Intel Arc A380 Hack Runs XeSS 3 Multi-Frame Generation For A Big FPS Boost

The Intel Arc A380 is a meager GPU by modern measures. It has just 8 Xe-cores, giving it a smaller GPU than the Core Ultra X9 388H's integrated part. It's based on the original Alchemist architecture, which is considerably less capable than the second-generation Battlemage designs that we're so fond of. And yet, with a little tweaking, this tiny GPU can propel Cyberpunk 2077 to over 140 FPS thanks to some XeSS 3 magic.


Indonesian tech YouTuber Alva Jonathan proved this out by slapping together a system with a Ryzen 5 7500F and an ASRock-built Intel Arc A380 6GB card. Multi-frame generation isn't officially available yet on Arc discrete GPUs, so he modified the driver package by copying two files from the "8362" driver for Panther Lake to the "8452" directory for everything else. After that, the driver panel happily offers him the Multi-Frame Generation override that was absent when we tried to test the feature on Arc B580 after CES.


Loading up everyone's favorite benchmark Cyberpunk 2077, Jonathan found that the A380 can propel the game to around 58 FPS in 1080p, using 'Low' settings and XeSS Ultra Quality upscaling. Given that, enabling 4x multi-frame generation should take us all the way to 240 FPS, right? Well, not quite. Enabling 4x MFG actually took the frame rate to about 140 FPS, and the reason is because the process of doing multi-frame generation requires a considerable amount of compute and memory bandwidth in itself—resources which the little A380 simply does not have to spare.


Jonathan says that using 3x MFG was actually much more successful. Dropping down to 3x gave him a final output framerate of right around 120 FPS, which means that the actual render framerate was around 40 FPS. We've actually tested XeSS frame generation, the regular old 2x version, in similar conditions on a GPU with a roughly similar performance level, the Radeon 780M built into the Ryzen 7 8700G. We found that it feels quite acceptable at around 80 to 90 FPS, so we don't doubt the YouTuber when he says that 120 FPS on the Arc A380 6GB feels pretty good.

Check out the video above for his commentary; you can turn on Indonesian subtitles and then hit the Auto-translate to English for quite good translation. He has tests of more games besides just Cyberpunk 2077, too, including Expedition 33 and F1 24. Naturally, commenters on the video are deeply curious whether this same trick would work for Arc B-series GPUs, and so are we. Unfortunately, as Jonathan points out, there's no easy way to measure input latency under XeSS FG yet. Still, if you'd like to see unofficial multi-frame generation tests on the Arc B580 and B570, let us know in the comments below.

_{Thanks to WCCFtech for the spot.}