Xbox Ally X gets smoother gameplay with AutoSR update
Summary created by Smart Answers AI
In summary:
- PCWorld reports that Microsoft’s Auto Super Resolution (AutoSR) technology will soon be available on Xbox Ally X handheld consoles to improve gaming performance.
- AutoSR uses AI-based upscaling to render games at lower resolutions and then scales them up, allowing less powerful GPUs to achieve higher frame rates.
- A public preview of AutoSR for the AMD-powered Ally X is expected in April, promising smoother gaming experiences for users.
In a month, owners of Xbox Ally
Microsoft made a reference to the technology as part of a presentation at the Game Developer Conference, where the company demonstrated features of its upcoming Project Helix console as well as AI enhancements to Microsoft’s DirectX API.
Essentially, AutoSR is an upscaling technology, originally designed for use with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 or X2 Elite processor, according to Microsoft. This is a visual enhancement tool, which allows you to render a game in a lower resolution, which is easier to calculate.
Windows then scales the game using AI to approximate what it would look like if rendered at native resolution. It’s a trade-off: a less powerful GPU can deliver higher frame rates at higher resolutions, making high-end games more playable on a wider range of hardware. This may not look as good as if the game was rendered at a higher resolution, but it may go unnoticed in high-intensity gaming.
However, Microsoft designed AutoSR as a technology that requires explicit support for games, and Microsoft maintains a list of games that you can filter to find out if AutoSR works out of the box or needs to be enabled.
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This list, however, was designed with Snapdragon’s Windows-on-Arm architecture in mind. The Asus ROG Xbox Ally X uses an AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chip inside, an X86 processor. So it’s unclear whether or not AutoSR will need explicit game support.
Regardless, a sharp-eyed Twitter user took a video of Microsoft announcing that a public preview of AutoSR would appear on the Ally X in April, as spotted by Windows Central.
Microsoft started talking about AutoSR in 2024, and we saw AutoSR (also known briefly as DirectSR) debut in a Windows Insider Program release that same year. Microsoft has integrated the addition into the Windows 11 Settings menu (System > Display > Charts) although it doesn’t seem to be present in stable releases.
It’s unclear whether users will have to explicitly enable the feature or if it will simply be enabled via the update. Either way, smoother gameplay awaits us.
