XeSS to take on DLSS, FSR

[porina]

 

Quotes

Quote

 In choosing their approach, Intel seems to have gone in a similar direction as NVIDIA’s second attempt at DLSS. Which is to say, they’re using a combination of spatial data (neighboring pixels) and temporal data (motion vectors from previous frames) to feed a (seemingly generic) neural network that has been pre-trained to upscale frames from video games. Like many other aspects of today’s GPU-related announcements, Intel isn’t going into too much detail here. So there are plenty of outstanding questions about how XeSS handles ghosting, aliasing, and other artifacts that can arise from these upscaling solutions. With that said, what Intel is promising isn’t something that’s out of their reach if they’ve really done their homework. 

Summary

Intel have disclosed some aspects of their supersampling technology which will take on nvidia's DLSS and AMD's FSR. By using both spatial and temporal information feeding a neural network, it is closer to DLSS 2.0 than FSR in technology. But they intend to follow AMD's lead in other ways. While the best performance will use the logic in Intel's upcoming GPUs, there will also be a generic tier support which apparently will run on other recent generation GPUs. The implementation will also be open source, like FSR.

 

My thoughts

How will game devs react to this? When DLSS was the only thing, it was take it or leave it. With AMD recent FSR's introduction, they have a choice. FSR offers a degree of universal support, but will lack the ultimate quality of DLSS. Support one? Support both? Now there's a third option too?

 

Intel being the last to join the party is also trying to offer the best overall solution. Take the best from both AMD and nvidia's implementations and put it together. "AI"? Check. Compatible with other recent generation GPUs? Check. Will be open source? Check.

 

Sources

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16896/intel-architecture-day-20201-intel-unveils-xess-image-upscaling-technology

[Jurrunio]

Imo it will still depend on which one runs best on consoles. 

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

Neat. Looks like it may be a decent third option.

 

I tried the Back4Blood Beta and the inclusion and implementations of DLSS and FSR were surprising to me. DLSS was included as an "anti-aliasing" option oddly enough, and it seemed to work pretty well for that purpose. I ended up preferring it over the other options.

 

FSR was included as a sharpening feature, and I hated the way it made the game look, so I turned it off.

[tikker]

It's so exciting to be teased with actual competition again after years of green and blue. AMD and Nvidia are close GPU wise, AMD is getting ahead of Intel CPU wise. I'm really curious about how this will perform.

[The Torrent]

Idc who and what it is, game developers just get it implemented !!!

[Quackers101]

Depends on how easy it is to implement and how much it will benefit.

Hopefully in the end benefitting everyone and with some competition, just hope it doesn't cause conflict and games dropping support for one over the other.

 

At least a DLSS competitor and what generations this might go through, and what reconstruction capability it Could Get?

While FSR is a bit more generic, while a good tool if one wants some extra frames. Although XeSS seems mostly a focus on 4K imagery.

Edited August 19, 2021 by Quackers101

[AlTech]

Here I was thinking Intel would just be happy that FSR works (or will if it doesn't already) on Intel GPUs. 

[Orcblood]

Well this seems promising. Open Standards are good. DLSS, if this is close to it's performance & quality or better mind you, should be replaced by this. 

[RejZoR]

18 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Here I was thinking Intel would just be happy that FSR works (or will if it doesn't already) on Intel GPUs. 

They showcased Ai processed gameplay of GTA V that looked much more realistic than the actual game itself. But that was probably run on a supercomputer and it was glitchy. But they certainly have some experience in this Ai trickery even if on a much more basic level for purposes of upscaling.

[porina]

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

They showcased Ai processed gameplay of GTA V that looked much more realistic than the actual game itself. But that was probably run on a supercomputer and it was glitchy. But they certainly have some experience in this Ai trickery even if on a much more basic level for purposes of upscaling.

