Intel hits another home run with new Arc GPU driver, bringing in some huge frame rate boosts

Intel has made great progress with its Arc graphics card drivers since its Alchemist GPUs first emerged, and the latest release is no exception.

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The new Arc & Iris graphics driver version 31.0.101.4952 - which it should be noted is a beta - brings in support for the following 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

As well as support for The Talos Principle 2, this gets a solid performance boost, with the new driver offering an (up to) 19% increase in average frames per second at 1440p resolution (on High settings).

Returnal (in DX12) witnesses a much bigger uplift, though - an impressive 53% increase in average FPS at 1080p (with 'Epic' ray tracing on).

Those gains are compared to driver version 31.0.101.4900.

Intel also highlights some big frame rate boosts in comparison to a slightly earlier driver release, v31.0.101.4887, including Halo: The Master Chief Collection (DX11), which is up a rather jaw-dropping 750% at 1080p with Ultra graphics.

Other major movers include Yakuza 0 (DX11) which witnesses a 154% average FPS uplift at 1080p (Ultra), and World War Z (DX11), the latter being more than twice as fast with a 113% performance boost (again at 1080p, Ultra). Guild Wars 2 (DX11) gets an up to 53% boost at 1080p (Ultra).

Granted, some of the huge gains seen since the launch of Arc GPUs is partly because the driver was first realized in such a shoddy state, there was a long way to go for some games. But it's nonetheless good to see Intel put in the work that theoretically lays the foundations for Battlemage to be really competitive against the AMD and NVIDIA duopoly next year.