Intel has released its latest Intel Arc graphics driver version 31.0.101.4502, which brings large boosts in performance for several games, including a ludicrous 313 percent increase in the Assassin’s Creed Unity frame rate.
That uplift is achieved when the game is running at 2,560 x 1,440 (1440p) resolution with High in-game settings. Meanwhile, a 271 percent boost is available when playing at 1,920 x 1,080 (1080p) with Very High settings. You can see if your system is capable of playing the game by checking the Assassin’s Creed Unity system requirements.
Other games to receive a frame rate increase are F1 22, which gains up to 36 percent at 1080p with High settings, 20 percent at 1440p with High settings, and 10 percent at 1080p with Ultra High settings and all ray tracing settings on. Deathloop also sees not insubstantial gains of up to 10 percent at 1080p with Ultra settings and up to 8 percent at 1440p with Very High settings.
While it’s far from unheard of for new graphics drivers to unlock significant performance gains, those Assasin’s Creed Unity figures are astonishing. However, although Intel doesn’t say as such, the story here really is that performance with Intel Arc graphics cards in that game used to be terrible and now Intel has fixed it – it’s not that the game ran well and now has magical levels of performance.
Nonetheless, such huge improvements speak to how the lackluster performance and stability issues reported when Intel Arc graphics cards first arrived can steadily be improved upon. Although, equally it could be argued this goes to show how Intel’s approach of not having native DirectX 11 (DX11) support continues to be a problem for the GPUs – Assasin’s Creed Unity is a DX11 game.
The full list of Intel Arc 31.0.101.4502 highlights, fixes, and known issues is below.
Download the Intel Arc Graphics driver 31.0.101.4502 for Windows 10 and 11 here.
Gaming highlights
Intel Game On Driver support on Intel Arc A-series Graphics for:
- AEW: Fight Forever
- Layers of Fear
Game performance improvements versus Intel 31.0.101.4502 software driver for:
- Assassin’s Creed Unity (DX11)
- Up to 271 percent uplift at 1080p with Very High settings
- Up to 313 percent uplift at 1440p with High settings
- F1 22 (DX12)
- Up to 36 percent uplift at 1080p with High settings
- Up to 20 percent uplift at 1440p with High settings
- Up to 10 percent uplift at 1080p with Ultra High settings and all Ray Tracing settings on
- Deathloop (DX12)
- Up to 10 percent uplift at 1080p with Ultra settings
- Up to 8 percent uplift at 1440p with Very High settings
Known issues
Intel Arc Graphics Products
- System may hang while waking up from sleep. May need to power cycle the system for recovery.
- GPU hardware acceleration may not be available for media playback and encode with some versions of Adobe Premiere Pro.
- Topaz Video AI may experience errors when using some models for video enhancement.
- Streaming Dota 2 using XSplit Broadcaster may exhibit corruption in Game Capture mode.
- Blender 3.6 may experience an application crash during render operations when Hardware Ray Tracing is enabled
Intel Core Processor Products
- Total War: Warhammer III (DX11) may experience an application crash when loading battle scenarios.
- Call of Duty Warzone 2.0 (DX12) may exhibit corruption on certain light sources such as fire.
- Conqueror’s Blade (DX12) may experience an application crash during game launch.
- A Plague Tale: Requiem (DX12) may experience application instability during gameplay.
Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics Products
Driver installation may not complete successfully on certain notebook systems with both Intel Iris Xe + Iris Xe MAX devices. A system reboot and re-installation of the graphics driver may be required for successful installation.
Intel Arc Control known issues
- Using Arc Control Studio capture with certain games may incorrectly generate multiple video files.
- With Intel Arc Control installed, systems may experience slightly higher than expected power consumption during system sleep or hibernate.
- May observe “could not stop Highlights” notification when stopping Auto-Game Highlights.
- The Camera on-screen preview may incorrectly persist when switching between Desktop and Overlay modes.
- The “Connector” type in the Display page may incorrectly show DP when using an HDMI display connection.
- Arc Control may become unresponsive after a driver upgrade. A workaround is to perform a clean driver installation using Display Driver Uninstaller.
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 (1.0.790.5)
- oneAPI Level Zero Loader and Validation Layer
- Intel Graphics Compute Runtime for OneAPI Level Zero specification
- Intel Arc Control installer (1.69.5033.3)
- 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.