Intel Fine Wine: Big performance gains for Arc GPUs one year after release
Only three things are certain in life, taxes, death, and Intel’s further driver optimizations. It is clear that the latest BETA driver delivers on that.
The just released 31.0.101.4952 driver can offer substantial performance gains in as many as 17 games. Not only that, it is optimized (Game On) for 5 new games: The Talos Principle 2, Robocop: Rogue City, Star Ocean II R, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. That’s a quite a list that many gamers on Arc graphics will be pleased to see.
When it comes to actual game improvements, there are mostly double-digit performance gains across all listed games. Some performance figures are in relation to the previous 4900 drivers and some compared to the 4887 version. What is worth noticing is that these improvements were observed at high or ultra settings, often with ray tracing enabled.
There are many games with 20% performance gains, such as Sniper Elite 3 or Returnal, Guild Wars 2, but there are also three games that received improvement up to 113% like in World War Z or 154% in Yakuza 0. But the biggest improvements come to Halo The Master Chief Collection, as measured with DX11 API. This game is now said to offer 750% improvement at 1080p resolution with Enhanced settings.
Something to keep in mind is that all these games were tested on Arc A750 GPU and i9-13900K system.
| Arc 31.0.101.4952 Beta drivers | ||
|---|---|---|
| Game | Improvement | Settings |
| The Talos Principle 2 (DX12) | Up to 19% average FPS uplift | 1440p with High settings |
| Returnal (DX12) | Up to 53% average FPS uplift | 1080p with Epic Ray Tracing settings |
| Guild Wars 2 (DX11) | Up to 53% average FPS uplift | 1080p with Ultra settings |
| Halo: The Master Chief Collection (DX11) | Up to 750% average FPS uplift | 1080p with Enhanced settings |
| Sid Meier’s Civilization V (DX11) | Up to 6% average FPS uplift | 1080p with High settings |
| Total War: Warhammer (DX11) | Up to 10% average FPS uplift | 1080p with Ultra settings |
| Lost Ark (DX11) | Up to 15% average FPS uplift | 1080p with Very High settings |
| Warhammer: Vermintide 2 (DX11) | Up to 16% average FPS uplift | 1080p with Extreme settings |
| Sniper Elite 3 (DX11) | Up to 37% average FPS uplift | 1080p with Ultra settings |
| World War Z (DX11) | Up to 113% average FPS uplift | 1080p with Ultra settings |
| Euro Truck Simulator 2 (DX11) | Up to 27% average FPS uplift | 1080p with Ultra settings |
| Yakuza 0 (DX11) | Up to 154% average FPS uplift | 1080p with Ultra settings |
| Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (DX11) | Up to 20% average FPS uplift | 1080p with Ultra settings |
| Alien: Isolation (DX11) | Up to 9% average FPS uplift | 1080p with Ultra settings |
| Far Cry Primal (DX11) | Up to 14% average FPS uplift | 1080p with Ultra settings |
| Far Cry 5 (DX11) | Up to 14% average FPS uplift | 1080p with Ultra settings |
| Far Cry New Dawn (DX11) | Up to 11% average FPS uplift | 1080p with Ultra settings |
Intel isn’t concluding its efforts, and there’s more to do before the Battlemage launch, but the necessary groundwork will be in place.
Source and download: INTEL Arc & Iris Graphics 31.0.101.4952 driver
