Simply put, at launch, the DX9 via DX12 emulation for Intel Arc wasn't very good. That’s even though most DX9 games aren't particularly demanding, especially when compared with recent DX11/12 releases, performance in DX9 is only as good as the emulation. Token support for DX9 via DX12 emulation might have sounded fine on paper, but in practice it was a glaring indication that Intel’s GPUs and drivers weren’t as good as AMD and Nvidia drivers. The problem is that a lot of older games remain immensely popular. DG1 was also about as fast as AMD’s Vega 8 integrated graphics found in Ryzen 4000 U-series (15W) processors. In our DG1 benchmarks, it was roughly on par with Nvidia’s GT 1030 GDDR5 graphics card, an anemic solution that launched in 2017, cost $69, and wasn’t fit for much more than 720p gaming at low to medium settings. But Intel opted to stick with LPDDR4x, the same memory used by the laptop processors. The hardware basically consisted of the integrated graphics used in Intel’s 10th Gen Tiger Lake mobile processors, minus the CPU and with dedicated VRAM. The hardware finally started shipping, in limited fashion, in mid-2021, with cards from Asus and Gunnir. And there was a precursor to Arc, even if most people never saw it.įirst shown off at the start of 2020 during CES, Intel’s DG1 test vehicle - Discrete Graphics 1 - felt more like a way to drum up hype rather than something substantive. This wasn’t going to be a quick and easy task, though the initial plan was almost certainly supposed to be something competitive before 2022. It announced its intention to create dedicated graphics cards back in November 2017, when it hired Raja Koduri shortly after his departure from AMD. DirectX 9, 20 Years LaterĪrc isn't Intel's first discrete graphics rodeo. Other updates have had much further reaching ramifications, with the biggest change being DirectX 9 optimizations. Many of the updates have been targeted at one or two specific games - there were two different drivers that addressed problems with Spider-Man Remastered performance on the Arc A380, for example. There are presently eleven different versions of Arc drivers available from Intel: five WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) certified and six beta drivers, but there were other “hotfix” or beta drivers that are no longer listed. Since the first dedicated Arc A380 cards started showing up in China - which meant they also started getting shipped to individuals around the world - Intel has been cranking out updated drivers on a regular basis. Intel’s DG1 helped pave the way for more frequent driver updates, but things were still iffy back in 2021. A few years ago, a lot of games simply refused to work at all on Intel’s integrated graphics solutions - and even those games that worked would often perform poorly. We have included the results for that one game from the newer drivers (as before we couldn't get a result).Īrc arrived with what were arguably the best GPU drivers Intel has ever created – but that’s not saying much. These fix a problem that we noticed with Red Dead Redemption 2 crashing on the Arc A750, among other things. Update: Intel just released the 4146 drivers on February 28, 2023. Last week, version 4125 drivers came out, but a quick check on one of the Arc cards indicates the only changes are related to some recent game launches and that the performance otherwise remains the same as the 4123 drivers for our test suite. We began our testing a couple of weeks back, right after the 4123 Intel drivers became available. We set about testing (and retesting) every Arc graphics card, including the Arc A770 8GB using an ASRock model that we haven't quite got around to reviewing just yet, due to all the retesting that's been going on. Intel has been busily updating drivers on a regular basis since launch, and rarely does a fortnight pass without at least one new driver to test.Īnd that's the crux of the story: How much better are Intel’s latest drivers compared to the original launch drivers? The company made a lot of noise about its improved DirectX 9 performance, claiming 43% higher performance on the A750 with recent drivers compared to the original 3490 launch drivers - and at the same time dropping the price of the A750 to $250 down from $290. You can see where they land on our GPU benchmarks hierarchy as well, but that's only part of the story. Intel’s Arc Alchemist GPUs launched toward the latter part of 2022, vying for a spot among the best graphics cards.
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