Intel’s latest Arc beta graphics driver brings several improvements to the Alchemy table (see what I did there?). The update includes optimizations for Counter-Strike 2, F1 2023, Aliens: Dark Descent, and Forever Skies. Counter-Strike 2 is now up 20% faster at 1080p using the Very High graphics settings, while Destiny 2 runs 11% faster at 1080p using the Highest visual settings.
The largest improvement comes in the form of F1 2023 (DX12). The game is up to 33% faster at 1080p with Ultra High settings and ray tracing turned off. When ray tracing is turned on, the Arc A770 is up to 18% faster at Ultra settings at 1080p. At 1440p, F1 2023 is up to 27% faster using the latest beta driver at High settings.
Benchmarks conducted by PCGamesHardware show the Arc A770 16GB beating the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB by over 20% at 1080p Ultra. Compared to the RTX 3070, we’re looking at 17-18% of the performance with ray tracing thrown into the mix. Although I can’t say this with 100% certainty, the Arc A770 16GB performs very close to the upcoming RTX 4060 8GB in this game. At higher resolutions, the VRAM bottleneck comes into play, perhaps even resulting in a loss for the latter.
This is an excellent result seeing as the Arc A770 costs just about $300, the same as the MSRP of the RTX 4060. The former offers twice as much memory while delivering similar ray-tracing performance.
GAMING HIGHLIGHTS:
Intel® Game On Driver support on Intel® Arc™ A-series Graphics for:
- Counter-Strike 2*
- F1 23*
- Aliens: Dark Descent*
- Forever Skies*
Game performance improvements versus Intel® 31.0.101.4382 software driver for:
- Counter-Strike 2* (DX11)
- Up to 10% uplift at 1080p with Very High settings
- Up to 8% uplift at 1440p with High settings
- F1 23* (DX12)
- Up to 33% uplift at 1080p with Ultra High settings with Ray Tracing off
- Up to 18% uplift at 1080p with Ultra High settings with Ray Tracing on
- Up to 27% uplift at 1440p with High settings
- Destiny 2* (DX11)
- Up to 11% uplift at 1080p with the Highest settings
Platform (OS Support)
- 11th Gen Intel® Core™ processor family (Codename Tiger Lake, Rocket Lake, Tiger Lake-H)
- 12th Gen Intel® Core™ processor family (Codename Alder Lake-S, Alder Lake-H, Alder Lake-P, Alder Lake-U, Alder Lake-HX, Alder Lake-N)
- 13th Gen Intel® Core™ processor family (Codename Raptor Lake-S, Raptor Lake-HX, Raptor Lake-H, Raptor Lake-P, Raptor Lake-U)
- Intel® Iris® Xe Dedicated Graphics family (Codename DG1)
- Intel® Arc™ Graphics family (Codename Alchemist)
