The Finals—a free-to-play online first-person shooter—has pulled in a large population of gamers across Windows PCs and current-gen gaming consoles since its surprise launch last month, but players on Linux Desktop + Intel Arc hardware were missing out on this experience...until very recently. Phoronix reports that Embark Studio's Unreal Engine 5-powered title has started to work in a Linux environment "thanks to Valve's Steam Play (Proton + VKD3D-Proton). With the latest Mesa driver activity, Intel Arc Graphics on Linux with their open-source driver can now handle this popular game." GamingOnLinux owner, Liam Dawe, created a post about this development, although he noticed a multitude of stability problems and glitches in-game, but was largely up and running with an AMD Radeon 6800 XT GPU on Mesa 23.3.3.

Phoronix's Michael Larabel noted some (Intel Arc-specific) feedback on GitLab: "when launching The Finals on Linux with Intel Arc Graphics using the default DirectX 12 renderer, it was reported that the game is stuck at a black screen for Intel Arc Graphics and then simply closes... Well, it's an easy fix and one that has come up before." He has witnessed similar problems with other games—notably Diablo IV and Cyberpunk 2077: "due to The Finals using Intel's XeSS upscaling tech but that not behaving well on Linux. The Windows game sees Intel Graphics being utilized and by default tries to leverage XeSS...Intel Arc Graphics on Linux can run The Finals when concealing the fact that it's Intel Graphics inside."

MSI made a really bold move building a handheld game console around an Intel Core Ultra processor, when traditional logic would've pushed them to the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme. The Claw is powered by a Core Ultra 7 155H processor with some tight power management by MSI. The 155H comes with a maxed out Arc Xe-LPG integrated graphics, with 8 Xe cores, worth 128 EU (1,024 unified shaders). In comparison, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme has a maxed out Radeon 780M with 12 CU worth 768 stream processors. Specs are just half the story, the design win the Arc Graphics gets from MSI as the primary GPU, over the Radeon 780M that comes from company that's been designing GPUs for close to 3 decades, is the main story here.

The MSI Claw is about the same size as an ASUS ROG Ally (powered by the Ryzen Z1), with a 16:9 1080p, 120 Hz touchscreen in the middle, flanked by two halves of the main controller. The MSI Center M is the main user interface, which runs on top of Windows 11. This has a game launcher, a platform aggregator (though not with a storefront), and will probably get some gamer social media features down the line. There are two variants of the Claw, the $749 main variant powered by the Core Ultra 7 155U, and a cheaper $699 variant that rocks a Core Ultra 5 135H (with 4P+8E CPU). Both come with a 53 Wh battery that's larger than the 40 Wh on the ROG Ally. The demo piece is the $749 model powered by the 155H, and was shown running "Assassin's Creed: Mirage" with XeSS enabled. Gameplay was butter smooth, and with reasonably good settings. The Claw is a much needed vote of confidence for the Arc Graphics team, more than anything.

With the zeitgeist of AI technology taking the world by storm, MSI, a world-leading premium laptop brand, has taken it in stride through its professionalism over luxurious aesthetics, extreme performance and innovative technology. Announcing the world's first gaming handheld powered by Intel Core Ultra Processor - the Claw. Equipped with ARC graphics featuring up to 8 Xe cores and advanced XeSS technology, the Claw ensures smooth gameplay across various AAA titles. Its robust HyperFlow cooling system and a large 53Wh battery, coupled with Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, make it an exceptional handheld gaming device for gamers.

"In our commitment to enhancing the gaming experience for our users, we aim to address market pain points and dedicate efforts to the handheld space," said Eric Kuo, the Executive Vice President& NB BU GM of MSI. "We have fine-tuned specific designs tailored exclusively for gamers, debuting our very first handheld, Claw, which redefines the standards in the handheld market."

