Pragmata is yet another launch day fail for Intel's GPUs, but its quick response to game issues shows it's still working hard for gamers
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Join the club
Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards.
Getting an Intel Arc card can be a good option in this otherwise eye-wateringly expensive market, especially as many of the GPUs' initial wrinkles have been ironed out. But problems still remain, and they sometimes surface with the release of new games, as some Intel Arc gamers found with the launch of Pragmata. But the company's latest driver claims to fix the crashes that were causing a stir.
Intel's 32.0.101.8735 graphics driver claims to fix "application crash while loading into game menu" for Arc A-series, B-series, and Core Ultra Series 1, 2, and 3 integrated Arc GPUs. This is the only fix that's mentioned, and known issues with other games such as The Finals, Fortnite, and Crimson Desert remain.
Assuming the crashes mentioned on Reddit are the ones this Intel driver fixes, which does seem likely to be the case, it seems there was already a workaround which involved manually deleting the game's shader cache and config files. Still, it's better to have an actual fix than having to mess with your game files.
Say what you want about its GPUs, but Intel's been doing a pretty good job of resolving these kinds of issues lately. For instance, last week's driver update claimed to resolve some flickering problems in Crimson Desert. And this isn't long after it was up for question whether the game would even be supported on the GPUs at all.
That's a far cry from how things were when Arc graphics cards first launched, and even when the B-series launched and for some time after. You still can't count on the full compatibility of an Nvidia or AMD GPU, but things are a lot better than they were.
At any rate, if you're a proud owner of an Arc GPU and you're keen to get dad-simming in Pragmata, it looks like you won't have to miss out on the action any longer.

1. Best overall: AMD Radeon RX 9070
2. Best value: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB
3. Best budget: Nvidia RTX 5050
4. Best mid-range: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti
5. Best high-end: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.

Jacob got his hands on a gaming PC for the first time when he was about 12 years old. He swiftly realised the local PC repair store had ripped him off with his build and vowed never to let another soul build his rig again. With this vow, Jacob the hardware junkie was born. Since then, Jacob's led a double-life as part-hardware geek, part-philosophy nerd, first working as a Hardware Writer for PCGamesN in 2020, then working towards a PhD in Philosophy for a few years while freelancing on the side for sites such as TechRadar, Pocket-lint, and yours truly, PC Gamer. Eventually, he gave up the ruthless mercenary life to join the world's #1 PC Gaming site full-time. It's definitely not an ego thing, he assures us.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.

