Intel XeSS technology was introduced as one of the most important news which will accompany the launch of Intel Arc Alchemist, a new generation of graphics from the chip giant. Its arrival in general has not yet happened and we still do not have a confirmed exact date, but some media have already been able to test some models ahead of time, and Digital Foundry was one of the last lucky ones.

The mentioned medium was able to test the Intel Arc 7 A770 and instead of limiting itself to evaluating its raw performance, it decided to focus its tests on an in-depth analysis. value offered by Intel XeSS in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, one of 19 games that will support such technology. I can already tell you that the result was very good and that in general Intel XeSS ranks very similar to NVIDIA’s DLSS Gen2.

What is Intel XeSS and how does it work?

It is a scaling technique and image reconstruction who uses deep learning (artificial intelligence) to improve performance and image quality. This technology is based on a base that is generally very similar to NVIDIA’s DLSS because:

• It uses spatial and temporal elements (previous frames) as well as motion vectors.
• It relies on artificial intelligence to select and combine only the best previous images to reconstruct and rescale the “perfect” image.
• It uses hardware acceleration because all the payload it represents is executed on XMX arrays using INT8 operations.

Unlike NVIDIA DLSS Gen2, which only works on graphics cards equipped with tensor cores, Intel XeSS it can work on graphics cards that do not have an XMX field. In this case we have no hardware acceleration and DP4a instructions are used. Any graphics card that supports DirectX 12 and Shader Model 6.4 supports this Intel technology.

In terms of performance, there is a clear difference between using hardware- and software-accelerated Intel XeSS. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider with Intel XeSS enabled in performance mode below 4K with hardware acceleration, the performance cost when activated is 3.4 milliseconds of render time images vs. native 1080p.

With the same configuration, the mode without hardware acceleration using the GeForce RTX 3070 registers an increase of 3.8 milliseconds. It’s a small difference that confirms that Intel has done a good job supporting XeSS in both hardware and software modes.

If we compare Intel XeSS with NVIDIA DLSS in terms of performance with GeForce RTX 3070, we see a significant difference as expected. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider with 4K resolution and Intel XeSS in performance mode, there is a price for this technology 3.4 milliseconds rendering time, while with hardware-accelerated DLSS Gen2 cost it only increases by 2.3 milliseconds.

Image quality and performance: Intel XeSS does a good job

As with any image resizing technology, its performance can vary depending on three main keys:

• target resolution: The lower the lower the performance improvement. This is also the case with NVIDIA DLSS, which offers a more significant performance improvement when upscaling to 4K than downscaling to 1080p.
• The mode used: and Intel XeSS has a total of four different modes, ultra quality, quality, balanced and performance. The first two offer higher image quality but improve performance less because they render from a higher resolution, and the last two do the exact opposite, offering better performance.
• Graphics load in general: is more important than it seems because. Using advanced settings that have a big impact on performance, such as ray tracing, makes scaling technologies make a bigger difference in performance.

We can see it perfectly on the video. The ultra quality mode by Intel XeSS improves performance by 16% below 1440pa figure that increases to 26% when quality mode is activated and that shoots up to 39% in balanced mode and 52% in performance mode. If we increase the resolution to 4K, the difference in performance is much greater and in performance mode it reaches 88%.

In synthetic tests such as 3DMark at 4K, the performance improvement achieved by Intel XeSS is much greater. Activating the ultra quality mode stops being a presentation test and improves performance by 57%, although to make it really smooth we need to activate the performance mode that offers 177% improvement over native mode.

The results you get in terms of image quality they are really good. Intel XeSS improves the level of detail compared to native rendering with TAA, especially for objects at medium and long distances and on such complicated elements as cables and very thin objects. The scene I leave you with right below these lines is an example of this, look at the level of detail that Intel XeSS maintains in the networks and in the absence of saw teeth in the wood. Click on it to enlarge it.

For still images, and judging by image quality alone, it’s clear that Intel XeSS does an excellent job, even if it falls short of 2nd generation DLSS. When using moving images, the superiority of the NVIDIA solution is even clearer, as shown by Intel XeSS clear flickering issues, features more ghosting issues caused by the use of motion vectors and certain graphical glitches that affect specific elements such as water. We also see other aspects that could be improved, such as Lara’s hair, which is much more pixelated when using Intel XeSS.

In general, Intel XeSS is interesting technology full of possibilities which, generally speaking, meets the expectations it has raised. However, it also turned out that does not reach NVIDIA DLSS Gen2 leveland therefore the technology is still the most advanced in terms of AI-based scaling.

The video that DigitalFoundry shared is very comprehensive, so I suggest you go ahead and watch it because it’s worth it. If you have problems with spoken English you can activate subtitlesvideo will be more accessible to you.