With both NVIDIA and AMD having the ability to nearly double frame-rates in games using frame generation technologies such as DLSS 3 and FSR 3, Intel Graphics couldn't be too far behind. The company is taking a significantly different approach than the other two GPU makers. In a research paper titled "ExtraSS Framework Details Intel's Take on Frame Generation," Intel provides an overview of how ExtraSS works, and its obvious advantage over DLSS 3 and FSR 3—latency.

ExtraSS is a technology that relies on frame extrapolation, instead of interpolation on FSR 3 and DLSS 3. In interpolation, the software uses past- and future frames to guess an in-between frame, using motion vectors and temporal data. This adds latency, which is why NVIDIA and AMD rely on technologies such as Reflex and Anti-Lag+ to mitigate it. There's no such technological problem to solve with ExtraSS. On the other hand, generating frames entirely using past frames (i.e. extrapolation in the literal sense of the word), can result in artifacts and ghosting. Intel intends to solve this using a new warping method, and AI. ExtraSS should come in particularly handy as Intel is betting big on giving its processors powerful iGPUs, such as the Xe-LPG powering the Core Ultra "Meteor Lake," while its Arc "Alchemist" GPUs remain a generation older than what NVIDIA and AMD have in the dGPU market. Intel hopes to launch its next-generation "Battlemage" discrete GPUs in 2024.

Bethesda has released its latest Starfield Update 1.8.88 for all platforms, and as a minor update, it only fixes several issues, including a rather annoying bug where space matter is stuck to the player's ship during space travel, also known as the "pet-asteroid" bug. The new update also fixes a bug that prevents random guns spawning in a newly created Weapon Case after loading, and fixes an issue where the game crashes while saving in some scenarios.

As this is a minor patch, it kept everyone wondering when we would see some other promised updates, including city maps, official mod support, a possible new vehicle, and more. Thankfully, Bethesda took to Reddit and clarified that the major update will be coming early next year, bringing support for AMD FSR 3 and Intel XeSS, as well as numerous "in-progress" quest fixes. The post adds that they have been hard at work on fixing many of the issues that were posted, as well as on those new features.

Sparkle Computer and Intel, longstanding Thunderbolt development partner since 2015, have announced a new partnership to launch the SPARKLE Intel Arc Series Graphics Cards. With a wealth of experience producing quality industrial graphics cards, ODM solutions and peripherals, Sparkle is now expanding our reach into the consumer graphics business.

"We value this collaboration and we are fully prepared," says Willie Huang, General Manager of Sparkle Computer Co., LTD. "Sparkle is dedicated to creating a creator-friendly working environment, ranging from industrial graphics, external GPU to docking stations.... As the last piece of the puzzle, Sparkle Intel Arc Graphics, featuring an advanced Xe Media engine and AV1 encoder, has fully completed our product line and fulfilled the requirement of the desktop community"

Intel late Thursday released the Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4502 WHQL. The drivers address a major issue that caused the iTunes Windows app to crash during launch. It also addresses a blank screen error noticed in some apps that use WebView2 embedded content. These aside, the the company identified new issues with GPU hardware acceleration for Premiere Pro, errors with Topaz Video AI, and crash with F1 23 on certain XeSS presets. There are no new game optimizations with this release.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Driver 101.4502 WHQL

Intel Graphics today released the latest version of Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.4499 beta adds optimization for F1 23, Aliens: Dark Descent, Forever Skies, and Counter Strike 2. There are major performance uplifts to be had. Counter Strike 2 sees up to 8% uplift at 1440p with high settings, and up to 10% at 1080p with Very High settings. F1 23 players can expect up to 33% uplift at 1080p with Ultra High settings and RT on, and an 18% uplift with RT off; and a 27% uplift at 1440p with high settings. Intel also updated its Destiny 2 optimization, with a neat 11% uplift to be had at 1080p with the highest settings. An error or black screen seen on applications embedding WebView2 frames, has been fixed.

