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.

The pirate sea-battle online multiplayer, "Skull and Bones" by Ubisoft, is on its way to become the first PC game to feature performance enhancements from all three GPU brands—NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS. Ubisoft also put out the system requirements for the four main quality-levels of the game—1080p Low, 1080p High, 1440p High, and 4K. The GPU requirements are fairly steep for 1080p High and 1440p High; and you'll need at least an RTX 3080 or RX 6800 XT for 4K premium experience. The only available Arc GPU you can buy right now is the A380, and this probably meets the 1080p Low requirements. The PC version of Skull and Bones includes ray-traced global illumination, HDR, uncapped FPS, support for ultra-widescreens, and an in-game benchmark.

ASRock's Arc A380 "Alchemist" graphics card is now available for purchase on US retailer Newegg for USD $139.99. The card is sold and shipped by Newegg from the US-based warehouses, and isn't a marketplace listing that imports them from foreign retailers. The ASRock A380 Challenger is a close-to-reference card that runs the A380 at slightly overclocked speeds, draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, and uses a simple aluminium monoblock fan-heatsink to cool the GPU. Based on the Xe-HPG graphics architecture, the Arc A380 features 1,024 unified shaders, meets DirectX 12 Ultimate API specs (which includes ray tracing), and comes with readiness for the XeSS performance enhancement. The card has 6 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 96-bit memory bus.

Intel earlier this week released its own performance numbers for as many as 50 benchmarks spanning the DirectX 12 and Vulkan APIs. From our testing, the Arc A380 performs sub-par with its rivals in games based on the DirectX 11 API. Intel tested the A750 in the 1080p and 1440p resolutions, and compared performance numbers with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060. Broadly, the testing reveals the A750 to be 3% faster than the RTX 3060 in DirectX 12 titles at 1080p; about 5% faster at 1440p; about 4% faster in Vulkan titles at 1080p, and about 5% faster at 1440p.

All testing was done without ray tracing, performance enhancements such as XeSS or DLSS weren't used. The small set of 6 Vulkan API titles show a more consistent performance lead for the A750 over the RTX 3060, whereas the DirectX 12 API titles sees the two trade blows, with a diversity of results varying among game engines. In "Dolmen," for example, the RTX 3060 scores 347 FPS compared to the Arc's 263. In "Resident Evil VIII," the Arc scores 160 FPS compared to 133 FPS of the GeForce. Such variations among the titles pulls up the average in favor of the Intel card. Intel stated that the A750 is on-course to launch "later this year," but without being any more specific than that. The individual test results can be seen below.The testing notes and configuration follows.

Intel officially launched the Arc A380 "Alchemist" entry-mainstream desktop graphics card in China, priced at RMB ¥1,030, including VAT, which roughly converts to USD $153. The Arc A380 "Alchemist" is based on the Xe-HPG graphics architecture, and the smaller DG2-128 (ACM-G11) silicon, which is built on the TSMC N6 (6 nm) silicon fabrication process.

The A380 desktop GPU is endowed with 8 Xe Cores, or 128 EU (execution units), which work out to 1,024 unified shaders. The chip features a 96-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface, running 6 GB of memory. Despite these hardware specs, you get full DirectX 12 Ultimate capability, including ray tracing, and the XeSS performance enhancement. There are also several content-creation accelerators, including Intel XMX, and AV1 hardware-encode capabilities.

The ambitious performance enhancement by Intel Graphics rivaling NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR, the Intel XeSS (Xe Super Sampling,) will debut on May 20, 2022, with a patch for "Dolmen," developer Massive Work Studio announced. This matches our report from March 2022 that referenced an "early Summer" debut. This would mean Intel Graphics has a driver release planned very soon, for its Xe LP-based iGPUs and Iris Xe MAX discrete GPU; as well as the first round of Arc 3 "Alchemist" mobile graphics, which will launch with XeSS support.

Much like FSR and DLSS, XeSS works with a supported game to render raster 3D scenes at a lower resolution than the display resolution, and upscales them using a sophisticated algorithm that minimizes image quality loss, with a net gain in frame-rates. XeSS will play a particularly big role in Intel's plans to grab a slice of the gaming graphics market with its Arc "Alchemist" discrete GPUs. XeSS appears to work similar to AMD FSR 2.0, with its upscaler using motion-vectors and temporal data from the game engine to reconstruct details in the outbound frames. Also, much like FSR, XeSS will be open to GPUs from other brands.Update May 17th: The Dolmen Twitter handle just put out an update that XeSS support is coming "this Summer," implying that it will not release on May 20 as earlier reported.