Intel is not a small organisation, and it may be that whoever did that GTAV realism mod is unrelated to XeSS. The goals are very different, with the GTAV mod aim being to change the game graphics into something more "photorealistic", and XeSS is an upscaler. The only two, common points are AI is involved somewhere and Intel in some way did it. 

[RejZoR]

32 minutes ago, porina said:

Intel is not a small organisation, and it may be that whoever did that GTAV realism mod is unrelated to XeSS. The goals are very different, with the GTAV mod aim being to change the game graphics into something more "photorealistic", and XeSS is an upscaler. The only two, common points are AI is involved somewhere and Intel in some way did it. 

My point was that they are researching many different things and seeing that, they surely have experts on board that know stuff well.

[Kisai]

On 8/19/2021 at 11:29 AM, porina said:

 

 

My thoughts

How will game devs react to this? When DLSS was the only thing, it was take it or leave it. With AMD recent FSR's introduction, they have a choice. FSR offers a degree of universal support, but will lack the ultimate quality of DLSS. Support one? Support both? Now there's a third option too?

 

 

 

I think the GPU vendors are chasing the wrong rabbit here.

 

These upscaling technologies belong in the monitors and televisions, where existing upscalers are "OK" for film and TV, but absolutely suck for video games.

 

Yes, the GPU's can have this technology, but ultimately if the GPU is capable of doing 4K, it should do 4K, not upscale from 1080p. You're not going to sell more high end parts if the low-end part can present a passable 4K experience to people who have 4K monitors. So I think the real goal here isn't even standard PC games, it's probably VR, where the higher refresh rate is required..

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

Yeah, maybe its for the 5 people who use VR, or its a cop out for devs for poor performance in titles like cyberpunk or even Resident Evil 3…

 

i mean i kinda like it, but its mostly useless to me i play at 1080p often with Nvidia  DSR, this does the opposite.

Useful in RPCS3 for certain titles however.

 

[Quackers101]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

Yes, the GPU's can have this technology, but ultimately if the GPU is capable of doing 4K, it should do 4K, not upscale from 1080p. You're not going to sell more high end parts if the low-end part can present a passable 4K experience to people who have 4K monitors. So I think the real goal here isn't even standard PC games, it's probably VR, where the higher refresh rate is required..

sure going native (full 4K) than a blended (sometimes a mess) of 4K images.

But for those that can't run it, it should be good or needing the extra frames + details.

like an inbetween 1080 to 4K solution and sometimes having the benefits of 4K and higher FPS.

Also some games are just going to be hard to run in 4K so having these solutions can help, but like other say, these solutions plus other engine solutions that is coming can encourage less optimization and poor performance in general and needing or built around these "solutions".

 

but as for running it in 4K native, it depends on the game as for motion, the upscaled one could if done right and helping a lot.

also that DLSS can do more than what 4K native offers and sometimes worse, some details it saves or reconstruct instead of not being there natively.

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

I think the GPU vendors are chasing the wrong rabbit here.

 

These upscaling technologies belong in the monitors and televisions, where existing upscalers are "OK" for film and TV, but absolutely suck for video games.

 

Yes, the GPU's can have this technology, but ultimately if the GPU is capable of doing 4K, it should do 4K, not upscale from 1080p. You're not going to sell more high end parts if the low-end part can present a passable 4K experience to people who have 4K monitors. So I think the real goal here isn't even standard PC games, it's probably VR, where the higher refresh rate is required..

 

 

When even RTX 3080 or RTX 3090 struggle to really run 4K game with ray tracing smoothly, there is no way that RTX 3060 will be able to do the same. And it scales similarly when DLSS is enabled. It often gives RTX 3060 or even RTX 2060 a fighting chance in running games way smoothly with DLSS and even maybe with ray tracing, but it'll just never be the same. And in honesty, when Quality mode is so good you can't really tell a difference, why does it even matter? I always slap ReShade with CAS on top which makes everything even sharper and brings out details that aren't even seen by default (surfaces actually get more visible cracks, scratches and surface textures like brushed metal or fabric texture). If that means I gain another 20% on top of RTX 3080 already being pretty fast, I'm not going to complain.

