If you’ve ever squinted at your ROG Xbox Ally X’s screen and thought that it could be a little sharper, Xbox (and Microsoft) heard you, loud and clear. In April 2026, the handheld gaming PC will get a free software update that will make your games look better. No hardware updates or additional costs included.
Xbox will release a feature called Automatic Super Resolution or Auto SR — Microsoft’s AI-powered answer to Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR — which upscales video games from 720p up to 1080p or more (via Windows Central).
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
What does the Auto SR feature do?
The feature forces your Ally X to work smarter, not harder, delivering a performance boost of up to 30%. Unlike DLSS and FSR, Auto SR operates at the operating system level, which means developers won’t need to integrate it into each game individually. However, it is important to note that Auto SR still trails Nvidia’s DLSS in terms of outright image quality.
No matter who the developer is or what the game is, Auto SR is designed to function seamlessly. However, its current support is limited to games built on DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 platforms only. This raises a question: why is Auto SR exclusive to the Xbox Ally X, but not the standard Xbox Ally?
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
So, why is it only coming to Ally X?
The Ally X is powered by AMD’s Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chipset, which possesses a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) specifically designed for AI and machine learning tasks. This specialized processing capability allows the feature to upscale video games in real-time, all while keeping the CPU’s workload manageable. Unfortunately, the base model does not include an NPU, making the feature exclusive to the X variant.
It’s worth mentioning that the April release is technically a preview of the feature, not a finalized version. Although the promise of a 30% performance increase is exciting, actual performance may vary as Microsoft refines the technology leading up to its launch.
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