Intel® XeSS on Arc™ Graphics Explained

par Intel Gaming |

As a gamer, which is more important: high framerate or high resolution? Why not have both?

Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) is Intel’s solution to get the best of both worlds and ultimately make better use of GPU resources. XeSS renders a game at a lower resolution then upscales the image using AI to a higher resolution with quality similar (or better) to a native render. This speedup occurs because games run faster rendered at lower resolutions as the GPU has fewer pixels to push. But low resolutions are a bummer, and we want the best of both worlds. So how does it all come together?

Graphics experts within Intel have been researching different approaches over the past few years and it became clear that infusing AI in the upscaling, or super sampling process, was the way to go to build a high performance, high quality solution. With XeSS, a trained model is applied to low-resolution frames and takes input from motion vectors and a frame history to send high resolution images to the display.

Got all that? Check out the visual explanation in the video above at the 4:45 mark. Hold your breath for an even deeper dive into the math and Intel’s powerful XMX engines which make this all possible. If you’d rather skip math class today, take a look at the frametime chart below. TAP’s blackboard shows rendering each frame at a lower resolution and replacing temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) with XeSS saves a considerable amount of time. Lower frametimes = higher framerates and smoother gameplay. Simple!

But enough work — it’s time to play! We’ve been collaborating with some fantastic developers who’ve gone through this process to implement XeSS in their games. We tried not to die in a developer build of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, a cinematic gaming experience with XeSS built-in. Devs and publisher Eidos-Montréal and Square Enix are going the extra mile to give gamers the latest visual tech four years after the game’s launch and the benefits are evident.

To suit your preference for performance versus precision, XeSS is available at several different quality levels which vary the input resolution. “Performance” runs the fastest, “Ultra Quality” gives the best images, while “Balanced” and “Quality” fall in-between. TAP set XeSS to Balanced in L'ombre du Tomb Raider while my XeSS was turned off. We both ran at 1440p, max settings with raytracing on, and his game ran around high-60 frames per second while mine was in the mid-40s. For more info on framerates, see the data table at the end of this article.

Is thwarting Tomb Raider’s Mayan apocalypse not your preferred adventure? Over a dozen other devs are jumping aboard the XeSS train, including the folks behind NARAKA : BLADEPOINTArcadegeddonet Redout II. We’ve also been working with Activision-Blizzard to include XeSS in the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II at its launch! Our commitment to XeSS and Intel Arc graphics even includes working with Hashbane Interactive on Instinction, a cinematic story game with dinosaurs still early in development.

Below we’ve got performance data on several other games with early adoption of XeSS:

Beyond select early adopters, our XeSS SDK will be open to developers and is easy to plug in to games with a similar process to implementing TAA. We’re also working with UL, publishers of the 3DMark benchmark tool as well to create an XeSS feature test, which can be tested on any — not just Intel Arc — GPUs which support HLSL Shader Model 6. We’re excited for gamers and developers around the world to experience XeSS which will be available by the time A700 series discrete GPUs are available.

We’ve now got a library of information on Intel Arc graphics available here at arc.intel.com! Watched all our videos and read all the blogs already? There’s more exciting content on the way; watch this space for info on raytracing, overclocking, hardware teardowns, and more coming soon!

Avis et clauses de non-responsabilité

Les performances varient en fonction de l'utilisation, de la configuration et d'autres facteurs. Pour en savoir pluswww.Intel.com/PerformanceIndex (graphiques et accélérateurs).

Les résultats des performances sont basés sur des tests effectués aux dates indiquées dans les configurations et peuvent ne pas refléter toutes les mises à jour publiquement disponibles. Aucun produit ou composant ne peut être absolument sûr.

Intel ne contrôle ni ne vérifie les données de tiers. Vous devez consulter d'autres sources pour en évaluer l'exactitude.

Les technologies Intel peuvent nécessiter l'activation de matériel, de logiciel ou de service.

Tous les plans de produits et les feuilles de route sont susceptibles d'être modifiés sans préavis.

Les déclarations qui font référence à des plans ou à des attentes futurs sont des déclarations prospectives. Ces déclarations sont basées sur les attentes actuelles et impliquent de nombreux risques et incertitudes qui pourraient faire en sorte que les résultats réels diffèrent matériellement de ceux exprimés ou sous-entendus dans ces déclarations. Pour plus d'informations sur les facteurs susceptibles d'entraîner des différences matérielles entre les résultats réels, voir notre dernier communiqué de presse sur les résultats et les documents déposés auprès de la SEC à l'adresse suivante www.intc.com.

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