In the long run that Intel is performing to enter the world of dedicated GPUs and playing a leading role, an important element is certainly represented by technology Xe Super Sampling (XeSS)the solution of upscaling that the company is developing in response to competing technologies from NVIDIA (DLSS) and AMD (FSR).
Intel is working closely with game developers for bring XeSS to as many titles as possible from launch. The company has confirmed the integration of the technology in the following titles, without indicating precise dates, although the new CoD, for example, will integrate XeSS from October 28:
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
- Arcadegeddon
- Ghostwire Tokyo
- Vampire Bloodhunt
- Ghostbusters Spirits Unleashed
- Hell Bladepoint
- Super People
- Gotham Knights
- DioField Chronicles
- Dolmen
- Chivalry II
- Redout II
- The Settlers
- Death Stranding: Director’s Cut
- The Rift Breaker
- Hitman III
- CHORVS
- Shadow of The Tomb Raider
- Anvil Vault Breakers
Like other technologies, XeSS renders the game at a lower resolution and then upscales the image using AI to obtain a higher resolution with a quality very similar to that of native rendering. All this, however, while ensuring better performance compared to rendering at native resolution.
The approach is similar to that of NVIDIA, with a “trained” model that is applied to low-resolution images and receives input from motion vectors and previous frames to reproduce high-resolution images on the screen. Within the Arc GPUs this work is handled by the XMX Engines, or the NVIDIA Tensor cores in Intel sauce. XeSS, however, it will also work on competing GPUs with Shader Model 6.4 support using the DP4A instruction.
XeSS predicts four modes to give users maximum control over quality and performance: Performance will return the highest performance degrading the image in a visible way, Balanced will try to find a balance between the two while Quality e Ultra Quality they will better preserve the graphic detail.
Looking at the performance results shown in some popular graphs, you can see how (for example) Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1440p and maximum details with active ray tracing gains around twenty frames per second by activating XeSS in Balanced mode compared to native on-board rendering. Arc A770 video.
Finally, Intel is working with UL (Underwriters Laboratories)developer of the test 3DMark, to integrate a new Feature Test dedicated precisely to XeSS.