Intel Demonstrated XeSS, a New Alternative to DLSS and FSR

Some time ago, Intel announced that it is ready to expand its influence to the graphics card segment, where the battle has been fought exclusively between two candidates for years - AMD and Nvidia. According to currently available information, this company should present its first graphic solutions on March 30. This is an event to follow because a new (old) player is finally appearing in the field of graphics cards. We'll see if he manages to beat the competition.

But Intel seems to have decided not only to make graphics cards but also to provide the most comprehensive software support for its Alchemist (DG2) architecture, so it presented its counterpart Nvidia DLSS and AMD FSR technologies at GDC.

To remind you, both DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) are technologies that aim to provide better performance in video games without drastically reducing display quality.

Essentially, these are technologies that render frames in video games at lower resolutions than those displayed on the screen and compensate for this difference in resolution and quality of the graphic display by using AI to scale the image to a higher resolution. So, fewer computer resources are used, the software converts the lower resolution image into a higher resolution image, and you get a lot of frames per second more.

Now, there is Intel, which introduced XeSS, ie. Intel Xe Super Sampling, which serves the same purpose - upscaling an image rendered at a lower resolution to provide users with higher quality images with reduced resource usage and a better framerate. So how does Intel's solution work?

Intel XeSS is also powered by artificial intelligence that uses machine learning to reconstruct lower-resolution frames and transform them into higher-resolution frames, allowing for more frames per second in demanding video games. Also, this technology should be available even for integrated graphics solutions, reports Chinese Expreview. 

According to Intel, rendering a 4K image using XeSS technology requires twice as less resources as rendering such an image in native 4K resolution. Originally, this technology uses XMX AI in the XE-HPG architecture to speed up the performance, but will also be supported on graphics cards that do not use XMX because DP4a is compatible.

In addition, Intel's XeSS also has an integrated software tool to increase image sharpness, which, in theory, should replace TAA antialiasing.

XeSS will have five modes of operation - Ultra Quality, Quality, Balances, Performance, and Ultra Performance. So, more or less the same as DLSS and FSR. Inter used its Alchemist architecture graphics card to show the difference in performance that can be achieved using each of these modes. For example, Ultra Quality mode provides 1.21 to 1.27 times better performance, while Ultra Performance mode promises improvements of 1.97 to 2.53 times.

For now, it is not yet known when this technology will see the light of day, and Intel has not released a list of supported video games. So, XeSS exists, it works, but it is not known when the users themselves will be able to try it all.