AMD FSR Redstone Ray Regeneration Transforms Call Of Duty Black Ops 7 Graphics

Back when AMD announced its next-generation FSR Redstone technology, the company promised to have the updated upscaling and frame generation techniques out by the end of the year. Many expected that this would mean a late-December source release, and that adoption in real games would follow. Instead, our first taste of Redstone comes in the form of the new Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

Indeed, announced via tweet (below) by AMD's SVP of Graphics Jack Huynh, FSR Redstone debuts tomorrow in Activision's latest Call of Duty title. However, what's coming tomorrow is, as Jack says, "just the beginning." You see, FSR Redstone was originally announced with four components: super-resolution upscaling, frame generation, AI-powered ray-tracing denoising, and Neural Radiance Caching that offers superior real-time global illumination.


We already knew that Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 would support FSR 4 upscaling, so there's one piece of the puzzle solved. It also supports FSR frame generation, but contrary to what Jack Huynh says in the video below, this is the older FSR3 method, not the newer AI-powered version; the Redstone feature is apparently coming in a post-launch update. Today's announcement introduces just one more piece of Redstone: AI-powered ray-tracing denoising, analogous to competitor NVIDIA's "ray reconstruction" feature.

In theory, this feature shouldn't have much effect on performance if you're already using the ray-traced effects available in "CoD:BLOPS 7". Actually, NVIDIA's version of the technology slightly improved performance when we tested it upon its release in Cyberpunk 2077 thanks to the AI-powered denoiser eliminating the need to run several other denoisers. Of course, if you're not using the ray-traced reflections and shadows supported by the game, you won't see any difference.


Unfortunately, while AMD initially hoped that Redstone would be coming to all GPUs eventually (including non-Radeon cards), this initial release is going to require a Radeon RX 9000 series GPU, meaning RDNA 4 architecture. However, if you're so-equipped, Black Ops 7 will be your first chance to check out AMD's Redstone technology tomorrow. We're looking at doing some testing with the tech, so keep your eyes here and we'll see soon how AMD's AI solutions compare to the competition.