Microsoft confirmed in late 2020 that the Xbox Series X and Series S were the only consoles that used the RDNA 2 architectureand therefore only these had full support for the advanced technologies and features present in said architecture. The company also said that both consoles feature “hardware-accelerated deep learning capabilities.”

According to Microsoft itself, these abilities could be used to improve the AI ​​of NPCs, animations and also create AI scaling technologies which offered not only higher performance but also higher image quality and stability compared to standard non-AI upscaling.

In a Q&A round, Digital Foundry delved deeper into the topic again, noting that the Xbox Series X has dedicated hardware to accelerate AI and deep learning with overall performance 100 TOPs in INT4. If we convert it to INT8, we have power 50 TOPswhich is a number that is well below the 300 TOP in INT8 that the PS5 Pro has, in theory.

Why Microsoft hasn’t taken advantage of this Xbox Series X hardware

It’s a good question, especially considering that the company itself was aware of the true potential of this hardware, and because it was Microsoft that explained all the things it could be used for. It’s true that intelligent scaling technology They don’t work on INT4, but work with INT8which of course greatly reduces the performance available in said hardware.

However, it should be taken into account that NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution works without problems with the humble GeForce RTX 2050 Mobile, a graphics card that, if I remember correctly, It has an approximate strength of 48 TOPs in INT8. This means that Microsoft could have taken advantage of that TOP 50 performance in INT8 that the Xbox Series X has by creating its own intelligent upscaling, but chose not to.

I know what you’re thinking, Microsoft didn’t do this because it could use AMD FSR, and that’s true, but intelligent upscaling accelerated by AI would be much better than AMD’s solutionand would allow Microsoft to make a huge difference compared to the PS5. It’s a shame that Microsoft didn’t know how to play cards with this hardware.

Microsoft has not commented on the matter and with respect to the Xbox Series it is highly unlikely that the company has now decided to develop this type of technology, especially since it seems that it has already resigned to this generation and is more aware of the next generation. Unless there is a surprise, said hardware will be useless.