Web videos can now be upscaled by Microsoft Edge using AMD and NVIDIA GPUs

In the past, it was necessary to utilize NVIDIA's solution.

Owners of NVIDIA video cards already enjoy the benefit of video upscaling in Chrome or Edge, but what about those with an AMD board? Microsoft believes it can assist. It is experimenting with a Video Super Resolution feature in Edge Canary that enhances and eliminates artifacts from web videos below 720p using both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs (sorry, Intel Arc supporters). You'll need a minimum of a GeForce RTX 20 series or Radeon RX5700, but this may be helpful if you're viewing an old YouTube video or attempting to conserve bandwidth on a limited data plan.

There are certain requirements. To begin with, this is only for Windows users. If you're using a laptop, you'll need to plug it in, and the video cannot use a digital rights management (DRM) system such as PlayReady or Widevine. Currently, if your laptop has a hybrid graphics configuration, you'll also have to force Edge to utilize your dedicated GPU. According to Microsoft, automatic hybrid video support is under development.

The technology relies on GPU-agnostic algorithms. Microsoft had to add a DirectX 12 pipeline to Google's Chromium engine (which typically uses DirectX 11) in order for its machine learning framework to communicate with the browser. Compression helps keep the computational load relatively light.

At the moment, Video Super Resolution is only accessible to a few Edge Canary users, but it should become available to more users in the "coming weeks," according to the company. It also plans to expand the list of supported GPUs, so don't be disheartened if your hardware isn't initially compatible. If you're not willing to use experimental software, be patient; it's likely to take some time before beta and polished versions of the feature are supported.