Digital Foundry has launched an in-depth look on the upscaling tech that’ll be included with Intel’s upcoming Arc GPUs and in contrast its efficiency to Nvidia’s providing, Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS). Based on the assessments they’ve run thus far, Intel’s Xe Super Sampling, or XeSS for brief, seems to do a cheap job of holding its personal in opposition to extra mature applied sciences — although it’s price noting that Digital Foundry solely ran assessments with Intel’s highest-end card, the Arc A770, and largely in a single recreation, Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
The idea behind XeSS and different applied sciences like it’s to run your recreation at a decrease decision, then use a bunch of machine studying algorithms to upscale it in a means that appears means higher than extra primary upscaling strategies. In apply, this allows you to run video games at greater body charges or activate fancy results like ray tracing without giving up a large quantity of efficiency as a result of your GPU is definitely rendering fewer pixels after which upscaling the ensuing picture, typically utilizing devoted {hardware}. For instance, in accordance to Digital Foundry, when you have a 1080p show, XeSS will run the sport at 960 x 540 in its highest efficiency (AKA highest FPS mode) and at 720p on its “Quality” mode earlier than then upscaling it to your monitor’s native decision. If you need extra particulars on how precisely it does this, I like to recommend trying out Digital Foundry’s write-up on Eurogamer.
Image: Digital Foundry
In Digital Foundry’s assessments, XeSS did this job fairly properly when running on the Arc A770 (the tech will be usable on different, non-Xe graphics playing cards as properly, together with those built-in into Intel’s processors and even on Nvidia’s playing cards). It supplied a strong bump in body charges in contrast to running the sport in native 1080p or 4K, and there wasn’t a large drop in high quality such as you’d anticipate to see without any kind of upscaling. Put side-by-side with the outcomes from Nvidia’s DLSS, which is kind of the gold commonplace for AI-powered upscaling at this level, XeSS was in a position to retain a comparable quantity of sharpness and particulars in a lot of areas, akin to foliage, character fashions, and backgrounds.
Digital Foundry discovered that XeSS added two to 4 milliseconds to body instances or the period of time a body was displayed on the display earlier than being changed. That may, in principle, make the sport really feel much less responsive, however in apply, the truth that you’re getting extra FPS helps even issues out a bit.
With that mentioned, XeSS had a few hiccups that both weren’t current or have been noticeably much less intense when utilizing DLSS. Intel’s tech significantly struggled with skinny particulars, generally displaying flickering moiré patterns or bands. These kinds of artifacts may positively be distracting relying on the place they confirmed up, they usually acquired worse as Digital Foundry pushed the system, asking it to upscale decrease and decrease decision photos to 1080p or 4K (one thing you might need to do with particularly demanding video games). Nvidia’s tech wasn’t completely immune to these points, particularly in modes that centered extra on efficiency than picture high quality, however they actually appeared much less prevalent. XeSS additionally added some extraordinarily noticeable jittering results to water and a few much less intense ghosting to sure fashions after they have been transferring.
Gif: Digital Foundry
Intel additionally struggled to sustain with Nvidia when it got here to a few specific topics — notably, DLSS dealt with Lara Croft’s hair considerably higher than XeSS. There have been one or two instances when the outcomes from XeSS appeared higher to my eyes, although, so your mileage could differ.
XeSS continues to be clearly in its early levels, and specs about the Arc GPUs it’ll primarily be aiding are simply beginning to come out. That makes it laborious to inform the way it’ll carry out on Intel’s lower-end desktop lineup and on the laptop computer graphics playing cards which have been round for a few months. It’s additionally price noting that, as with DLSS, XeSS gained’t work with each recreation — thus far, Intel’s site solely lists 14 video games as appropriate, in contrast to the roughly 200 titles that DLSS works with (although the corporate does say it’s collaborating with “many recreation studios” like Codemasters and Ubisoft to get the tech into extra video games).
Still, it’s good to at the least get a style of the way it will work and to know that it’s, on the very least, competent. Without naming names, different first tries at this kind of tech haven’t essentially held up to DLSS in addition to XeSS has. While we nonetheless don’t know whether or not Intel’s GPUs are literally going to be any good (particularly in contrast to the upcoming RTX 40-series and RDNA 3 GPUs from AMD, which has its personal upscaling tech known as FSR), it’s good to know that at the least one side of them is a success. And if Intel’s playing cards do find yourself being dangerous for gaming, XeSS may very well be in a position to assist with that — it’s the small wins, actually.