Intel details XeSS tech: Arc A770 GPU benched, 20+ games support XeSS

Intel has just detailed its XeSS technology that will be launching alongside its upcoming Arc GPU desktop graphics card family, which drops next month. Ahead of that, we've got some juicy new details on Intel's upcoming XeSS upscaling tech.

In a new demo, Intel's Ryan Shrout and Tom Peterson use an Intel Arc A770 graphics card running Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1440p and at maximum graphics settings, with ray tracing enabled. Tom ran his PC with XeSS on the "Balanced" preset, while Ryan was running Shadow of the Tomb Raider at the native 2560 x 1440 resolution with XeSS disabled.

XeSS on "Balanced" was running Shadow of the Tomb Raider at around 60-80FPS for the most part, while natively, the Intel Arc A770 was pushing out less than 60FPS, and spent most of its time at 40-50FPS or so.

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The key here is that XeSS was set to "Balanced" which provides "decent visuals and performance levels" while there's also the "Performance" preset if you wanted the "best performance" that pushes performance up to 87FPS average.

Intel XeSS presets:

• XeSS Performance = +2.5x Over Native
• XeSS Balanced = + 2.1x Over Native
• XeSS Quality = +1.8x Over Native
• XeSS Ultra Quality = +1.5x Over Native

Intel released some benchmark charts looking at the performance running 2560 x 1440 with XeSS enabled and set to both "Balanced" and "Performance" modes, as the company isn't sharing performance metrics on the "Quality" and "Ultra Quality" presets of Intel XeSS.

Ghostwire Tokyo enjoys the additional performance with a 75% increase in performance at 1440p, max graphics, and RT enabled. Hitman 3 is the same, with a 61% increase, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider with a 26% improvement in performance. This translates into 25FPS to 44FPS in Ghostwire Tokyo with XeSS enabled and set to "Balanced", Hitman 3 from 34FPS to 54FPS, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider from 62FPS to 79FPS.

Switching over to XeSS set to the "Performance" on the Intel Arc A770 graphics card, and we have some even better results: 2.1x more performance in Ghostwire Tokyo, 2x performance in Hitman 3, and 1.4x the performance in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. This is once again at 1440p but with XeSS set to "Performance", with the same maxed-out graphics settings, and RT enabled.

This is where the more impressive Intel Arc A770 performance metrics come from: 25FPS to 53FPS in Ghostwire Tokyo with XeSS set to "Performance" mode, 34FPS to 68FPS in Hitman 3, and 62FPS to 89FPS in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

• Read more: Intel XeSS launches on May 20, while GPUs are still MANY months away

Intel also announced it has teamed up with UL, the company behind the infamous 3DMark, on a new tool called the XeSS Feature Test... which isn't exclusive to Intel Arc GPUs but rather will work with other GPUs to show users what the benefits of XeSS can be. There will be a visual comparison so you can see a side-by-side comparison, where the benchmark itself will let you run it in the 4 x XeSS presets (Performance, Balanced, Quality, Ultra Quality).

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The company also announced that it will have Intel XeSS support inside of what will be one of the very biggest games of the year: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II which launches on October 8. There's a much bigger list of games that will have Intel XeSS support either when they launch, or over the coming months, these games include:

• 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

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