Intel has substantially improved its Arc graphics drivers since last year’s hardware launch. Many older DX11 titles that were unplayable now perform on par with their GeForce and Radeon rivals. In a blog post, the chipmaker has detailed the various driver optimizations made to legacy titles. At 1080p, popular eSports games like Overwatch 2, GTA Online, and Counter-Strike 2 have been boosted by up to 33%, with gains of up to 99% in the 99th percentile lows.
The test environment included a Core i5-13400F paired with an Arc A750 8GB Limited Edition alongside 32GB (4x8GB) of DDR5 4800MT/s CL36 memory on an ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero. The Arc 3490 graphics drivers were compared to the latest release.
As you can see, nearly every title saw a double-digit increment to their lows, with five of the most popular eSports games seeing a 20%+ uplift, led by Overwatch with a 45% bump.
Following this update, most titles average close to or over 150 FPS with 99 percentile lows of over 100 FPS. GTA Online is the slowest, with averages and lows of 66 FPS and 84 FPS, respectively. These are highly competitive numbers for a GPU that costs $200 or lower.
