mind
- Small sample. It's six games on two ASUS machines, with reviewer-chosen settings. The source doesn't give run counts, variance, power limits or per-device driver versions.
- Frame rate only. Battery life, latency and motion artifacts weren't measured.
- One laptop. The "Strix Halo" result is the TUF Gaming A14 only. It doesn't speak for every Ryzen AI Max system.
- The Intel comparison is opinion. The closing remarks on Panther Lake, XeSS 3 and the Arc G3 Extreme come with no benchmarks.
- Early user reports vary. NEOTEO notes that one user reported recurring Forza Horizon 6 stutter on the preview driver, while others saw gains elsewhere. That fits Tom's Guide's mixed Forza numbers.
Practical takeaway
If you're on an Ally X or X20:
- Install the preview driver and enable the tile before launching.
- Pick one game and test FSR 4 at Balanced against Performance. Then test against your old FSR 3 setup.
- Check frame rate, stutter and sharpness yourself. The results here are a starting point and won't hold for every title.
- If stability matters more than novelty, wait for the Official Updates release.
The headline calls it an "optical illusion", but that's the author's framing. A fairer summary is that a straight swap at the same preset won't buy you frames. Dropping a notch to Performance may give you similar or slightly better frame rates with a sharper picture. How far that holds across your library is something only your own testing will show.