At GDC 2022, Intel engineers announced new details on Intel Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) image scaling technology. In particular, the company’s specialists spoke about the difficulties they face when developing a new scaling technology, as well as the advantages that it can bring to ordinary players.
Image source: Intel
The Intel experts involved in the development of XeSS technology point out that scaling and AA (anti-aliasing) should be considered as a single problem. At the same time, they point out that using temporal oversampling anti-aliasing, or TSSAA, is not always the best choice for game developers. Older games and older graphics cards may perform better when using spatial scaling. Games with ray tracing and other graphics-intensive technologies supported by more modern graphics cards, in turn, show higher performance and higher image quality when using temporal scaling algorithms.
Intel once again reminded that XeSS will work on graphics cards any manufacturer, which support shader models from version 6.4 and DP4a directives. However, XeSS works most effectively on proprietary Intel Arc graphics cards and other accelerators equipped with XMX hardware matrix engines. A special version of XeSS technology is used for such hardware. However, game developers shouldn’t worry about the complexity of integrating XeSS support, as the technology will have a single API for native and third-party graphics cards.
The company states that it now solves the most common problems associated with the use of temporal scaling technologies, such as: B. Graphic traces and image blur. To solve them, Intel has developed its own software algorithms that either completely eliminate or minimize these effects.
Unlike AMD FSR 2.0 and NVIDIA DLSS 2.3, Intel XeSS Technology offers five scaling modes: Maximum Performance, Performance, Balanced Settings, Quality, and Maximum Quality with a scaling factor of 1.3 or higher.
According to Intel, XeSS is able to provide higher scaling factors than other temporal and spatial scaling technologies. For example, in Maximum Quality mode, XeSS increases graphics performance by 21% and 27% at 1440p and 4K resolutions, respectively, while in Maximum Performance mode FPS increases from 97% to 153%. These values are based on internal testing using an Arc Alchemist graphics card with a fixed GPU frequency. How accurate the frequency of the GPU in the graphics card was, the company’s engineers did not specify.
Intel has not yet announced a release date for the XeSS technology, nor has it announced a list of games that will support it. Perhaps this information can be found during the official announcement of Arc graphics cards, scheduled for March 30th.
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