Brilliant as Nvidia DLSS and FSR 4 are, they remain exclusive to their own GeForce and Radeon corners. A few years ago, Intel took a different path and shared the benefits of AI upscaling more widely with its brand-agnostic XeSS upscaler. Now the company’s going further by expanding support for its more-advanced XeSS 2 performance suite.
Intel published XeSS 2.1 SDK on August 1, whose changelog almost exclusively focuses on introducing XeSS 2 features to non-Intel GPUs. Outside of those changes, the updated kit enhances XeSS-SR (Super Resolution) in Vulkan which should prove a boon to Linux systems such as Steam Deck.
More specifically, XeSS 2.1 SDK enables support for XeSS-FG (Frame Generation) and Xe-LL (Low Latency) on GPUs with Shader Model 6.4 support. This means graphics card families as old as GeForce GTX 10 Series and Radeon RX 5000 Series are theoretically compatible.
There is a small caveat to support for Xe-LL, in that it’s not possible to enable by itself. Support for the technology is necessary for the most efficient rendering pipeline while using XeSS-FG, keeping latency as low as possible. This is more a small shame than a huge deal in my eyes.
Intel® XeSS 2 is now supported on other vendors GPUs! Developers can offer AI-based frame generation with low-latency technology to many more gamers by using the updated XeSS 2.1 SDK available today.
Link: https://t.co/nwQJI2PVt0 pic.twitter.com/111bXJY5YE
— Intel Software (@IntelSoftware) August 1, 2025
Like Morpheus to Neo, Intel has shown the door to wider XeSS 2 support but it’s up to developers to walk through it. Adoption of the suite has grown since launch, notably recently appearing in Cyberpunk 2077, but there’s still a ways to go in catching up with FSR or DLSS.
Ever since putting the XeSS 2 suite to the test in my Arc B580 review, I’ve though the entire feature set showed promise as a genuine alternative to FSR. In the months since launch, it’s proven just that and remains my preferred choice of performance enhancements when FSR 4 or Nvidia DLSS are unavailable.
I’m curious to see how well XeSS 2 runs on older hardware, where compute budget will naturally be far more constrained. Here’s to all those GTX 10 Series owners that can squeeze a little more life out of their cards before Nvidia ceases updates in October.
Long may this democratisation of AI upscaling continue, improving image quality for all. After all, modders have already proven that FSR 4 can run on older Radeon GPUs. Sadly, we’re yet to see any signs of AMD following in their or Intel’s footsteps. I’m hopeful this should only prove a matter of time but newer SKUs, most-recently Radeon RX 9060 XT, are clearly the manufacturer’s priority for the moment.
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