[porina]

6 hours ago, Kisai said:

These upscaling technologies belong in the monitors and televisions, where existing upscalers are "OK" for film and TV, but absolutely suck for video games.

It is impossible for a TV to do as good an upscaling job as on PC for at least two reasons that spring to mind.

 

Firstly, when used properly the likes of FSR and DLSS do not render everything at the lower resolution and scale the output to the higher resolution. Low perf impact elements, such as the UI, can still be rendered at native resolution and overlaid on the scaled game world content. This enhances the perception of image quality.

 

Secondly, the techniques used by nvidia and now Intel uses additional information from the game engine about what is happening. You're simply not going to have that available after going through a display link. 

 

I wouldn't say no to more flexibility on display side scalers, but it can't do what system side scaling can.

[Monkey Dust]

On 8/19/2021 at 7:35 PM, Jurrunio said:

Imo it will still depend on which one runs best on consoles. 

I'd have thought pretty much this. If game devs have to implement FSR for the console version, why put in the extra work to implement a different solution on PC? Especially when we are the smallest of the three audiences.

[Senzelian]

The moment I saw that picture I thought Intel would be getting into the camera business. And instead of DLSS I read DSLR.

Maybe I'm just tired...

[LAwLz]

Some additional info. 

 

The "Intel specific" version of XeSS uses the XMX matrix math unit which Intel is putting into their Xe-HPG card. 

 

The "generic version" of XeSS will apparently rely on the DP4a instruction. 

This means that it should be supported on Nvidia GPUs as old as the 1060, but probably only slightly newer AMD GPUs like Navi 12 and newer. 

[Quackers101]

well if it works any good on older cards or giving any good performance. Not sure what card they were using in the demo, but wanted to guess their own GPU? (if not it was stated).

[Guest]

On 8/20/2021 at 6:29 AM, porina said:

Support one? Support both? Now there's a third option too?

to be fair they're probably all proprietary or trademarked or whatever

On 8/20/2021 at 6:29 AM, porina said:

Intel being the last to join the party

 

three's a crowd, four's a party. bring on Matrox.

[leadeater]

11 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

three's a crowd, four's a party. bring on Matrox.

 

Going to need some strong ass magic to bring them back lol

[porina]

20 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

to be fair they're probably all proprietary or trademarked or whatever

That's an interesting point. Can you have an open source based technology with a trademark? My gut feeling is yes, but don't rely on me for legal advise! An example might be Android AOSP, or possibly the best known implementation of it, Amazon Fire tablets. They're using AOSP as base but it is NOT called Android in a quick skim of the product pages.

 

We might have a similar situation if the technology names are trademarked. That wont stop you from using the underlying functionality, but may affect how you refer to it.

 

I also presume it is possible to have a trademarked name and still grant a wide licence to use it without affecting retaining rights to the trademark. As an example, look at the social media companies. Quite often people want to use the logos in their own designs to indicate how to contact e.g. you can put your Twitter user name next to a Twitter icon. Twitter I'm sure will want to retain rights to their logo/icon, but they also grant a wide licence to use that in certain ways without needing a formal agreement with every single person doing so. YouTube on the other hand, do require you to submit a request to use the logo. I found this out when I started streaming... Facebook and Twitch are more chill like Twitter, with YouTube being the outlier here.

 

20 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

three's a crowd, four's a party. bring on Matrox.

Cirrus Logic, I choose you!

[Murasaki]

So I'm guessing XeSS is pronounced eggs-e ess-ess?

[porina]

3 hours ago, Murasaki said:

So I'm guessing XeSS is pronounced eggs-e ess-ess?

Quote

XeSS (pronounced “ex-ee-ess-ess”)

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16896/intel-architecture-day-20201-intel-unveils-xess-image-upscaling-technology