If you’re one of those who figured Intel would abandon its Arc Alchemist line of GPUs post-launch, it hasn’t. It has apparently continued to work on its drivers to improve performance, as that was its Achilles heel at launch. Along those lines, one of the biggest drawbacks for its GPUs at launch was they were optimized for DX12 and Vulkan games. Intel said its GPUs were for newer games, not older titles like CS: GO and others. However, many people play those games; they are among the most-played games on Steam. Now the company has figured out a way to boost performance in DX9 titles by a significant margin. It’s also lowering the price of its Intel-branded A750 GPU by $40 as well, making it $249.
Intel made the announcement in a video and blog with its PR team. The duo stated the company’s engineers have been hard at work over the holiday period working on improving Arc drivers. As proof of that hard work, they say they have delivered the equivalent improvement of two generations of GPUs with a single driver update. Overall, the improvements equate to an average of 43% at 1080p across DX9 titles. The 99th percentile frames (max frame rate) have improved by 60%, according to Intel.
Intel Arc A750 benchmarks. (Image: Intel)
Whether this improvement will be noticeable is debatable. However, more frames are always better than fewer. For example, Intel says CS: GO fps has gone from 195fps with its launch driver to 347fps. As you can see in the chart above, frame rates have increased by a significant margin in many popular games.
Intel Arc A750 benchmarks. (Image: Intel)
The new driver, dubbed 4091, also allows for improvements at 1440p. The 1.1GB driver boosts performance up to 123% in CS: GO, but only by 9% in Rift, so your mileage may vary. Intel says it’s released eight drivers since November, as well as provided drivers for “21 new or significantly updated” games at launch. We’re not sure what that means, really, but it does sound like Intel is trying to do right by its customers. The PR team also says there are improvements to DX11 and DX12 titles as well, but they’re not quantified.
Aside from the DX9 news, it announced it’s dropping the price of its A750 Limited Edition 8GB GPU to $249. That’s a $40 price reduction, which is a surprise, given it just launched a few months ago. According to our friends at PCMag, the price drop isn’t due to poor sales. Instead, it’s because Intel has found efficiencies in its manufacturing process. We don’t really buy that, but that’s the official line from Chipzilla.
Overall, this seems like good news for those who took a chance on Intel’s inaugural GPU. It was a risky bet at the time, given the company’s history with drivers. However, kudos to Intel for sticking with it and improving the situation. It seems like Intel’s engineers will keep working on drivers for all of 2023, too. A recently leaked roadmap showed its successor, dubbed Battlemage, not appearing until 2024. However, it also showed an Alchemist+ refresh arriving in the second half of 2023.
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