Intel, surprisingly, launches one of its most boring Windows WHQL drivers ever

Intel has released a new Windows graphics driver for Arc (Xe-HPG) discrete GPUs and its integrated UHD graphics based on Xe-LP (11th gen and newer). The new driver, version 31.0.101.4575, is WHQL certified and comes optimized for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, the first title to sport GPU decompression via Microsoft's DirectStorage 1.2. Alongside that, the driver also optimizes Remnant II.

The driver also contains a couple of other game-related bug fixes, which means this is one of the most boring Intel Arc driver launches we have had as we have now come to expect massive gains in performance with almost every driver update. For example, recently Intel's graphics team delivered a driver which fixed the terrible Assassins' Creed Unity performance.

The full changelog is given below:

GAMING HIGHLIGHTS:

Intel® Game On Driver support on Intel® Arc™ A-series Graphics for:

• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart*
• Remnant II*

FIXED ISSUES:

Intel® Arc™ Graphics Products:

• Halo Infinite* (DX12) may experience application freeze or crash after loading to game menu.
• Streaming Dota 2* (DX11) using XSplit Broadcaster* may exhibit corruption in Game Capture mode.

KNOWN ISSUES:

Intel® Arc™ Graphics Products:

• Shadow of The Tomb Raider* (DX11) may experience an application crash after loading to game menu.
• System may hang while waking up from sleep. May need to power cycle the system for recovery.
• GPU hardware acceleration may not be available for media playback and encode with some versions of Adobe Premiere Pro*.
• Topaz Video AI* may experience errors when using some models for video enhancement.
• Blender* 3.6 may experience an application crash during render operations when Hardware Ray Tracing is enabled.
• Adobe After Effects* may experience an application crash during render operations.

Intel® Iris™ X e MAX Graphics Products:

• Driver installation may not complete successfully on certain notebook systems with both Intel® Iris™ Xe + Iris™ Xe MAX devices. A system reboot and re-installation of the graphics driver may be required for successful installation.

Intel® Core™ Processor Products:

• Call of Duty Warzone 2.0* (DX12) may exhibit corruption on certain light sources such as fire.

INTEL® ARC™ CONTROL FIXED ISSUES:

• Arc Control may become unresponsive after a driver upgrade. A workaround is to perform a clean driver installation using Display Driver Uninstaller.

INTEL® ARC™ CONTROL KNOWN ISSUES:

• Using Arc Control Studio capture with certain games may incorrectly generate multiple video files.
• With Intel® Arc Control installed, systems may experience slightly higher than expected power consumption during system sleep or hibernate.
• The Camera on-screen preview may incorrectly persist when switching between Desktop and Overlay modes.
• The “Connector” type in the Display page may incorrectly show DP* when using an HDMI* display connection.
• May observe “stream has already ended” pop-up after the power events with Capture/Highlights/Broadcast toggle on.

To download the new 31.0.101.4575 driver, head over to Intel's official website via this link.

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