New drivers are usually a good thing for GPU owners because they help optimise graphics cards for the latest games. This could be fixing bugs in released titles, smoothing things over, or preparing for an upcoming launch. In some cases, they even lead to a leap in performance. It’s rare that a simple driver update hits quite as hard as this latest Intel Arc one, mind you. Somehow, Team Blue has truly changed the game in some cases.
The biggest gain for this GPU comes in the form of a boost to Just Cause 4. For those who don’t know, the game’s chaotic, physics-based, and has an open world where you can strap rockets to sheep and turn them into Beyblades. It’s a silly but fairly demanding affair. As a five-year-old game, it’s not a huge surprise that there’s a gain. We’re not sure anybody would have expected the boost to be to the tune of 268%, though. That’s a staggering upgrade and the kind of thing you’d only normally see if you bought a whole new GPU.
The second biggest upgrade is to Elex 2, which is an interesting science fantasy game from early 2022. The title gets a 101% boost from this update. Now, most other games don’t jump quite as high. That said, we’re not ones to scoff at any kind of uplift. PvP games like Apex Legends benefit from a 26% leap, keeping you on the competitive edge. Even newer, more demanding games like Tekken 8, which literally just launched, see an impressive 15% boost on ultra settings.
As you might expect, these figures are all based on the Intel Arc A-Series GPUs. If you already own one, these kinds of improvements are worth it at the cost of simply downloading a driver update. The Intel Core Ultra with Arc Graphics cards also gets a couple of notable upgrades. The biggest of them is a 25% boost for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, which again, just came out.
It’s great to have such boosts for a line of GPUs that, if we’re being honest, aren’t quite as popular as something from Nvidia or AMD. We’re getting used to seeing massive improvements from simple Arc updates, but it doesn’t take away the joy every time another one rolls around. Now, if only Teams Red and Nvidia could follow suit, we’d all be happy.
Also, thank you to WCCFTech, who gave all of us these lovely crunchy numbers to enjoy.
