Intel’s Arc graphics card have notoriously had bad DirectX 11 performance, thanks to the fact that the older Windows gaming API isn’t natively supported by the GPU architecture. However, a new Intel Arc driver version 31.0.101.4885 has brought massive performance games for well over a dozen DX11 games, as well as some DX12 games too. The new release also brings official support for Forza Motorsport and Assassin’s Creed Mirage.
The largest frame rate increase can be seen in Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DX11), which gets a 119 percent frame rate uplift at 1080p with High settings. Meanwhile, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (DX11) sees a 90% gain at 1080p with Extra settings and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 (DX11) gets nearly as much of a boost with a 88 percent gain at 1080p with High settings.
Those are some astonishing performance gains, particularly for such popular titles. That speaks both to the continued effort Intel is putting in to better optimize its drivers and the significant backlog of poorly-supported games that it faces.
As for the rest of the performance gains, they range from as little as 5 percent up to 42 percent across a wide range of titles. The full list of Intel Arc driver version 31.0.101.4885 performance gains is shown below:
- Forza Motorsport (DX12) – Up to 19% uplift at 1440p with High settings
- Resident Evil 4 (DXR) – Up to 27% uplift at 1080p with High Ray Tracing settings
- The Last of Us Part 1 (DX12) – Up to 12% uplift at 1080p with Ultra settings
- War Thunder (DX11) – Up to 9% uplift at 1080p with Maximum settings
- Payday 3 (DX11) – Up to 37% uplift at 1080p with Ultra settings
- Naraka: Bladepoint (DX11) – Up to 5% uplift at 1080p with Highest settings
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege (DX11) – Up to 32% uplift at 1080p with Ultra settings
- Final Fantasy XIV Online (DX11) – Up to 7% uplift at 1080p with Ultra settings
- Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition (DX11) – Up to 42% uplift at 1080p with Ultra settings
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 (DX11) – Up to 88% uplift at 1080p with High settings
- Total War: Warhammer 2 (DX11) – Up to 10% uplift at 1080p with Ultra settings
- Tomb Raider (DX11) – Up to 10% uplift at 1080p with Ultra settings
- Mad Max (DX11) – Up to 6% uplift at 1080p with Very High settings
- Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (DX11) – Up to 14% uplift at 1080p with Ultra settings
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (DX11) – Up to 90% uplift at 1080p with Extra settings
- Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DX11) – Up to 119% uplift at 1080p with High settings
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (DX11) – Up to 8% uplift at 1080p with Very High settings
- BeamNG.drive (DX11) – Up to 10% uplift at 1080p with High settings
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance (DX11) – Up to 22% uplift at 1080p with Ultra High settings
- Divinity: Original Sin – Enhanced Edition (DX11) – Up to 9% uplift at 1080p with Ultra settings
The full list of other features included in the new Intel Arc driver are listed below:
Fixed Issues
Intel Arc Graphics Products:
- EA Sports FC 24 (DX12) may experience application crash during gameplay.
- UNCHARTED: Legacy of Thieves Collection (DX12) may exhibit texture corruption on characters.
- Starfield (DX12) may experience sporadic instability in some areas of the game.
- Dying Light 2 Stay Human (DX12) may exhibit color corruption during gameplay.
- Fortnite (DX12) may experience application crash when Global Illumination setting is set to Lumen Epic.
- Adobe After Effects may experience an application crash during render operations.
- Some Intel® Arc™ A-Series Graphics notebooks may incorrectly report a higher value than expected for default clock frequency value
Known Issues
Intel Arc Graphics Products:
- Starfield (DX12) may exhibit corruption when using Dynamic Resolution Scaling. A workaround is to change the Render Resolution Scale slider value.
- Starfield (DX12) may exhibit texture corruptions on certain objects and light sources during gameplay.
- Minecraft (DX12) may exhibit color corruptions in night scenes when ray tracing setting is on.
- Halo Infinite (DX12) campaign may experience an application crash on some system configurations.
- Dead by Daylight (DX11) may experience an application crash during gameplay.
- Topaz Video AI may experience errors when using some models for video enhancement.
Iintel Arc Control known issues:
- Using Arc Control Studio capture with certain games may incorrectly generate multiple video files.
- The “Connector” type in the Display page may incorrectly show DP when using an HDMI display connection.
- May observe “stream has already ended” pop-up after the power events with Capture/Highlights/Broadcast toggle on.
- Arc Control may not retain overall application settings in Overlay mode after system reboot. A workaround is to use Desktop mode of Arc Control.
Package Contents
- Intel Graphics Driver
- Intel Media SDK Runtime (21.0.1.35)
- Intel oneVPL GPU Runtime (21.0.2.9)
- Intel Graphics Compute Runtime for OpenCL Driver
- Vulkan3 Runtime Installer
- Intel Graphics Driver Installer (1.0.820.6)
- oneAPI Level Zero Loader and Validation Layer
- Intel Graphics Compute Runtime for OneAPI Level Zero specification
- Intel Arc™ Control installer (1.73.5335.2)
- Intel Driver Support Assistant
None of the Intel Arc cards are currently on our guide to the best graphics card, but with regular driver improvements like these that may well change in the future. For now, be sure to check out that guide for our pick of the best cards to buy right now.