Intel recently rolled out the graphics driver for its 10nm Ice Lake processors. The new update provides the processor’s Gen11 integrated GPUs with access to its Integer Scaling feature known as “Retro Scaling”.
The semiconductor company explains that the new update adds support for pure integer scaling, which “it scales up the existing pixels by an integer multiplier” and also nearest-neighbour (NN) interpolation “by filling in missing colour values in the upscale image with the coordinate-mapped nearest source of the pixel value”.
Like NVIDIA’s Turing-based Integer Scaling, Intel’s Retro Scaling is typically aimed at games released in that retro, pixelated graphics style. It basically takes a blurry image, and then proceeds to upscale and sharpen it to make it Pixel games such as Terraria and FTL (Faster Than Light) will benefit from Retro Scaling feature as the visual details will be preserved even if the display resolution increases.
Since the scaling is worked by a whole number, the aspect ratio should be similar to avoid having black borders filling the remaining space. Intel also explains that when a gamer is scaling a resolution of 640 x 480 (4:3 ratio) on a 3840 x 2160 (16:9 ratio) panel, black borders will exist due to the full height of the display panel not be used.
At current, the new update will only be available for the Intel Ice Lake CPUs. Users who have updated their Ice Lake-powered devices will find the feature already listed on Intel’s Graphics Command Centre.
(Source: Intel, Hot Hardware, Youtube)
