XeSS performs worse than native rendering on AMD's Ryzen 7 5700G

Shadow of the Tomb Raider - A bow-wielding Lara Croft stares down an irate jaguar.
(Image credit: Square Enix)

Yesterday I looked at the performance of Intel XeSS upscaling tech running on an Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti. While not quite up to the performance of DLSS, it wasn't far off, and the image quality was impressive. A promising start for Intel. Especially given that it runs on not just Intel's graphics cards, but AMD's and Nvidia's too.

In order for other cards to support the feature, they need to support DP4A. The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti does, which is used for the upscaling algorithm and is the fallback for non-Arc GPUs. Arc GPUs, such as the upcoming Arc A770, bring bespoke XMX acceleration to do this work even faster. 

There is another fallback for cards that don't support DP4A though, and that is INT24. You'll find INT24 support in pretty much every modern GPU, and that includes integrated GPUs, you know, the kind you'll find in AMD's APUs.

However, while this third tier of support ensures that XeSS works on plenty of systems, there are questions about how fast it is. In fact, after testing the various quality settings of a Ryzen 7 5700G system, the results are less than impressive. You're looking at performance that is actually worse than running at native. In other words, you'll actually see better performance turning XeSS off. 

Using Shadow of the Tomb Raider as an example, which is one of two games that current support XeSS, and using the highest graphics settings at 1080p, I witnessed just 20fps with no upscaling. The fastest setting for XeSS is the Performance quality setting, which actually saw the performance drop down to 18fps. The Quality preset dropped this even further, down to 15fps. 

(Image credit: Future)

Running Shadow of the Tomb Raider with the Highest settings is good for comparison with other graphics cards, but it is harsh for this hardware. I also tried running at the Low and Medium presets but saw similar results. Native is simply the faster option, and it looks better too.

Steam in your hands

Steam Deck with an image from Elden Ring overlayed on the screen

(Image credit: Future, FromSoftware)

Steam Deck review: Our verdict on Valve's handheld PC.
Steam Deck availability: How to get one.
Steam Deck battery life: What's the real battery life of the new device?
How loud is the Steam Deck? And will it pass the Significant Other test?
Steam Deck - The emulation dream machine: Using Valve's handheld hardware as the ultimate emulator.

Essentially you're better off ignoring XeSS on this APU, as turning it on will result in slower performance and worse frame rates. There is a chance that optimisations to XeSS could turn this around, although it's doubtful. Ideally, you'd go for FSR for AMD's GPUs, although Shadow of the Tomb Raider doesn't support that, so your options are XeSS or nothing. 

To be fair to Intel, it's asking a lot of the graphics silicon in this chip. It only has eight graphics cores, maxes out 2,000MHz, and has to make do with sharing system memory. You're also looking at the ageing Vega architecture. Still, a budget gamer can't help but dream.

While it would have been great if Intel XeSS did work on such a low-power GPU, I can't really criticise Intel for that. After all, its main reason for existing is to boost the performance of the company's own GPUs using MXM, which should be much quicker than even DP4A. The Arc A770 is set for release on October 12, and I'm sure we'll be revisiting XeSS when it does launch.

TOPICS
Alan Dexter

Alan has been writing about PC tech since before 3D graphics cards existed, and still vividly recalls having to fight with MS-DOS just to get games to load. He fondly remembers the killer combo of a Matrox Millenium and 3dfx Voodoo, and seeing Lara Croft in 3D for the first time. He's very glad hardware has advanced as much as it has though, and is particularly happy when putting the latest M.2 NVMe SSDs, AMD processors, and laptops through their paces. He has a long-lasting Magic: The Gathering obsession but limits this to MTG Arena these days.

Read more
A screenshot showing some ghosting during AMD's Toyshop demonstration video.
AMD says its ghostly 'Toyshop tech demo is truly not reflective' of what FSR4 will look like when it ships with the RDNA 4 cards this week
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang holding an RTX 50-series card.
92% of Nvidia users turn on DLSS... if they've been lucky enough to bag an RTX 50-series card at launch AND have the Nvidia App installed
A slide from an AMD presentation showing Space Marine 2 running at 3.5x the frame rate at 4K with FSR 4 and frame generation enabled
'Infused with AMD DNA': FSR 4 has been announced with a healthy dose of machine learning and support for 30+ games at launch
Cyberpunk upscaling
New modder tool makes it easier than ever to swap AMD's FSR 4 scaling for Nvidia's DLSS or Intel's XeSS and vice versa
Naoe looking at the wrist blade in Assassin's Creed Shadows
Assassin's Creed Shadows will let you take your pick from the frame gen and upscaling buffet as 'a mix and match approach is possible'
A screenshot of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed: Shadows using the game's Photo Mode and maximum quality graphics settings
Assassin's Creed: Shadows PC performance analysis: Ray tracing, upscaling, and frame generation are all optional, but only two of them are worth using, though not the ones you might think
Latest in Graphics Cards
A Gigabyte RTX 5070 Ti Eagle OC Ice on a desk and installed in a gaming PC.
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Eagle OC Ice SFF review
An MSI RTX 5080 in white installed in a gaming PC.
MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Ventus 3X OC White review
Nvidia App
Hmmm, upgrades: Nvidia App gets an optional AI assistant and custom DLSS resolution scaling
A close-up photo of an Nvidia RTX 4070, with its heatsink removed, showing the AD104 GPU die and the surrounding Micron GDDR6X VRAM chips
With Nvidia Ace taking up 1 GB of VRAM in Inzoi, Team Green will need to up its memory game if AI NPCs take off in PC gaming
A collage of Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards, as shown in AMD's promotional video for the launch of RDNA 4 at CES 2025
AMD's CEO claims 9070 XT sales are 10x higher than all previous Radeon generations but that's just for the first week of availability
Colorful iGame RTX 5070 Ti Vulcan OC graphics card from various angles
The RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti are rumoured to be mere weeks away, with board partners reportedly required to ensure at least one MSRP model at launch
Latest in News
A screenshot from SaGa Frontier 2, showing one of the protagonists wandering through a quaint fantasy village
One of Square Enix' most underrated PlayStation-era JRPGs just shadow dropped on Steam
The titular character from Princess Mononoke is depicted riding the wolf goddess Moro and carrying a spear.
Studio Ghibli AI image trend floods social media, cheered on by OpenAI and denounced by critics as an insult to Hayao Miyazaki
Marvel Rivals tier list - Wolverine
Marvel Rivals director says a future patch will reduce the shooter's insatiable hunger for RAM: 'It's a very big problem'
Hogwarts Legacy potions professor holding a potion
An unannounced Hogwarts Legacy expansion and 'definitive edition' have reportedly been cancelled
Story of Seasons - A cahacter in a purple tuxedo stands outside in a town square talking to the player
Story of Seasons is doing another Harvest Moon remake and it might be the best the series has ever looked
Assassin's Creed Shadows change seasons - An upper-body shot of Yasuke looking cheerfully up into the distance.
Assassin's Creed Shadows puts up the 'second highest day-one sales revenue in Assassin's Creed franchise history'