Microsoft’s “Auto Super Resolution” DLSS competitor isn’t exclusive to Qualcomm

When you launch a game on a Snapdragon on a Windows laptop, you might get an AI frame rate boost from Microsoft’s mysterious Auto Super Resolution (Auto SR) feature. But while Microsoft hasn’t fully explained how the feature works, The Verge can now confirm it’s not Qualcomm technology, not exclusive to Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X chips, and not exclusive to specific games, either.

You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise! Microsoft’s new Automatic Super Resolution help page bluntly states that a Snapdragon X chip is required — see screenshot — and that all of its processing “occurs on-device using the integrated GPU and Neural Processing Unit.”

But Qualcomm now tells us that Super Resolution is Microsoft’s own feature — it’s not Qualcomm Snapdragon Game Super Resolution by another name — and it’s not technically exclusive to Qualcomm chips, either.

“The ‘exclusive’ language is really about what is available today so that will no longer apply if another technology becomes available that can meet Microsoft’s performance threshold,” Qualcomm spokesperson Macey Davis tells me. “Since Automatic Super Resolution (Auto SR) integrates with Windows on a Copilot+ PC, Qualcomm is the only one that can exclusively run it today.”

That said, it’s not clear which rival chips might be able to take advantage. AMD and Intel, each of which are expected to have their own Copilot Plus PCs this fall with similarly speedy NPUs inside, weren’t able to tell me anything about Auto Super Resolution. Both deferred to Microsoft — and Microsoft’s page currently suggests Auto SR is just for games running as a native Arm app or via Arm emulation. Intel and AMD produce x86 chips that play x86 titles, not Arm ones.

Microsoft has yet to answer my questions, but here are a couple other burning questions I’ve asked the company about: