A strong start for a new, more open AI upscaler.
XeSS is exciting stuff.
It’s what I consider to be a second generation upscaler.
XeSS takes its place alongside these technologies.
To do this, XeSS uses information from current and previous frames, jittered over time.
The Arc A770 is the largest GPU in the Arc stack, with 32 Xe cores in total.
Arc’s XMX units process using the int-8 format in a massively parallel way, making it quick.
For non-Arc GPUs, XeSS works differently.
The performance and quality of XeSS on non-Intel cards is something we’ll be looking at in future.
The amount of performance saved over native rendering quality depends on the rendering load in question.
For example, at 1440p at those same configs, performance mode only increases performance by 52 percent.
Conversely, the heavier the rendering load is, the greater the savings will be.
Put simply, the more intensive the rendering, the bigger the gain using XeSS.
XeSS ultra quality mode goes further, at 1656p.
Let’s talk about the actual test methodology.
Another area to address concerns movement.
kindly enable JavaScript to use our comparison tools.
There is still some work for Intel though.
For starters, the moire effect stands out as one of its clearest weaknesses.
Even DLSS is not completely immune to this, but XeSS clearly presents this artefact in more scenarios.
DLSS has its issues in terms of clarity with water, but the jitter artefact is more offputting.
Particle rendering can be challenging for these upscalers, but XeSS and DLSS both work well here.
But that was about it.
Interestingly, the areas where I expected XeSS to be most challenged shows some good results against DLSS.
Disocclusion does not seem to cause large image discontuinities with XeSS, which is an excellent result.
Even with these issues, I would say XeSS is shaping up to be a great success.
And yes, it goes without saying that our tests were based on just one implementation.
There are many others coming out soon enough when Arc launches.
We’ll have more on XeSS soon, including how it runs on other GPUs.
Plug-ins for Unreal Engine and Unity?
They’re already done apparently.
