To be fair, I have zero experience with real-time upscaling. I only do archival stuff often with low source quality; DVD, VHSRip, low bitrate 720p videos, older, low bitrate vertical smartphone videos.

Getting good quality upscaled video can be a big pain and even on a beefy computer (5800X, 3080, 64GB RAM) it is nowhere near real-time and more difficult source material can require multiple-trial runs (different model and/or config).

That being said 1080 to 4K does tend to be relatively easier (it helps that 1080 source material is usually of high quality). However, I usually never bother with 1080 to 4K as I find the results to somewhat unimpressive and not worth the effort (compared to say a full on film to 4K transfer like on UHD Bluray).

The article doesn’t really go into any detail, I suspect the result is more cosmetic in nature. This is in contrast to some results I’ve had where it literally looks like magic or like in the movies (the original Bladerunner with the enhance scene).

If you can run “lite real-time upscaling” on the NPU, it is a decent feature and use case (even if I wouldn’t use it).