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
Welp, time to update Intel's "unsupported hardware" list again in the minimum requirements.
5700G/5600G launched in 5th of August 2021 at DIY channel, they should support it with adrenaline drivers for 5 years imo (Q3 2026) although this is utopian of course!
In a pessimistic scenario, probably Nvidia will discontinue Maxwell 1&2 game-ready status in one year from now and at the same time AMD will shift focus also leaving behind GCN4.0/GCN5.0 architectures.(just only 2 years after the 5700G/5600G DIY launch)
With the REBAR performance issues, could you even run one of their new GPU's on an older platform to have concerns about mixing old + new drivers in the first place? (This happens with AMD and nvidia, I cant mix a GT 710 and my 3090, they need different drivers)