DOWNLOAD: Intel GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4499 Beta

Intel Arc graphics have dedicated AI hardware built-in. Leveraging those capabilities for gaming gets the most performance possible out of Arc GPUs, and that's exactly what Xe Super Sampling does. Let's look closer: when you turn on XeSS, every frame the GPU renders starts at a lower size than your target resolution. That smaller image renders quickly, then XeSS steps in. XeSS uses a trained AI model combined with motion vectors and frame history to intelligently upscale frames to full HD, 1440p, or 4K. Got all that? The sausage-making can get pretty technical, but the important thing is turning XeSS on scales games to high resolutions faster than traditional rendering could.

FPS numbers aren't the only thing we're increasing: over fifty games now include XeSS, from the biggest franchises to your niche favorites. When we launched the Intel Arc A750 and A770, we showed how XeSS works to boost FPS in nine popular games with over a dozen more on the way. Now with our high-performance desktop GPUs out for half a year, our game developer friends have helped deliver even more AI-fueled upscaling to over fifty new and existing games. A full list of every game and demo with XeSS included is at the bottom of this article.

CD Projekt RED has released the newest update for The Witcher 3 Next-Gen, bringing performance improvements for ray tracing, adding support for Intel XeSS, and fixing some issues seen earlier.

According to the update release notes, the latest The Witcher 3 Next-Gen Update 4.03 introduces general performance improvements for ray-traced global illumination and ray-traced reflections, and fixes some issues seen with ray-traced shadows. It also addresses issue with DirectX 11 crashing on certain AMD GPUs, adds support for Intel Xe Super Sampling, and fixes lighting issues with Screen Space Reflection when ray-traced global illumination is off. There are also plenty of visual, quest, and gameplay fixes on both the PC and other platforms.

Avalanche Software has released quite a big patch for Hogwarts Legacy, improving visual, performance, gameplay, and general stability. In addition to more than 500 bug fixes, it also brings the new Arachnophobia Mode.

Performance-wise, the newest patch resolves general crashes on the PC and various memory leaks, brings plenty of optimizations, fixes ray tracing issues, and more. It also updates minimum driver recommendation for NVIDIA graphics cards, updates NVIDIA DLSS to v3.1.2, AMD FSR to v2.2, and Intel XeSS to v1.1.

CD Projekt RED, the developer of Cyberpunk 2077, has advertised including various super sampling technologies like NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and now Intel XeSS supersampling. With the inclusion of XeSS version 1.1, Intel's Arc Alchemist graphics cards can record a significant performance uplift. Thanks to the Intel game blog, we compare XeSS enabled versus XeSS disabled, measuring the ability to play Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p Ultra settings with medium ray tracing enabled. The FPS comparison was conducted with Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition GPU, which was paired with Intel Core i9-13900K and 32 GB of RAM.

With XeSS off, the A750 GPU struggled and only reached 39 FPS. However, with XeSS set to performance, the number jumped to 67 FPS, making for a smooth user experience and gameplay. This is a 71% performance uplift, enabled by a new update in the game. Interestingly, Intel XeSS is computed on Arc's XMX Units, while NVIDIA and AMD compute their super sampling on shader units.

The latest update for Kojima Productions Death Stranding Director's Cut is bringing support for the latest version of Intel XeSS, DualSense Edge support, and additional minor fixes.

Released over at Steam, the 5 GB update is not a major update and adds support for Intel XeSS 1.1, which brings new advanced XeSS upscaling model improving temporal stability, bringing faster DP4a kernels, and faster XMX kernels. The Intel XeSS 1.1 also adds optional auto-exposure. The new update adds DualSense Edge support as well, with a note that players will need to disable Steam Input and connect their controller with a USB C cable in order to use the full functionality of the DualSense Edge. The update also reduce ghosting, moire, and flickering in the game.

