Nvidia brings Integer Scaling to its drivers, but only for Turing

Some games are designed to look blocky, be it an indie pixel art title or an emulated classic on a modern gaming PC. Sadly, these classic-style graphics are often misrepresented on today’s high-resolution screens, where resolution scaling adds unnecessary blur or removes sharp pixel edges. This has only become more common in today’s 4K era. 

Earlier this year, Intel stated that it would support a feature called Integer Scaling, a method which allows classic games and pixel art graphics to be scaled to higher resolutions without losing any of the image’s sharpness. a single pixel will be scaled to a block of 2×2 pixels, or 3×3 pixels or more, allowing games to look as they should, without the need for added blur or other upscaling artefacts. Unfortunately for Intel, revealing these plans have shown their plans to the competition, giving them a chance to offer the same features before Intel has a chance to hit the GPU market. 

Today, Nvidia has revealed “Turing Integer Scaling”, a seemingly Turing specific feature which allows Nvidia to offer integer scaling within games, preserving pixel edge details and the ultra-sharp presentation of classic and pixel art games. The images above showcase the benefits of Nvidia’s new scaling feature, which allows games like FTL: Faster Than Light to look like the developer intended on a modern, high-resolution display. 

Users of Nvidia’s new Geforce 436.02 driver, and an Nvidia Turing or newer graphics card, can enable Integer Scaling as a beta feature within Nvidia’s control panel. This enables clearer sharper images when used with specific games. This driver is now available to download.