AMD Accidentally Reveals New Radeon Boost and Integer Scaling Features for Upcoming Driver

Eagle-eyed Reddit users on the AMD subreddit have spotted a footnote in AMD's "Gaming Details" page under the names "GD-156" and "GD-158." These two footnotes, respectively, detail which GPUs are compatible with integer scaling and "Radeon Boost" driver features, which have not been officially revealed yet and are expected to arrive with AMD's end of the year driver release.

Integer scaling is a technology that is supposed to make retro or retro style games look the way they were intended to look. Intel, which already released integer scaling support on its iGPUs earlier this year, says integer scaling is quite nice to have. With such little detail, it's hard to decipher what "Radeon Boost” is. Since Radeon Chill is also on a per-title basis, it might be a similar performance or power-conscious feature. The feature makes the transition from one pixel to the next much sharper as opposed to the smoothness many gamers experience on devices without integer scaling.

For example, if an old game were intended to be played on a 400x400 pixel display and was then upscaled to 600x600, the rendered pixels and the actual display pixels wouldn't align properly. That means it wouldn't look as sharp as intended, which is ironically caused by the higher-resolution display.

All AMD GPUs since the GCN 7000 series will have integer scaling for DX11, DX12, and Vulkan. The RX 5000 series will exclusively have DX9 support, strangely enough. APUs are also included, but only the more recent Ryzen 2000 and 3000 APUs. This support is also only for Windows 10.

The other feature, "Radeon Boost," is more of a mystery. AMD says it's compatible with all AMD GPUs since the 400 series as well as Ryzen APUs, and that it's available on both Windows 7 and 10, but that's about it. It is also only supported on a per-title basis, and while AMD has helpfully provided a link to a list of these titles, this link is broken. That’s likely because the company didn't mean to reveal these new features today.HiAlgo, acquired by AMD in 2016, developed the Chill technology prior to its acquisition and also has a page on it's "Boost" technology (which basically dynamically changes resolution depending on the situation). Perhaps "Radeon Boost" and HiAlgo's "Boost" are the same technology, which seems to be the consensus on enthusiasts forums.

AMD's upcoming driver update, should it contain these new features, will very likely be another feature-filled update. Ever since 2016, AMD has promised to deliver one big update every year in December, and so far, that promise has held up. Four yearly driver updates in, it seems AMD still hasn't slowed down.