Intel promises significant performance improvements for Arc GPUs and DirectX 9 games

Intel is releasing a new driver version for its Arc Alchemist GPUs that should bring noticeable performance improvements to DirextX 9 games. It was already known that the Arc GPUs performed less well in combination with the older APIs.

Intel shows Based on our own findings, the performance of the Arc A770 in six popular DirextX 9 games, comparing the October release driver (v3490) and the new v3959 driver that focuses specifically on DirectX 9. This concerns Guild Wars 2, Payday 2, Stellaris, Starcraft 2, League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. In terms of average frame rate, CS:GO saw an improvement of almost 80 percent; the other games scored somewhat lower, relatively speaking.

According to Intel, there has been a noticeable improvement in the number of frames per second, especially in League of Legends and CS:GO. At 1440p and the graphics settings on ultra, the average frame rate in CS:GO with the old driver would be 179fps, while with the new driver it is 317fps. In League of Legends this goes from 228 to 346fps. In terms of 99 percentile values, the relative improvement on CS:GO is 2.15 at 1440p and ultra settings, which should mean better frametimes and therefore noticeably smoother gameplay.

Intel acknowledges that the DirectX 9 experience “required more attention.” It was already known that the video cards were not well optimized for older graphics APIs such as DirectX 11 and older. Until now, Intel had to use API translation layers to support older DirectX 9 titles via DirectX 12. Popular games like CS:GO still use this.

These translation layers are not all deleted; Intel says it uses several ways to achieve the best results per game. In that sense, v3959 is a driver version that should also be seen as a starting point; this driver does not immediately bring native support for every DirectX 9 title. This will be the case for some games, but for others the translation layers are still used.