CD Projekt Red has now officially released the long-awaited patch for Cyberpunk 2077, bringing RT: Overdrive mode with Path Tracing technology preview, and other improvements. The new patch adds a Ray Tracing Overdrive and Path Tracing presets, which have to be manually enabled. Of course, the Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode is only supported on the NVIDIA RTX 40 series graphics cards, and it will work on the RTX 3090 graphics card, although it is only limited to 1080p resolution.

The new patch also adds an option to enable Path Tracing for Photo Mode, and adds support for NVIDIA DLAA, which is NVIDIA's AI-based anti-aliasing mode meant to improve image quality. To not make it all about NVIDIA, CD Projekt Red also added support for Intel XeSS 1.1, and some minor benchmark improvements. Unfortunately, and surprisingly, the new patch does not bring any expected gameplay improvements, which will probably come at a later date in a separate patch.

Intel cut the baseline prices of its Arc A750 performance-segment graphics card. The card now starts at USD $249, down from its launch price of $289 for the first-party reference-design card. Among the handful custom-design board partners for the A750 are Acer, Gunnir, and ASRock. The A750 targets maxed-out AAA gaming at 1080p, although the card is capable of higher resolutions with the Intel XeSS performance enhancement.

Based on the 6 nm ACM-G10 silicon, the A750 is endowed with 3,584 unified shaders across 28 Xe Cores or 448 EUs, 224 TMUs, 112 ROPs, and 8 GB of 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory across the chip's full 256-bit wide memory interface (512 GB/s memory bandwidth). The card has a typical board power of 225 W, draws it from a combination of 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connectors; and has modern display outputs that include HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 2.1. The Arc "Alchemist" family of GPUs meets the full DirectX 12 Ultimate feature-set, including real-time ray tracing. They also have regular driver updates with day-zero optimization for big game releases.Many Thanks to TumbleGeorge for the tip.

Intel released the XeSS Unreal Engine plugin, letting game developers integrate the performance enhancement technology with their Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 5 powered games, simulators, and 3D visualization applications. The plugin lets Unreal Engine take advantage of XeSS not just on Intel Arc "Alchemist" GPUs, where they benefit from the accelerated XMX code-path; but also AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, where the technology takes advantage of the slower yet functional DP4a code-path. XeSS is technically a second-generation super-resolution technology that Intel claims is on-par with AMD FSR 2.x and NVIDIA DLSS 2. Integrating it is as straightforward as adding AMD FSR support. Those interested can grab the plugin from the GitHub source link, below.

We're excited to release a new 3DMark feature test for Intel's new XeSS AI-enhanced upscaling technology. This new feature test is available in 3DMark Advanced and Professional Editions. 3DMark feature tests are special tests designed to highlight specific techniques, functions, or capabilities. The Intel XeSS feature test shows you how XeSS affects performance.

The 3DMark Intel XeSS frame inspector tool helps you compare image quality with an interactive side-by-side comparison of XeSS and native-resolution rendering. Check out the images below to see an example comparison of native resolution rendering and XeSS in the new 3DMark feature test.

The Intel Arc 7-series performance-segment graphics cards announced earlier this week, are all priced within $60 of each other. The series begins with the Arc A750 at USD $289. $40 more gets you the Arc A770 Limited Edition 8 GB, at $329. The top-of-the-line Arc A770 Limited Edition 16 GB is priced just $20 higher, at $349. This puts the Intel flagship at least $30 less than the cheapest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 available in the market right now, which can be had for $380. The dark horse here is the AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT, which is going for as low as $320.

Intel extensively compared the A770 to the RTX 3060 in its marketing materials, focusing on how its ray tracing performance is superior to even that of NVIDIA RTX in this segment, and that the Intel XeSS performance enhancement is technologically on-par with 2nd generation super-scaling techs such as FSR 2.0 and DLSS 2. If Intel's performance claims hold, the A770 has the potential to beat both the RTX 3060 and RX 6650 XT in its segment. The Arc A750, A770 8 GB, and A770 16 GB, go on sale from October 12. Stay tuned for our reviews.

