I tested Intel’s new XeSS 2 to see if it really holds up against DLSS 3

Although it technically arrived alongside the Arc B580, Intel quickly disabled its new XeSS 2 feature shortly after it was introduced. Now, it’s back via a new driver update, and with a few fixes to major crashes issues. I took XeSS 2 out for a spin with the Arc B580, which has quickly climbed up the rankings among the best graphics cards, but does XeSS 2 hold up its side of the bargain?

XeSS 2 is Intel’s bid to fight back against Nvidia’s wildly popular DLSS 3. The upscaling component at the core of XeSS is the same, but XeSS 2 includes both a Reflex-like latency reduction feature and, critically, frame generation. The latency reduction, called XeLL, is enabled by default with frame generation.

Intel has promised frame generation in games like Marvel Rivals, as well as upcoming releases like Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but right now, it’s only available in one game: F1 2024. It’s an impressive feature overall, but after testing it myself, I can see that there are still some problems with Intel’s new tech.

A big performance boost

Let’s start with the positives. XeSS 2 still works really well for boosting your performance. I’ve seen the upscaling portion at work plenty of times before, and depending on the game, it can sometimes match the quality of DLSS. Unsurprisingly, F1 2024 is a perfect showcase for the upscaling portion, but frame generation also works well.

To put that in perspective, the Arc B580 is capable 29 frames per second (fps) in F1 2024 at 4K with the Ultra High preset. That present includes ray tracing. The fact that the Arc B580 can even manage that level of performance is impressive enough, but with XeSS 2 enabled and set to Performance mode upscaling, you’re getting more than triple the performance at 95 fps. It’s a massive uplift in performance, sure, but more importantly, it’s playable. Looking at frame generation or upscaling alone, you aren’t able to get above 60 fps.

At lower resolutions, you’re pushing into triple-digit frame rates, which is great considering this is a $250 graphics card running a recent game with maxed-out ray tracing settings.

Moreover, the performance overhead isn’t huge. I tested frame generation and upscaling individually to see how much performance you’re losing when running the frame generation algorithm, and the overhead is surprisingly small. There’s a pretty easy way to figure it out. If you look at the native performance of, for example, 1440p, you get 49 fps. Frame generation inserts a frame every other frame, so you’d double your performance to 98 fps. That theoretical number minus the actual result — 86 fps — shows the overhead. In this case, about 12 frames each second.

What’s interesting is that the frame generation works better at lower resolutions. You’re getting less juice out of upscaling at a lower resolution due to the CPU bottleneck that’s imposed by a low internal render resolution. Frame generation doesn’t care about a CPU bottleneck, though, so you’re still able to get close to triple the frame rate at 1080p with upscaling and frame generation turned on.

The image quality is surprisingly good, too, at least compared to the first versions of DLSS 3. I noticed some small issues, particularly with names above each car stuttering across the screen as if they were running at half the frame rate. I suspect Intel needs to tune XeSS 2’s masking — the parts of the scene it tries to cut out of the frame generation — to provide a smoother image. Still, there aren’t a ton of visual artifacts, at least in F1 2024. 

…when it works

But still, there are issues. First and foremost, turning on XeSS is buggy. That’s not new. Virtually any game I’ve tested with the feature will lock up for five to 10 seconds when turning on XeSS. That doesn’t happen with DLSS or AMD’s FSR. In the early days of XeSS, you’d sometimes encounter a full-on game crash when turning on XeSS. I haven’t seen that happen in a while, but the hang-up when turning on XeSS looms.

It looks like XeSS-FG is carrying some of those issues forward. Right now, turning off XeSS-FG will crash F1 2024, full stop. I tried half a dozen times, and the game crashed each time. At the very least, the crash was quick — the game just closes without explanation. Intel says there’s a known issue with F1 2024 where turning on XeSS-FG during gameplay can cause a crash. However, I saw the crash even when changing settings from the main menu.

In addition, turning on XeSS-FG caused a massive slowdown in the game. In a couple of instances during my testing, I had to fully restart the game, as my inputs would take upward of 30 seconds to reflect in-game. It’s a good thing XeSS 2 is only available in one game right now because if it was available more widely, I imagine there’d be a lot of frustration with even turning the feature on.

Ironically, the other issue with XeSS 2 is a lack of game support. Although the feature is coming to a handful of titles, I would’ve liked to see a wider range of games at release. That’s something I’ve criticized AMD about with FSR 3 in the past — and something that AMD has turned the corner on nearly a year after releasing the feature.

With XeSS 2 only available in one game, and with an implementation that, although impressive, is clearly buggy, it looks like Intel is testing the waters before a wider release of XeSS 2. My hope is that the kinks are ironed out before XeSS 2 shows up in another game because, based on my first look at the feature, it’s mighty impressive.