Intel XeSS AI scaling tested on Intel, NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards - results differ

Intel launched XeSS scaling technology this week.
Since Intel's Arc A7 series graphics cards in desktop version are not available yet, new solution can be tested on mobile versions of Arc, budget A380 desktop, as well as AMD and NVIDIA products.
Journalists from Tom's Hardware and PCGamer conducted a series of tests.
Testing was conducted in the game Shadow of the Tomb Raider.Image source: IntelIntel XeSS available in two versions: one designed for cores XMX on Arc processors, and the second works with DP4a instructions, which are supported by most modern graphics cards, including models of families NVIDIA Pascal, Intel Graphics 11th generation, as well as AMD Vega 20, Navi and newer.
Source image: pcgamer.comJournalists from PCGamer took NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card as a test case and compared its performance in three modes: with scaling disabled (native rendering) as well as with XeSS and DLSS.
At 3440 × 1440 resolution, it showed 95 fps, whereas with XeSS and DLSS in Quality mode the results were 112 and 119 fps respectively.Image source: tomshardware.comJournal of Tom's Hardware ran a more thorough testing using previous and current generation NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards at 2560 × 1440 pixels.
The results were quite interesting: Intel XeSS worked on all tested models but not always provided a significant performance boost, and in some cases, there was even a significant decrease in performance.
Authors of the article explained the negative effect due to the fact that some models support DP4a instructions only in emulator mode - this affected, in particular, AMD Vega and Navi first-generation GPUs.Image source: tomshardware.comSignificant increase in performance in some cases, associated with insufficient amount of video memory, although 6 GB - not so little for the game four years ago.
Modern models of video cards mainly confirmed the effectiveness of XeSS compared to native rendering.
Especially curious was the result for budget Intel Arc A380, whose performance, varying the settings, managed to increase from the \"native\" 26.5 to 58.7 frames per second - more than twice.

Intel has explained in details and examples how image scaling technology XeSS works

Intel has published a fresh video in which its representatives described in detail how Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) technology works.
The Intel XeSS technique is designed to increase gaming performance by scaling the original image from a lower resolution setting below the native screen resolution to a higher resolution setting below the native screen resolution with maximum image quality.
In the new video, Intel representatives pretty much covered everything that was already known before.
Raster graphics and lighting in the game are rendered at low resolution, the game frame data along with motion vectors are passed to the XeSS scaling algorithm, and then passed through post-processing rendering tools, after which the user interface is applied to the picture in native resolution.
The XeSS upscaler uses not only motion vectors and important input frame data, but also temporal data from already processed (zoomed) frames, so the pre-trained AI algorithm within XeSS can more efficiently reconstruct image details.
The company shared fresh performance data from its flagship Arc A770 desktop graphics card and demonstrated how the use of XeSS technology affects performance in games such as Ghostwire Tokyo, Hitman 3, Arcadegeddon, SoTR, Diofield Chronicle, Super People, Redout 2 and Chivalry 2, which used different XeSS scaling presets: Ultra Quality, Quality, Balanced and Performance.
Intel also said that the company has started to work closely with UL Benchmarks, a developer of a comprehensive synthetic 3DMark test.
It is assumed that under this cooperation, a new performance test XeSS will be developed for 3DMark, as before there were separate tests to test the effectiveness of NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR on certain models of graphics cards.
According to Intel, their XeSS technology can be integrated into game engines as easily and quickly as AMD FSR.
In this case, the most effective results from XeSS will be observed in video cards equipped with matrix engines XMX.
For the gas pedals that do not have them, the company has made provisions for XeSS to work via DP4a programming instructions.
Thanks to this, XeSS will be supported not only by Intel Arc graphics cards and Intel Iris integrated graphics, but also by older Intel processor integrated graphics architectures (such as Xe-LP) as well as competing graphics solutions.
During video presentation games, which in perspective will support Intel XeSS scaling technology, were also listed.The first AAA-class game, which will support XeSS, will be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, which will be released on October 28.