It's the moment you've been waiting for! (And the moment our teams have been working towards!) The Intel Arc A750 and A770 GPUs will be for sale on October 12th starting at $289 and $329 respectively, with the Arc A770 Limited Edition available for $349. After years of price increases in the massive $200-400 GPU segment, Intel is bringing balance back to the GPU market. Pricing seems to have gone off the deep end and we're working to reel it back in with the Intel Arc A-series GPUs. As we've shown in earlier performance blogs, the Arc A750 and A770 trade blows with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060—a popular mainstream GPU. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger called out the extreme GPU prices in his Intel Innovation Day 1 keynote, showing that the last four years have seen a nonstop upward trend in prices of mainstream GPUs. By entering the GPU space as a third player, Intel is ready to turn these tides in gamers' favor and disrupt the market.

On average, a new GeForce RTX 3060 will set you back $418. (This number was calculated on Newegg.com, targeting in stock, sold by Newegg, new RTX 3060 cards as of Sept 22, 2022.) Picking up an Intel Arc A750 on October 12th for $289 gets you 53% more performance per dollar on average, or an 8 GB Arc A770 for $329 provides 42% more perf/dollar. Why is that? The Arc A700-series performance beats the 3060 in most modern titles using DirectX 12 or Vulkan APIs and our GPUs aren't far behind in most DX11 games—all for much less cash.

Intel's ambitious XeSS (Xe Super Sampling) performance enhancement formally launched, with the latest "Shadow of the Tomb Raider" patch dated September 27. The patch release notes describes this feature addition as "Added XeSS graphics support for DX12-compatible systems." This means that XeSS not only works in its native XMX code-path for Arc "Alchemist" GPUs, but also the agnostic DP4a code. CapFrameX confirmed that XeSS works with Radeon RX 6000 RDNA2 GPUs, which means the DP4a fallback has been implemented. The XeSS feature-addition to SoTR comes just in time as reviews of the Arc A770 are expected to go live early next month, with availability slated for October 12. You can learn more about XeSS in our older article.

Here's the first picture of a custom-design Intel Arc A750 "Alchemist" graphics card, in this case, an ASRock Arc A750 Challenger. ASRock showed the card off at its Tokyo Game Show 2022 booth. The strictly 2-slot thick card appears to have a fairly well-endowed aluminium fin-stack cooling solution featuring a pair of large 100 mm fans. Its cooling solution uses two aluminium fin-stacks skewered by a number of copper heat pipes. The card draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and features some illumination in the way of an illuminated Arc logo.

The Arc A750 is based on the same 6 nm "DG2-512" silicon as the A770 Limited Edition—which looks increasingly like an Intel-exclusive that will only be sold in its reference design. While the A770 maxes out the chip with all 32 Xe Cores being enabled (512 EUs, or 4,096 unified shaders), the A750 gets 28 Xe Cores (448 EUs, or 3,584 unified shaders). It also gets 8 GB of 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit wide memory interface (512 GB/s bandwidth), 448 XMX units (accelerates AI and features like XeSS), and 28 RT units. The reference engine clock of the A750 is set at 2.05 GHz, although it's likely that the ASRock Challenger is a factory-overclocked card.

Intel XeSS is a second-generation upscaling technology that's at par with DLSS 2.0 and FSR 2.0, says Digital Foundry, which got an exclusive early-access an Arc A770 graphics card along with XeSS, and the latest version of "Shadow of the Tomb Raider," which features XeSS besides DLSS. The publication compared the A770 + XeSS with a GeForce RTX 3070 + DLSS, and in its testing, found XeSS to offer comparable or better image quality at low frame-times. XeSS uses a AI-ML algorithm to reconstruct details, which is accelerated by the XMX cores on Xe-HPG "Alchemist" GPUs. XeSS hence currently only supports Arc GPUs, however, the company is working on a DP4a (programming model) version so XeSS could work on other GPU architectures, across brands.

