Intel details upcoming XeSS upscaling technology

While Intel announced XeSS earlier this year, as well as a list of games planning to support it, we've yet to see it in action. Now as Intel continues to ramp up to its Arc A770 and A750 graphics card launch, the company has begun talking up XeSS once again, this time with a deep dive video explaining how the tech works, as well as performance comparisons with the feature on and off. 

In the video below, Ryan Shrout and Tom Petersen of Intel share more details about XeSS, what other games will support the technology, and performance charts showing how the Arc A770 performs with and without the upscaling technology enabled.

Intel XeSS will be supported by all GPUs with Shader Model 6.4, meaning even Nvidia Maxwell GPUs (GTX 900 desktop series) will be able to benefit from it. Moreover, the video confirms there will be four modes – performance, balanced, quality and ultra-quality.

While benchmarking Chivalry 2 with XeSS implemented and in ‘performance mode', the feature improved frame rates by 37% over running the game at native 1440p. That was just the smallest increase shared in Intel's benchmarks. The most significant boost appears in Ghostwire: Tokyo, which got a 111% performance boost with XeSS enabled in performance mode.

At 1440p with balanced mode enabled, the gains are more subtle, but still quite noticeable. In games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Chivalry 2, performance can increase by up to 26% compared to native resolution. Ghostwire: Tokyo is once again the game that benefits the most from this tech in this mode, with a 75% increase in frame rate.

Furthermore, Intel is working with UL, the developer behind the 3DMark benchmarks, to release an XeSS feature test that allows everyone with a compatible GPU to test the technology. XeSS ultra quality mode should boost performance by up to 50%. Quality mode bumps framerates by up to 80%, balanced mode by up to 110% and performance mode by up to 150%. In the video, you can also see the Arc A770 running the test with a GPU operating frequency of 2,100-2,200MHz.

Lastly, the list of games supporting XeSS has expanded with new titles, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Ghostbusters Spirits Unleashed, Naraka Bladepoint, Gotham Knights, DioField Chronicles, Redout II, and Skull and Bones.

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KitGuru says: Many of us have come to appreciate features like AMD DSR and Nvidia DLSS for the performance gains. Soon, Intel XeSS will join that list and it will be interesting to see how it stacks up to the competition. 

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