Thursday, July 28th 2022
Intel's Day-0 Driver Updates Now Limited to Xe-based iGPUs and Graphics Cards
Intel Graphics, with its latest Graphics Drivers 31.0.101.3222, changed the coverage of its latest driver updates. The company would be providing game optimizations and regular driver updates only for its Gen12 (Iris Xe), and Arc "Alchemist" graphics products. Support for Gen9, Gen9.5, and Gen11 iGPUs integrated with 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th generations of Intel processors, namely "Skylake," "Kaby Lake," "Coffee Lake," "Ice Lake," and "Cascade Lake," will be relegated to a separate, quarterly driver update cycle, which only covers critical updates and security vulnerabilities, but not game optimizations.
Intel's regular Graphics Driver cycle that includes Day-0 optimizations timed with new game releases, will only cover the Gen12 Xe iGPUs found in 11th Gen "Tiger Lake," "Rocket Lake," and 12th Gen "Alder Lake" processors; besides the DG1 Iris Xe graphics card; and Arc "Alchemist" discrete GPUs. Version 31.0.101.3222 appears to be a transitioning point, and so it has drivers from both branches included within a 1.1 GB package (the main branch supporting game optimizations for new GPUs, and the legacy branch for the older iGPUs). You can grab this driver from here.
Source:
Intel
Intel's regular Graphics Driver cycle that includes Day-0 optimizations timed with new game releases, will only cover the Gen12 Xe iGPUs found in 11th Gen "Tiger Lake," "Rocket Lake," and 12th Gen "Alder Lake" processors; besides the DG1 Iris Xe graphics card; and Arc "Alchemist" discrete GPUs. Version 31.0.101.3222 appears to be a transitioning point, and so it has drivers from both branches included within a 1.1 GB package (the main branch supporting game optimizations for new GPUs, and the legacy branch for the older iGPUs). You can grab this driver from here.
33 Comments on Intel's Day-0 Driver Updates Now Limited to Xe-based iGPUs and Graphics Cards
Same as amd, gcn isn't anymore their priority, Rdna is
Dedicated driver for dGPU is the right way to go.
This is why their Linux driver only required minor fixes related to dedicated VRAM in order to support dGPUs.
The hard part will be getting the game developer <-> driver developer loop going. It requires a lot of people skills. NVIDIA driver has been so well developed because of their communication with the gaming industry. They organize special events for gaming developers, in which you get to interact with the driver team, ask questions and suggest improvements. AMD's support is not as good, but they also do their part. Intel historically hasn't been very good at this, which needs to change if they want to be serious in the dGPU market. Seems that way. You can work around this issue by downloading the Dell drivers, for example older <Gen12 or newer >=Gen12. If you open the .exe in 7-zip you'll get the Appx folder which contains the control panel shipped with all dependencies, which do not require working Windows Store to install. Unfortunately Ice Lake mobile shipped with Gen11 iGPU, which is a slightly beefed up Gen9 originally debuted in 2015.
Intel is not abandoning those older generations, security and general fixes will still happen, but not at the rapid pace required for the newer Xe based models.
Ok not serious gaming but I squeeze all the blood I can get from that stone, which means older and indie titles so this change shouldn't matter much, if at all.
Comet Lake has a few more years since Skylake's EOL is set to September 30, 2022.
And even by your definition, what Intel is doing here is not "EOL" since apart from security updates they will receive critical updates, as in "the iGPU is not working in Win12, here's a driver to fix it". This is written in the OP.