Some interesting technical specifications of the elusive two GPUs behind the Intel Arc "Alchemist" series surfaced. The larger DG2-512 silicon in particular, which forms the base for the Arc 5 and Arc 7 series, is interesting, in that it is larger in every way than the performance-segment ASICs from both NVIDIA and AMD. The table below compares the physical specs of the DG2-512, with the NVIDIA GA104, and the AMD Navi 22. This segment of GPUs has fairly powerful use-cases, including native 1440p gameplay, or playing at 4K with a performance enhancement—something Intel has, in the form of the XeSS.

The DG2-512 is built on the 6 nm TSMC N6 foundry node, the most advanced node among the three GPUs in this class. It has the highest transistor density of 53.4 mTr/mm², and the largest die-area of 406 mm², and the highest transistor-count of 21.7 billion. The Xe-HPG graphics architecture is designed for full DirectX 12 Ultimate feature support, and the DG2-512 dedicated hardware for ray tracing, as well as AI acceleration. The Arc A770M is the fastest product based on this silicon, however, it is a mobile GPU with aggressive power-management characteristic to the form-factor it serves. Here, the DG2-512 has an FP32 throughput of 13.5 TFLOPs, compared to 13.2 TFLOPs of the Navi 22 on the Radeon RX 6700 XT desktop graphics card, and the 21.7 TFLOPs of the GA104 that's maxed out on the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti desktop graphics card.

XeSS is arguably the most boasted-about new graphics technology by Intel. A performance enhancement that is functionally similar to AMD FSR or NVIDIA DLSS, XeSS will instrumental in making Arc "Alchemist" GPUs offer high performance with minimal loss to image quality, especially given that Intel's first crack at premium gaming GPUs also happens to include real-time ray tracing support, to meet DirectX 12 Ultimate specs.

Intel announced that XeSS won't be debuting with the Arc 3 series mobile GPUs that launched yesterday (March 30), but instead alongside the Arc 5 and Arc 7 series slated for early-Summer (late-May to early-June). At launch, several AAA titles will be optimized for XeSS, including "Ghostwire: Tokyo," "Death Stranding," "Anvil," "Hitman III," "GRID Legends," etc.

For decades, Intel has been a champion for PC platform innovation. We have delivered generations of CPUs that provide the computing horsepower for billions of people. We advanced connectivity through features like USB, Thunderbolt and Wi-Fi. And in partnership with the PC ecosystem, we developed the ground-breaking PCI architecture and the Intel Evo platform, pushing the boundary for what mobile products can do. Intel is uniquely positioned to deliver PC platform innovations that meet the ever-increasing computing demands of professionals, consumers, gamers and creators around the world. Now, we take the next big step.

Today, we are officially launching our Intel Arc graphics family for laptops, completing the Intel platform. These are the first discrete GPUs from our Intel Arc A-Series graphics portfolio for laptops, with our desktop and workstation products coming later this year. You can visit our Newsroom for our launch video, product details and technical demos, but I will summarize the highlights of how our Intel Arc platform and A-Series mobile GPU family will deliver hardware, software, services and - ultimately - high-performance graphics experiences.

Intel is preparing to debut the Arc "Alchemist" line of graphics processors with a mobile-first approach, where the company leverages its bulletproof relations with notebook manufacturers to use its discrete mobile GPUs to go with their 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" processors. These will be launch in two tranches, with the first round expected as early as today (March 30), according to a VideoCardz report citing a leaked company slide. The series will debut with the Arc 3 series of entry-level discrete GPUs, before moving onto the mid-range Arc 5 and premium Arc 7 series "early summer" (we read that as May-June, 2022).

The entire lineup of Arc "Alchemist" is based on two ASICs, the smaller one is the ACM-G11, or DG2-128; while the larger one is the ACM-G10, or DG2-512. The former comes with 128 execution units (EU), while the larger one has 512 EU. The Arc 3 series, consisting of the A350M and A370M, come with 96 and 128 EU (768 and 1,024 unified shaders), respectively, The mid-range Arc A550M is based on the lowest trim of the DG2-512, with half its EU count disabled (256 EU, or 2,048 shaders). The Arc A730M has three-fourths of the EU count enabled, while the A770M maxes it out.

Intel is reportedly targeting early-Summer (May-June) for the launch of its ambitious attempt at AAA gaming graphics cards for desktops, the Arc "Alchemist" series, based on the Xe-HPG graphics architecture, according to a report by Igor's Lab. Product launches are expected anywhere between May 2 and June 1, so one could expect some market availability within Summer. The Arc "Alchemist" series is designed to be sold through a handful board partners Intel already has strong industry relations with. The Arc "Alchemist" lineup will initially target four market segments, including the performance segment, meant for maxed out AAA gaming, with XeSS possibly even enabling 4K Ultra HD gameplay. Intel's entry to the gaming graphics space is expected to introduce an element of competitive pressure against both NVIDIA and AMD, as the company has the financial muscle to keep investing in this market if it tastes success with "Alchemist."