(Pocket-lint) – With Intel’s Arc graphics cards coming to market, the company is working on various technologies to ensure you have the best gaming experience. One of those technologies is set to rival Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution.
Known as Xe Super Sampling (or XeSS for short), this is an AI-accelerated super sampling tech that’s designed to be open-source. This means it’s not only going to work with Intel’s GPUs but also with those from its rivals.
We’re exploring more about what that means and how it’ll improve your gaming experience.
Is Xe Super Sampling just upscaling?
Intel has already been showing off what Xe Super Sampling can do. XeSS is designed to take a game that’s rendered at 1080p and upscale it to 4K. This means in theory that it offers the same benefits as Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling. That benefit is that you can play games at lower resolutions (meaning higher FPS) but use the technology to output a higher resolution image to your gaming monitor.
Intel has shown a demo of this technology in action with side-by-side comparisons of gameplay footage rendered natively at 4K and the same footage upscaled by XeSS. You can barely tell the difference. And Intel claims that using XeSS, gamers will be able to get twice the performance, meaning more FPS while still enjoying a high-resolution image.
The end goal here is to give you the best of both worlds – high frame rates and high resolution too.
Which hardware will XeSS support?
Intel has stated that XeSS is set to be open source and it will be open for game developers to use. Xe Super Sampling will also work with any graphics cards that support Shader Model 6.4+ and DP4a instructions. Naturally, it’s likely that XeSS will perform best on Intel’s own Arc graphics processors but it will work with Nvidia and AMD products as well.
Intel has said that it’s been working hard to ensure that Xe Super Sampling won’t be negatively impacted by ghosting or blurring which is sometimes an issue with upscaling tech.
The company has also said that XeSS will have five different image quality modes. Those modes will include:
- Ultra performance – 3 times scaling factor
- Performance – 2 times scaling factor
- Balanced – 1.7 times scaling factor
- Quality – 1.5 times scaling factor
- Ultra quality – 1.3 times scaling factor
Intel claims that XeSS can achieve high scaling ratios without negatively impacting quality and do so more effectively than other temporal and spatial upscaling techniques.
What games will XeSS work with?
Like other upscaling technologies, Intel XeSS will require some effort in order to work. The tech needs to be trained to work with the games so that the AI understands how to maximise performance and maintain quality.
That means that the list will be limited at first, though will grow over time. Currently, the list of games includes:
- Arcadegeddon
- Anvil
- Chorus
- Chivalry II
- Death Stranding
- Dolmen
- Enlisted
- Hitman III
- Ghostwire: Tokyo
- Grid Legends
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider
- Super People
- The Settlers
- Vampire: Blood Hunt
This list obviously is quite short at the moment but the fact the tech is open source should see it grow rapidly over time.
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