NVIDIA's 007 First Light Partnership Leaves AMD FSR 4 and Intel XeSS 2.0 in the Cold

IO Interactive's long-awaited James Bond origin story, 007 First Light, has arrived to critical acclaim, but its PC launch is marred by a significant technical controversy. A formal partnership with NVIDIA means owners of GeForce RTX graphics cards get the full suite of DLSS 4.5 features. However, the game has launched with a notably outdated and incomplete set of upscaling options for AMD Radeon and Intel Arc GPUs, leaving a large portion of the PC gaming community feeling like second-class citizens .

What Upscaling Tech Is Actually in the Game?

The graphics settings menu confirms a clear tier list of support at launch. NVIDIA users get the most advanced package, while others receive stripped-down or virtually non-existent alternatives.

• NVIDIA DLSS 4.5: This is the flagship feature set, including DLSS Super Resolution, Dynamic Multi Frame Generation (up to 6x), and DLSS Ray Reconstruction, though path tracing itself arrives in a summer 2026 update . NVIDIA's Reflex technology is also supported for latency reduction .
• AMD FSR 3.1.5: This is the only non-DLSS upscaling option practically available. Crucially, it lacks AMD's own frame generation technology entirely. There is no FSR 4.0 or 4.1, and no FSR Native AA (the AMD equivalent of NVIDIA's DLAA) .
• Intel XeSS: A basic version of XeSS is sometimes listed in options menus, but it is reported to be the older 1.x standard. There is no support for XeSS 2.0, which means no XeSS Frame Generation or Xe Low Latency for Intel Arc GPUs .

Why the AMD FSR 4 Situation Is Especially Frustrating

The biggest point of community anger isn't just the absence of FSR 4, but that AMD's own driver-level upgrade feature cannot be used. Normally, if a game supports the FSR 3.1 API, AMD's Adrenalin drivers can automatically inject FSR 4. However, IO Interactive integrated FSR 3.1.5 unusually. By baking it directly into the game's source code rather than using a replaceable .dll file, the studio made it impossible for the AMD driver to upgrade the upscaler to a modern version .

This technical decision has left AMD Radeon users, including owners of the latest RX 9000 series, stuck with the demonstrably inferior image quality of FSR 3.1.5, which was already considered outdated .

The Community and Industry Response

The reaction from tech press and the gaming community has been overwhelmingly negative, with little to no official response from the hardware manufacturers involved.

Intel has remained silent. There has been no public statement from Intel addressing the lack of XeSS 2.0 in a major AAA release like 007 First Light. The coverage has been entirely driven by tech reviewers and benchmarkers noting the absence .

The PC gaming community has been vocal. Steam discussion boards and enthusiast forums filled with criticism within hours of the review embargo lifting.

• Accusations of a skewed partnership: Many users are openly calling the game a "sponsored Nvidia title," pointing to the stark contrast between the full DLSS 4.5 integration and the bare-minimum support for everything else .
• Anger from AMD users: The tone on platforms like Steam is dire, with top-voted posts warning "Bad Game for AMD users" and reporting that the game "just looks like a washed-out mess" without proper upscaling .
• Intel Arc owners left out: The lack of XeSS 2.0, a technology that supports AI-powered frame generation on Arc hardware, leaves owners of Intel's discrete GPUs with no competitive upscaling or frame-smoothing option at all .
• A growing industry problem: As PC Gamer noted, 007 First Light "joins an ever-expanding list of 2026 games without up-to-date AMD FSR or Intel XeSS support," suggesting a troubling trend for hardware inclusivity in PC gaming .

For now, the PC version of 007 First Light is an unambiguous showcase for the latest NVIDIA technology. For owners of Radeon and Arc GPUs, it stands as a stark reminder that developer partnership choices can dramatically impact your experience, even on powerful hardware.