Intel’s Meteor Lake CPUs for laptops are set to arrive in December, and the company just demonstrated the integrated graphics on one of these Core Ultra processors that will run a big-name game nice and smoothly – with a little help from Intel’s DLSS rival, that is. .
The demo witnessed the Meteor Lake processor (presumably a top-end model, we’re not told which) running Dying Light 2 with the frame rate boosting XeSS technology enabled.
In fact, with the Xe-LPG (Alchemist-based) integrated GPU, Dying Light 2 was about 1.7x faster (averaging a peak here and there of 1.8x or higher) with XeSS than without 1080p. (That is, comparing native 1080p with XeSS-powered 1080p, which is upscaled from 720p to look almost the same, or almost indistinguishable from each other).
Sadly we don’t get to see any actual frame rate figures, but the game looks like it runs very smoothly, and with a decent level of visual detail and quality.
The Xe-LPG integrated graphics card works with up to 8 Xe-Cores, so that’s the same number of cores as an existing discrete Arc A370M laptop GPU.
Analysis: A glimpse of the future for gaming laptops?
This is notable because it’s the first time we’ve seen Intel demonstrate XeSS on an Xe integrated GPU, indicating that Team Blue is now more confident in pushing this combo as a viable solution for laptop gaming. As noted in the video presentation (see above), the idea is to achieve the performance you can get with a discrete graphics card, eliminating the need for that discrete GPU.
The obvious caveat, of course, is that this refers to lower-end laptop GPUs – there’s no way integrated graphics can compete with a flagship mobile discrete card – but it’s an important step towards integrated graphics cards that are a realistic proposal for more demanding (contemporary) gaming on a laptop.
Eliminating the need for a discrete graphics card not only significantly reduces the price of a laptop, but also reduces the notebook’s overall power consumption, which means longer battery life – a very precious commodity for a gaming enthusiast. Laptop.
The catch is that the crank needed here is XeSS to increase those frames per second (not too far away from doubling them). So we have to keep in mind that XeSS only works with the latest Intel (Xe) GPUs, and Meteor Lake apparently unlocks it to be powerful enough to be more viable (hence Intel’s demo now coming with the Core Ultra chips that are about to launch).
Additionally, games must also support XeSS, although the number of supported titles is growing, with Intel noting that more than 80 games are now compatible with XeSS.
What this represents is a glimpse of a future where integrated GPUs could take over from laptops, at least away from high-end monster notebooks, and in this regard Intel is certainly doing well in the portables space. Team Blue is doing a good job with XeSS – with positive feedback on the technology compared to FSR, for sure – and Intel is continually making strides in driver advancement.
Right now, Battlemage (next-gen) GPUs look promising, but Team Blue needs to be careful and not make any more major missteps like Starfield (the game didn’t work at all with Arc’s current graphics driver when it was released).
Through VideoCardz