Intel Arc graphics cards were released back in 2022, starting with three variants – Intel Arc A770, Intel Arc A750, and Intel Arc A380. They launched with the intent of bringing high-performance graphics to everyone. By hiring Raja Koduri, the former chief of AMD’s graphics division, Intel developed its dedicated graphics card architecture from scratch. Since the release of Intel Arc GPUs, we have seen numerous driver updates with various performance improvements & bug fixes. In this article, we are checking out the major improvements coming to DirectX 11 games on the Arc GPUs with the latest driver update.
New Intel Arc Graphics Driver Brings Major Improvements
The new Intel graphics drivers provide better gaming performance across DX11 & DX9 APIs. When talking about DirectX9 games, Intel Arc graphics will be up to 43% faster on average with the new drivers. In the benchmark data given below (provided by Intel), the games are running at 1080p Ultra.
Compared to the drivers available at launch, certain games including CS:GO, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Stellaris, and Half-Life-2 will see more than a 70% uplift in performance.
Next, let’s see what improvements we get with the latest Intel Arc drivers in games that use DirectX11. According to Intel, the latest drivers are 19% faster on DX11 vs the launch driver. The 99th percentile FPS is a figure that essentially represents the overall smoothness, and according to Intel, the latest drivers provide 20% additional smoothness.
Intel tested the Arc A750 paired with an i5-13400F in the below benchmark. In the competitive multiplayer game Valorant, armed with the newest Arc drivers, the A750 delivers 326FPS. Intel also states that the frame-time consistency during gaming has been improved, which does make a noticeable difference in how smooth the game will feel.
Counter-Strike 2, the new FPS from Valve, saw a jump in FPS from 218 to 257, which puts the A750 and i5-13400F combo slightly ahead of the 240FPS requirement for a 240Hz gaming monitor. Overwatch 2 is another popular multiplayer game, and the Intel Arc A750 goes from 138 to 183 FPS with the latest drivers in this game.
Playing games on Intel Arc is definitely more of a refined experience in 2023. The below benchmark compares the latest driver against the launch driver across 11 games:
Intel Releases PresentMon Monitoring Tool; New ‘GPU Busy’ Metric
In the Q3’23 update for Arc Alchemist graphics cards, Intel is also introducing a brand-new monitoring tool called Intel PresentMon. This is currently in beta and can be downloaded from this link here. This is their own software for monitoring the statistics of an Intel Arc GPU. These stats include GPU temperatures, clock frequency, utilization, temperature, and a new ‘GPU Busy‘ metric.
This new metric shows the balance between your CPU & GPU effectively, so you can evaluate where the bottleneck is present. Once the user refers to the ‘GPU Busy’ metric, they will see how their system’s computational resources are being utilized and if something isn’t sitting right. The PresentMon tool offers Broad API support, meaning it will work across DirectX, Vulkan, and OpenGL APIs.
