Microsoft's Automatic Super Resolution Comes to Intel "Panther Lake

Microsoft announced that it has expanded device support for its Automatic Super Resolution (Auto SR) feature, which provides resolution upscaling to nearly every NPU-powered device, to Intel's flagship "Panther Lake" mobile platform. Introduced in 2024, Auto SR was designed to bring resolution upscaling to more devices, being hardware-agnostic and useful when native technologies are not available. For instance, Microsoft has added Intel Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" designs to its Auto SR support list. When a game supports Intel's native XeSS Super Resolution upscaling technology, it is recommended to use that. However, if the game doesn't support XeSS-SR, Auto SR can take over, as it is built into Windows and can apply super resolution across existing games without requiring game-integrated super resolution.

Regarding performance, Microsoft conducted preliminary testing with Assassin's Creed Valhalla Benchmark Averages on the Intel Arc B390 GPU found in "Panther Lake" SoCs. At a native 1600p resolution with in-game settings on "High," the average frame rate is around 45 FPS. However, when Auto SR is applied to upscale a 1050p resolution to 1600p with in-game settings on "Ultra," the performance increases to 52 FPS. This represents a 15% improvement with higher in-game graphics settings, without any noticeable difference in resolution due to the model's upscaling capabilities. The current goal of Auto SR is to achieve a playable 60 FPS on devices that can't reach that, but Microsoft aims for a 90-120 FPS target in future iterations. Read full story