Intel today released the 4086 driver for the Arc discrete graphics cards. This is not supposed to improve the Arc A380, Arc A750 and Arc A770 much, but the software is said to have improved significantly since the launch in October. In addition, Intel has announced a reduction in the price of the Arc A750.
Intel claims to have significantly improved the speed of the Arc graphics cards over the past few months, especially with DirectX 9 On average, there should be 43 percent more FPS, and the frame times should also be a massive step forward. However, it must also be mentioned here that the arc performance in DirectX 9 games has been very poor up to now.
DirectX 9, DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 are said to be faster
Depending on the game, the frame rate is said to have increased by 10 to 77 percent on an Arc A750, the latter is said to be the case in Counter-Strike: GO, for example. At the same time, the manufacturer shows a frame history diagram with the 4086 driver, which looks significantly better than that with the launch driver 3490, but still shows some outliers. The significantly better frame pacing is also reflected in the percentile FPS, according to Intel these are between 2 and 114 percent better depending on the game.
The frame rates are said to have increased in recent months, and not only with the old DirectX 9 API. DirectX 11 games are also said to have gotten faster, and the same applies to DirectX 12, with the low-level API reportedly growing the least. ComputerBase was also able to determine an improved performance of Intel's Arc GPUs on an Arc A750 and Arc A770 with the 3802 driver not quite 2 months ago, even if it was still behind the competing graphics cards from AMD and Intel in AAA games. Since then, however, there may have been further FPS increases.
Compared to a GeForce RTX 3060, Intel wants to offer 52 percent more performance per euro with the Arc A750, but here more than double caution applies – this information should not be taken too seriously. Since Intel speaks explicitly and exclusively of performance per euro, it can be assumed that the Arc A750 will still not achieve the performance of the GeForce RTX 3060.
The Arc A750 costs 249 US dollars – there is no euro price
Intel has reduced the recommended price for its own Arc A750 Limited Edition with 8 GB of VRAM from USD 289 to USD 249 (before taxes) with immediate effect. Since the graphics card never had an official euro price, it still doesn't exist. In Germany, the graphics card currently costs at least 279 euros. According to Intel, the price has been reduced worldwide, and there should also be corresponding programs in this country. Since the current price of 279 euros only applies from today and has never been so low, it is conceivable that the reduction is already included in it.
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Intel Arc A750 driver development since launch (Image: Intel)
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Driver development of Intel Arc A750 since launch (Picture: Intel)
Further improvements are planned – but it will take time
ComputerBase had the opportunity to speak with Tom Petersen, Fellow at Intel, in advance, and he made it clear that driver development for the current Alchemist generation is far from over. For example, there will be improvements to the still problematic driver menu, which will also be available as a classic Windows app in the future and no longer just as an overlay. According to Petersen, it is still too early to speak of an exact schedule.
There was also more information on rBAR and idle behavior. For example, Arc graphics cards are extremely dependent on Resizable BAR and this is not going to change. While there may be minor improvements at some point in the future, Alchemist will always be significantly more dependent on rBAR than current GeForce and Radeon graphics cards.
According to Intel, nothing will change with Alchemist when it comes to idle behavior either. The current Arc models need some changes in the BIOS before the power consumption is more or less reduced on the Windows desktop. According to Petersen, this is a hardware limitation, which can only be changed with a new architecture. Simply installing a driver like AMD or Nvidia is not enough for Intel Arc.
ComputerBase received the information in this message from Intel in advance. These were made available under NDA. The only requirement was the earliest possible publication date. The manufacturer did not influence the report, there was no obligation to publish it.
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Intel Arc & Xe graphics driver download
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Graphics drivers for Intel CPUs, dedicated graphics cards and older mainboards with integrated graphics.
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