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Intel has had a bumpy road with its Arc Alchemist graphics cards, but an upcoming driver update could provide enough performance gains to keep the company’s hopes of breaking into the discrete graphics market alive for a while yet.
Since the launch of the first Intel Arc A380 discrete GPU in mid-2022, Intel’s GPU family has been plagued by a number of incompatibilities and driver issues, especially with older games running on DirectX 9.
This is according to a new report from the German media PC gaming hardware (opens in new tab) (through video cardz (opens in new tab)), Intel has located the source of the performance bottleneck and resolved the issue. A major driver update in the near future is intended to roll out these changes to the wider Arc ecosystem.
This would be a big boon for Team Blue as reported issues including incompatibilities and visual corruption will be a major turn off for gamers. That’s the only audience these cards need to appease if Intel ever hopes to beat the best graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia.
To that end, PCGH has tested 66 games over the years, as far back as Unreal Tournament 2004 GOTY Edition (a DirectX 8 title), and only Halo Infinite had serious issues. Most of the games in the trial ran perfectly – and that was before the upcoming driver update, which was said to fix the main performance issues Intel’s Arc cards faced.
It’s not too late for Intel Arc, but time may be running out
With Intel Arc appearing to be in control for months (if not years), there’s certainly reason to be cautious about how much of a difference this driver update will make.
Intel’s most recent earnings call did not exactly inspire confidence in the market (opens in new tab)and Intel will be under enormous pressure to increase revenues in the coming year. Intel’s discrete graphics card is already in the crosshairs, as the company’s significant investment hasn’t resulted in a major launch of a graphics card that could compete with the likes of AMD and Nvidia.
While Intel’s Arc cards may be under threat, they’re not out yet, and the company says it remains committed to bringing its discrete graphics project to fruition.
Since so much of the delay in the card’s release is related to issues with software drivers rather than the hardware itself, there’s reason to hope that Intel’s new cards can prove themselves to be strong contenders for the best low-cost graphics cards that are there.
This is much needed, as both AMD and Nvidia continue to release unacceptably expensive graphics cards that most gamers have little hope of affording.