New Intel Arc graphics driver boosts performance by up to 8%

A new driver for Intel's troubled Arc gaming graphics cards has been released with claimed performance boosts of up to eight percent. The driver also fixes a number of known game-specific glitches, details further bugs for future rectification and addresses problems with Intel Arc Control software.

Intel cites eight games that benefit from improved performance, with Dirt 5 heading the list with that eight percent boost. Intel says that figure is delivered running at 1440p and Ultra settings.

Other games that benefit from the new driver include Chorus, Far Cry 6, Forza Horizon 5, Ghostwire Tokyo, Gotham Knights, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy and Sniper Elite 5, with claimed performance boosts ranging from three to seven percent. Meanwhile, Doom Eternal (Vulkan), Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, Death Stranding Director's Cut and Forza Horizon 5 all receive bug fixes.

Finally, four games receive broad driver support: Sonic Frontiers, Marvel's Spiderman: Miles Morales, Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 and Dysterra. The driver is valid for all Arc GPUs from desktop to mobile and including the top Intel Arc A770 and Arc A750 boards we reviewed earlier this year.

All told, it's not a dramatic improvement. But every little helps. More to the point, it's indicative that work continues on the Arc project. Solving Arc's software and driver issues was never going to be the stuff of overnight success. So, it's good to see that progress is being made.

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Jeremy Laird
Hardware writer

Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.

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