UL Launches New 3DMark Feature Test for Intel XeSS

New Intel GPUs are on the horizon (still, and or, again), and with that comes a new suite of testing features on the much-loved 3DMark. Having been a staple of the benchmarking scene seemingly forever, it’s great to see this new update rollout to add XeSS testing. This new feature test is available in 3DMark Advanced and Professional Editions. While Nvidia has DLSS and AMD has FSR, Intel have XeSS, but broadly they’re all some form of upscaling to improve FPS. I actually did a little dive into these technologies recently, which you can read here.

The 3DMark Intel XeSS frame inspector tool will help you compare images too, much like Nvidia iCAT does, so you can really dig into the image quality, not just the FPS while doing your testing. I’m hoping we’ll be able to test other upscaling technologies and compare them in a similar fashion.

Comparing performance and image quality with the Intel XeSS feature test

The test renders a scene based on the 3DMark Port Royal benchmark two times to show the effect XeSS has on performance and image quality. The first run measures baseline performance by rendering the scene with temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) at the output resolution.

The second run renders the scene at a lower resolution and then uses the selected XeSS mode 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.

3DMark Intel XeSS frame inspector

The 3DMark Intel XeSS feature test includes the frame inspector tool. This tool lets you compare image quality with a side-by-side view of Intel XeSS and native-resolution rendering. You can render up to 100 consecutive frames from the feature test and freely pan around or zoom in up to 32x.

About Intel Xess

XeSS (Xe Super Sampling) is a new Intel graphics technology that uses AI-enhanced upscaling to improve performance while maintaining high image fidelity. XeSS renders each frame at a lower resolution to boost performance and then uses AI upscaling to generate frames at the target output resolution.

Available now

The Intel XeSS feature test is a free update to 3DMark Advanced Edition for users who purchased 3DMark after January 8, 2019. You can buy 3DMark on Steam or direct from the UL Benchmarks website.

To run the Intel XeSS feature test, you must have a GPU that supports Intel XeSS and Microsoft DirectX ray tracing Tier 1.1. XeSS compatible GPUs include Intel Arc GPUs, as well as AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce GPUs with Shader Model 6.4 support. You also need Windows 11 or Windows 10 64-bit, version 20H2 or newer.

If you already own 3DMark but bought it before January 8, 2019, you’ll need to buy the Port Royal upgrade to unlock the Intel XeSS feature test.