Intel has been busy working behind the scenes to improve the performance of its Arc graphics cards and its latest driver boasts up to 77% higher frame rates than their original 2022 launch driver.
Average DirectX11 performance increased by 19% on average with games such as Overwatch 2 and GTA V seeing 33% and 27% increases respectively. Meanwhile older DirectX9 games saw even bigger benefits with The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim and CS:GO benefitting by a massive 77%, with an average of 43% over a range of titles. Those are not small numbers.
It’s Arc graphics cards have come in for criticism due to poor performance in some game titles compared to Nvidia and AMD’s equivalent models, but elsewhere Intel’s graphics cards such as the Arc A750 have been praised for their excellent value in the face of otherwise high prices that have continued since the pandemic.
However, it’s not just raw frame rates that Intel has improved. Frame times and minimum frame rates were also a big focus of the company and it’s made large improvements here too.
The minimum frame rate, or specifically the 99th percentile where 99% of frame rates were above a certain level – critical to how smooth a game feels – have seen up to 45% increases in games such as Overwatch 2, with Apex Legends and GTA V seeing between 20 and 25% improvements here.
It’s achieved this by analyzing data from games and improving the way Intel’s drivers with with DirectX, in the case of Overwatch 2, DirectX 11. Fame times can be affected by many things, but one of them is your CPU and whether the graphics card is having to wait for it to do its work.
Intel has made impressive gains here in reducing frame times with its new driver through optimisations, which should offer smoother gameplay. Intel is still working hard to optimize its drivers to boost game performance and its Arc GPUs will become more competitive as a result.
They’re certainly a far better proposition than they were at launch and the company was always going to find it tough to match the relentless optimisations and release schedules of the likes of Nvidia and AMD’s graphics software teams. However, the latest drivers are an indicator that things continue to improve with welcome performance improvements across the board that will no doubt please owners of Arc GPUs as well as persuade more people to buy them over the competition.
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