An upscaling algorithm by design adds to frame-times (time taken to render a frame to display), and in Digital Foundry's testing, the most aggressive preset of XeSS, Performance, which upscales 720p to 1440p, adds 2 ms to the frame-time. A 1080p to 4K upscaling in the same mode, adds 3.4 ms to the frame-time, which jumps from 8.8 ms to 12.2 ms (an increase of 3.4 ms). The increase in frame-times is a good trade-off when you consider the performance gained—a staggering 88 percent increase in frame-rates for 1080p to 4K upscaling, and 52 percent increase with 720p to 1440p upscaling. Frame-times increase as you move up the presets toward the Quality mode, which renders the game at resolutions closer to native-resolution, so the performance-gained is smaller. XeSS offers a preset it calls "Ultra Quality," which renders the game at a resolution closest to native, while still yielding a 16-23 percent frame-rate gain, with an output that's practically indistinguishable from native-resolution.

Intel is preparing to announce a mega games+software bundle for prebuilt-desktops and notebooks that combine 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" processors and Arc "Alchemist" graphics. The bundle covers select models of 12th Gen Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 processors, along with Arc A500-series and Arc A700-series graphics. The total retail value of the bundle can be as high as $370.

Among the premium games bundled are "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II" (2022), "Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed," "Gotham Knights," and "Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodhunt." The Featured Software bundle, from which you can choose 3 out 5, include PowerDirector 365, D5 Render (limited subscription), MAGIX Video Pro X14 (limited subscription), Topaz Gigapixel AI, and XSplit Premium Suite. All the games in the bundle either are or will be optimized for Arc "Alchemist" graphics, and will feature XeSS. All the productivity software included takes advantage of the AI-acceleration capabilities and Hybrid architecture of 12th Gen Core processors. The list of eligible processors and graphics cards are tabled below.

Intel on Thursday posted an article that dives deep into the ray tracing architecture of its Arc "Alchemist" GPUs, which are particularly relevant with performance-segment parts such as the Arc A770, which competes with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060. In the article, Intel posted ray tracing performance numbers that put it at-par with, or faster than the RTX 3060, which which it has traditional raster performance parity. In theory, this would make Intel's ray tracing tech superior to that of AMD RDNA2, because while the AMD chips have raster performance parity, their ray tracing performance do not tend to be at par with NVIDIA parts at a price-segment level.

The Arc "Alchemist" GPUs meet the DirectX 12 Ultimate feature-set, and its ray tracing engine supports DXR 1.0, DXR 1.1, and Vulkan RT APIs. The Xe Core is the indivisible subunit of the GPU, and packs its main number-crunching machinery. Each Xe Core features a Thread Sorting Unit (TSU), and a Ray Tracing Unit (RTU). The TSU is responsible for scheduling work among the Xe Core and RTU, and is the core of Intel's "secret sauce." Each RTU has two ray traversal pipelines (fixed function hardware tasked with calculating ray intersections with intersections/BVH. The RTU can calculate 12 box intersections per cycle, 1 triangle intersection per cycle, and features a dedicated cache for BVH data.

Intel Graphics today posted a technological deep-dive video presentation into how XeSS (Xe Super Sampling), the company's rival to NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR, works. XeSS is a gaming performance enhancement technology where your game is rendered by the GPU at a lower resolution than what your display is capable of; while a high-quality upscaling algorithm scales it up to your native resolution while minimizing quality losses associated with classical upscaling methods.

The video details mostly what we gathered from our older articles on how XeSS works. A game's raster and lighting is rendered at a lower-resolution, frame-data along with motion vectors are fed to the XeSS upscaling algorithm, and is then passed on to the renderer's post-processing and the native-resolution HUD is applied. The XeSS upscaler takes not just motion vector and the all important frame inputs, but also temporal data from processed (upscaled) frames, so a pre-trained AI could better reconstruct details.