The performance of Intel Arc GPUs has divided fans in two, between those who expected more and those who are happy with the value for money of the cards. Today, however, the new drivers released by Intel could change the minds of skeptics: le DirectX 9 performance of Arc GPUs almost doubled with the latest update.
In particular, the driver 31.0.101.3959 from Intel improves the performance of Arc Alchemist GPUs by 1.8xwith peaks of 2.3 times in the case of the Arc A770, the top of the range of Team Blu, in games that use DirectX 9: it is therefore a real doubling of the performance of the card, which could thus be one of the most interesting on the market in their price range, especially for those who play regularly on not too recent products.
On the other hand, we have known for some time that the Intel’s main problem lies in the drivers, and not in the hardware of its video cards: this is especially true for games that use “Legacy” APIs, which Team Blu has promised to start supporting more over time. Therefore, the new driver significantly improves performance especially in games in DirectX 9, such as Counter Strike: Global Offensive, League of LegendsStarcraft 2, Guild Wars 2 and Payday 2.
For example, on CS: GO we see a jump from 177 FPS to 318 FPS with the new driver in 1080p, and a slightly smaller one in 1440p. In general, the percentage improvement is around 80% of the performance guaranteed by the Arc A770 before the driver update.
Intel has however confirmed some similar results also on the Arc A580 and A750while he also explained that improving graphics card performance in DirectX 12 and Vulkan remains his main goal.
