Xbox Ally X gets smoother gameplay with AutoSR update

In a month, owners of Xbox Ally X handheld consoles will see their frame rates jump upwards, as Microsoft begins supporting the Automatic Super Resolution (AutoSR) tech on the console.

Microsoft snuck in a reference to the technology as part of a presentation at the Game Developer Conference, where the company pitched features from its upcoming Project Helix console as well as AI enhancements coming 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. It’s a visual enhancement tool, rendering a game in a lower resolution that’s easier to calculate.

Windows then upscales the game using AI to approximate what it would look like if it were rendered at the native resolution. It’s a compromise: a less powerful GPU can deliver higher frame rates at higher resolutions, making top-tier games more playable on a wider range of hardware. It might not look quite as good as if the game were rendered on the higher resolution, but it may go unnoticed in a high-intensity game.

Microsoft did design AutoSR as a technology that needed explicit game support, however, and Microsoft maintains a list of games that you can filter to discover if AutoSR works out of the box or if it needs to be opted into.

@ethangach / X

That list, however, was designed with the 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. It’s not clear, then, whether AutoSR will need explicit game support or not.

In any event, a sharp-eyed Twitter user snapped video of Microsoft announcing that a public preview of AutoSR will appear on the Ally X in April, as noticed by Windows Central.

Microsoft first began 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 tucked in the addition inside the Windows 11 Settings menu (System > Display > Graphics) though it doesn’t appear to be there in stable builds.

It’s not clear whether users will have to explicitly turn on the feature, or it will be simply enabled via the update. In any event, smoother gameplay lies ahead.