Intel’s continued effort to improve its discrete GPU segment is starting to show great signs of success. Debuted about two years ago, the brand’s AI upscaling has grown to include hundreds of games.
Celebrating the new milestone, Intel has announced via a Tweet that its XeSS upscaling technology is now available in over 150 games. These include well-known titles such as Ratchet and Clank, Forza Horizon 5, Fortnite, and Hitman, not to forget a favourite of mine, Enlisted. Unsurprisingly, the brand indicates that this is only the beginning, with more support coming later.
Being the last to join discrete GPU manufacturing, Intel had to stand out from the pack. To do so, it focussed on aggressive pricing with its Arc A770 and A750 graphics cards, all while developing two upscaling solutions. The first – said to deliver better image quality and stability thanks to AI – was exclusive to its Arc GPUs, with the second following AMD’s FSR footsteps by offering a universal algorithm that works on all GPUs.
This meant that users had a choice between XeSS and FSR in supported games, giving an alternative in case one was better than the other in some aspect. Both had their strengths and weaknesses. In my experience, XeSS delivered a more stable image but at a higher performance cost, while FSR was blurrier but boosted performance further. DLSS on the other hand plays alone inside its walled garden, allowing it to offer a more curated experience that generally delivers the best results.
Its latest iteration, XeSS 2 is set to introduce frame generation and low latency technologies, pushing performance and responsiveness even more. Intel said that 7 out of 8 pixels are made by AI. This means smoother games but potentially with more artifacts and errors. To do so, XeSS 2 must be integrated into each game and only runs on Arc GPUs, unlike older versions. This trade-off seems to be worth it, as Intel’s presentations show a noticeable improvement over traditional non-AI-based upscalers.
Funnily enough, even though I own a Radeon RX 7900 XT, I use XeSS upscaling in Enlisted. I find its general quality better in this particular game as it suffers less from artifacts and ghosting. That said, the game may be using a newer version of XeSS which would give it an advantage over FSR. Regardless, in its current state, XeSS wins.
This goes to show how these open upscaling algorithms are great assets for gamers, giving the option to select the better result. Unfortunately, AMD seems to be weighing toward a proprietary AI-based solution that could leave its hardware-agnostic version outdated. However, since all three GPU brands have AI-based upscalers now, we may soon see a universal integration into DirectX that runs on all.
In any case, congrats to Intel and the Arc team for this achievement, we are looking forward to more competition in the GPU market.
