Friday, September 1st 2023

Intel Arc Owners Left in the Cold With Starfield as Advanced Access Begins

Starfield Premium owners now have access to the game in full and are testing their internet download limits with its massive 120 GB file size, but a few hopeful gamers are going to have to wait regardless of how much they paid in advance. Intel Arc GPUs currently cannot play Starfield, with varying symptoms ranging from the game not starting to it taking 30-40 minutes before presenting the player with a jumbled cacophany of texture mayhem. Users report that the executable does launch in the background, and that during the half-hour that it's visible in Task Manager it can consume as much as 30 GB of system memory, before either crashing or finally presenting the game menu. If one does manage to get to anything resembling gameplay, their time is short as the game will crash to desktop within only a few minutes.

Intel stated they were aware of the issues shortly after advanced access began opening up, but hopes of a quick fix are not high. In a post by @IntelGraphics on X they state that they are working to improve the experience by the game's full release date on September 6th, roughly a week away. As one might imagine, many Arc owners were not pleased by this. Starfield is an AMD sponsored game and both Bethesda and Microsoft have received some criticism for this. Accusations that this sponsorship "locked out" developers at Intel's graphics division from working on usable drivers have been thrown around the likes of Reddit and X, but no evidence to support them has so far surfaced. Many will be quick to point out that NVIDIA released a preliminary driver for Starfield as early as August 22nd, so such interference is unlikely.

Update: Intel has just released its Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4672 Beta, adding support and fixes for Bethesda's Starfied game.
Source: IntelGraphics on X
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59 Comments on Intel Arc Owners Left in the Cold With Starfield as Advanced Access Begins

#51
regs
AusWolfExactly this! I remember when graphics cards had only one driver that came on a CD. Why does every game need day-1 drivers now? With proper game development, we shouldn't need those.
It's like back in days some lazy web designers were only using Internet Explorer, so sites didn't work in other browsers. Same way as modern web designers proudly calling themselves front-end developers and only using Chrome and its non-standardized APIs. It's not a job of drivers or browser developers to make special hacks for every single game or site.
Posted on Reply
#52
Calatinus
Nowadays, who is responsible for a game to run, given there is a standard (DX12): the GPU manufacturers and their respective drivers which adhere to the standard or the "well-known" gaming studio who has a history of "complete and working" releases?
Posted on Reply
#53
Tahagomizer
Sucks to be an early adopter of unproven technology from a company new to this particular market segment, but people who bought Intel graphics cards must have realized they're the beta testers, just as people who buy early access or preorder games. As Americans say, it is what it is. At least Intel has a lot of money to throw at a PR problem so they'll probably sort it out quickly.
Posted on Reply
#55
csendesmark
I am curious how intel will cover this issue, how fast and how well.
Posted on Reply
#56
lexluthermiester
csendesmarkI am curious how intel will cover this issue, how fast and how well.
Um, did you miss the last few comments? Literally the one right above yours is Solaris talking about it working for his ARC A770. Intel has taken this challenge in stride. You may have made this comment from the front page.
Posted on Reply
#57
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
This goes to show how little the game devs actually tried - it's like they only had two PC's to test their game on, and they were both AMD GPU's


Intel should have been able to send them a GPU or receive a copy of the game long before this... or the devs just buying a single intel Arc GPU of any kind.
Posted on Reply
#58
csendesmark
lexluthermiesterUm, did you miss the last few comments? Literally the one right above yours is Solaris talking about it working for his ARC A770. Intel has taken this challenge in stride. You may have made this comment from the front page.
um, well I wrote my comment on that forgetting to quote.
Meaning, that I am curious on some benchmark results from pages like TPU
Simple announcement from any company means nothing to me.
I am interested in the user's reaction in this case.
Posted on Reply
#59
lexluthermiester
csendesmarkum, well I wrote my comment on that forgetting to quote.
Ah, ok. No worries. :toast: It kinda seemed like something was missing.
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