The Intel XeSS feature test helps you see how Intel XeSS affects gaming performance. The test renders a scene two times to show the effect XeSS has on performance and image quality.
The first run renders the scene at the output resolution with Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) to measure baseline performance.
and The second run renders the scene at a lower resolution then uses XeSS to upscale the frames to the output resolution.
The result screen shows you the average frame rate from each run and the difference in performance expressed as a percentage.
Intel XeSS Quality Modes
XeSS lets you balance performance and image quality with a selection of different Quality Modes, letting gamers configure the resolution scaling based on their preferences.
Intel XeSS was initially released with support for four quality modes, with XeSS version 1.3 introducing a further three quality settings. With the 1.3 update, Intel also adjusted the resolution scaling for each mode to reflect new improvements to image quality.
You can select from the following quality modes in the XeSS feature test:
| XeSS quality mode | XeSS 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 resolution scaling | XeSS 1.3.1 resolution scaling |
| Native | N/A | 1.0x |
| Ultra Quality Plus | N/A | 1.3x |
| Ultra Quality | 1.3x | 1.5x |
| Quality | 1.5x | 1.7x |
| Balanced | 1.7x | 2.0x |
| Performance | 2.0x | 2.3x |
| Ultra Performance | N/A | 3.0 |
Source: Intel XeSS 1.3 accelerates into the next generation of AI upscaling
- Intel gaming access blog
XeSS output resolution settings.
You can choose the output resolution for the test. By default, the test uses the 2560 × 1440 output resolution. You can select from the following resolutions:
- 1920 × 1080 (1080p)
- 2560 × 1440 (1440p)
- 3840 × 2160 (4K)
The lower the resolution the lower the image quality, but higher performance due to a lighter load on the GPU. You can choose 1920 × 1080 for the highest performance and 3840 × 2160 for the highest image quality.
Display resolution
For both parts of the test, the output resolution is scaled (if required) to the Scaled resolution setting on the 3DMark Options screen. By default, this is set to Automatic, which scales the output resolution to the display resolution of your Windows desktop. You can override this setting on the Options screen to test other scenarios based on the resolution and scaling capabilities of your monitor.
Scaling from output resolution to your display resolution has a negligible effect on performance.