It’s thanks to a really tough test that we can see that the scaling technology developed by Intel to compete with Nvidia’s DLSS is a real success. As usual, Digital Foundry has carried out an in-depth examination of Intel’s technology, pitting it against Nvidia’s DLSS. Even if one could criticize the exercise for focusing on Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the XeSS comes out particularly well considering its youth compared to the DLSS evolutions.
Intel XeSS: a technology still in “beta” and already on the level
For those who still have no idea of the interest of scaling technologies. These technologies bring a considerable improvement in the quality of certain games. They allow you to run games at higher frame rates or enable effects like Raytracing without bringing your graphics card to its knees. The magic is that your GPU actually renders fewer pixels and then upscales the resulting image, often with the help of dedicated hardware. Digital Foundry mentions the following example: if you have a 1080p display, XeSS will run the game at 960 x 540 in its highest performance (the resolution that allows the most FPS) and 720p in its “Quality” mode before scaling it to your monitor’s native resolution.
But let’s get back to the XeSS test itself. When using the techno with an Arc A770 card, there was a significant increase in frame rates compared to running the game in 1080p or native 4K. Important point: there was no huge drop in visual quality. Comparing the result to the same footage but processed by Nvidia’s DLSS, XeSS was able to retain a comparable amount of sharpness and detail in many areas. But be warned, not everything is rosy. On scenes with an intense level of detail, some artifacts could be seen at times. Problems also found for Nvidia but to a lesser extent.
XeSS is obviously still in its infancy and Intel has listed about 21 games that will support XeSS. This is still a small number compared to the 200+ titles DLSS works with. But the results already put this technology neck and neck with Nvidia’s solution. It should also be remembered that XeSS will also be usable on other non-Xe graphics cards, including those from Nvidia or AMD.
