Intel is a newcomer to gaming GPUs, entering the market just in 2022 with its Arc Alchemist series. That series today is only comprised of three cards, although only the Intel Arc A750 has been able to join the ranks of the best gaming GPUs. When it comes to graphics cards, it's about the software as much as it is about the hardware, and it's been challenging for Intel to match Nvidia and AMD, which have been in the industry for two decades. Despite having to do everything from scratch, Intel is managing to compete with its rivals even in one of the most cutting-edge areas of gaming. Here's what you need to know about XeSS.
A competitor to both DLSS and FSR
Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) is an image quality boosting software that came out alongside Intel Arc GPUs in 2022. It's the newest member of a field of image quality enhancers, alongside DLSS, which launched in 2018, and FSR, which launched in 2021. The core idea behind these technologies is that you can boost performance by rendering the game at a lower resolution and boosting the quality to look like a higher resolution. You can make 1080p look like 1440p and have a higher framerate, which is just a free performance gain.
Like DLSS and FSR, XeSS only works if a game explicitly supports it, and at the time of writing, there are only about 50 games with XeSS support, as compared to 300 DLSS and 250 FSR titles. This isn't a good selling point for XeSS or Arc right now, but it's also true that Arc only launched less than a year ago. If Intel keeps this pace up, then XeSS could catch up easily.
However, XeSS could already be falling behind technologically as it lacks any answer to DLSS 3 and FSR 3, which not only increase image quality but also use frame generation to create new frames based on actually rendered ones. On paper, it's not a good look for Intel to be in last place, but frame generation is a double-edged sword since it increases latency as much as it increases framerates. Depending on the game, you may or may not care whether XeSS ever gets frame generation in an update.
Not one upscaler, but two
XeSS is actually pretty unique on a technical level compared to DLSS and FSR because it's not just one thing. Like DLSS, XeSS uses machine learning and can harness the AI hardware of Arc GPUs. Like FSR, XeSS can run on basically any modern GPU in any game. Somehow, Intel was able to combine the best of both DLSS and FSR into one piece of software (sort of).
When enabling XeSS, Arc GPU users can take advantage of their card's XMX units, which have AI functionality. This allows XeSS to use the most advanced machine learning model it has, and the end result is that (in theory), XeSS can go head-to-head with DLSS, which uses the Tensor cores in RTX GPUs to accelerate DLSS.
For those that don't have Arc GPUs, it's still possible to enable XeSS, but a less advanced machine learning model will be used instead. That's true even for owners of RTX GPUs, which have AI cores because XeSS isn't compatible. This does mean XeSS image quality on non-Arc cards could be lower than on Arc GPUs. At least it can still run for owners of Nvidia and AMD GPUs. Compatibility is the biggest selling point of FSR, and XeSS matches it in this regard.
Can XeSS make a difference for Arc?
So, is XeSS any good? That's a bit challenging to answer, as there's not a ton of testing data, and the reliable data we have (like this deep dive from Digital Foundry) is almost exclusively from when XeSS first came out. It's not even really clear if XeSS looks much worse on a non-Intel Arc card, which is something you'd think would be tested quite in-depth by now.
Reviews for the earliest versions of XeSS were fairly positive, however. It wasn't quite a DLSS competitor, but it stood up pretty well to FSR. Of course, with XeSS being only in 50 or so games, it's not exactly a killer feature, but Intel has to start somewhere. If XeSS manages to get into as many games as FSR, it'll definitely become a feature users will start seriously considering. The fact that all Arc GPUs, even the tiny A380, have access to the best version of XeSS is also important, especially for gamers on a budget, who often find RTX GPUs out of their price range.
While Intel didn't need to make XeSS, as AMD's FSR works on Intel GPUs too, the fact that Intel has gone ahead with XeSS anyway is a strong indication that the company is not only putting in serious effort in Arc but also wants its users to have the best quality possible. If nothing else, XeSS is a testament that Intel (probably) isn't going to abandon Arc as it has with so many other products. If XeSS takes off, it will be not only great for Intel GPU users but also Nvidia and AMD users too.