Intel outpaces the competition with another Game On Driver for Arc Graphics

It looks like Intel is all-in on making its Intel Arc Graphics line-up of GPUs a viable mainstream alternative for 2023, and the latest Game On Driver adds support for impending PC game releases like Atomic Heart, Company of Heroes 3, Like a Dragon: Ishin!, The Settlers: New Allies, and Wild Hearts. Regarding day-one support for games and the pace of new driver releases for 2023, Intel is now ahead of both NVIDIA and AMD.

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Intel Graphics Beta Driver 31.0.101.4125 for Intel Arc A-Series Graphics and Intel Iris Xe Graphics.

And as part of the new driver update Intel has released a detailed blog post with info on some of the performance gamers can expect with its primary offering - the Intel Arc A750 GPU. For Sony's first-party release Returnal, which supports Intel's own AI-based upscaling tech XeSS, the Intel Arc A750 is said to deliver 67fps performance at 1440p using the High detail setting, for Ubisoft's The Settlers: New Allies the Intel Arc A750 can hit 174 fps at 1080p with high settings and 130fps at 1440p with high settings.

These results come from a high-end rig featuring an Intel Core i9-13900K processor and DDR5 memory, so results will vary on lower-spec systems. Still, it hasn't stopped Intel from benchmarking the same games using the same system with a GeForce RTX 3060 and presenting the Arc A750 as delivering better performance.

• Read more: Intel Arc driver update brings a massive 43% improvement to DX9 games

Of course, official support for these games is still to appear in upcoming drivers from NVIDIA and AMD - so these figures could change. Still, it's great to see Intel picking up the pace of its driver updates, especially when its most recent update introduced massive across-the-board performance gains.