Last August we shared with you an article dedicated to Intel XeSS, an image rescaling technology that starts from a base similar to what we have seen in NVIDIA DLSS, and that moves away from the model that AMD has used in the technology FSR. In the end, the objective of these three technologies is the same, reconstruct and rescale an image from a lower resolution to achieve a higher resolution with the best possible result, but they differ in the techniques they use to achieve this.
Intel XeSS technology uses spatial and temporal elements, as well as movement vectors, and uses artificial intelligence to rely on an algorithm that will help you achieve the best possible result. That approach is essentially the same as what NVIDIA uses with DLSS, while AMD just uses spatial and temporal elements but doesn’t use AI.
The chip giant confirmed at the time that Intel XeSS will not need individualized training in games, something that will be essential to facilitate its implementation and to promote its adoption from the moment it becomes available, and has also made it clear that can be activated through two ways, one through hardware accelerationusing the XMX arrays, and another by software, using the DP4a instructions if we have a GPU that supports them.
Intel XeSS tested in video: it will be able to double the performance
We already had a lot of information about Intel XeSS, but the chip giant has just published a new video where it has once again delved into the most important keys of this technology, has shared performance results using an Intel Arc A770 and has confirmed the complete list with the first games that will be compatible with it. Total, we have 19 titles which we indicate below:
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II.
- Arcadegeddon.
- Ghostwire Tokyo.
- Vampire Bloodhunt.
- Ghostbusters Spirits Unleashed.
- Naraka Bladepoint.
- Super People.
- Gotham Knights.
- DioField Chronicles.
- Dolmen.
- Chivalry II.
- Redout II.
- The Settlers.
- Death Stranding: Director’s Cut.
- The Rift Breaker.
- Hitman III.
- CHORVS.
- Shadow of The Tomb Raider.
- Anvil Vault Breakers.
As we can see, there are quite a few triple A titles, and some of them are quite demanding at the hardware level. Ghostwire Tokyo, for example, supports ray tracing, a very demanding technology that significantly reduces the frame rate per second. Thanks to Intel XeSS it will be possible make up for that performance loss when ray tracing is activated.
The technical explanation offered by Intel in this video is very interesting, and starts from those two keys that we have given you, the XMX matrices and the DP4a instructions. To improve performance, Intel has opted for greater parallelization of operations. Instead of starting from the multiplication of two registers and accumulating it in another register, what they do is split a 32-bit register into 8-bit chunks that are multiplied and accumulatedwhich allows performance to be multiplied by four under DP4a.
Impressed? Well wait till you see what XMX arrays can do. (Adipex) This hardware unit specialized in artificial intelligence can work with eight accumulations in parallel and not with only one, which according to Intel allows multiply the yield by 16.
Intel XeSS technology starts from a lower resolution to render an image that it reconstructs and rescales to a higher resolution. This reduces rendering time needed to generate a high-resolution image, which allows a higher frame rate per second and significantly reduces resource consumption. In terms of performance, the impact it has is so great that it can double the performance, as we can see in the attached graphics and in the video.
