Intel Graphics Releases Arc 30.0.101.3268 Beta Drivers with Dozens of Fixes

[btarunr]

Intel Graphics over the weekend released the Arc Graphics Drivers version 30.0.101.3268 beta. These drivers add performance optimization for Saints Row and Madden NFL 23, but that's hardly the defining feature. In our testing, the drivers were found to to be night-and-day compared to the previous version, in terms of overall system stability. The release comes hot on the heels of a report that Intel fixed as many as 43 bugs just by watching a product review video by Gamers Nexus.

Among the fixed issues are lower-than-expected performance with Marvel's Spider Man (Remastered) in DirectX 12 mode; an application crash with SoTR in DirectX 12 mode with ray traced shadow quality set to "high," a texture-corruption issue with Battlefield 2042 in DirectX 12 mode; artifacts and object loading failures seen in Halo Infinite, an application crash with Horizon Zero Dawn, and the nasty bug where Windows Update attempts to replace the installed driver, causing severe stability issues. As many as 17 bugs related to Arc Control and 11 bugs related to Arc Control Performance Tuning, have been fixed, as listed below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc 30.0.101.3268 beta



Gaming

• Driver support for Saints Row and Madden NFL 23 on Intel Arc A-series Graphics.

Fixed

• Marvel's Spider-Man (DX12) may experience lower than expected performance on Intel Arc A-series Graphics.
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12) may experience an app crash when setting Ray Traced Shadow Quality to High. A workaround is to change to the Medium or OFF setting.
• Texture corruption may be observed in Battlefield 2042 (DX12) in certain maps.
• Some objects and textures in Halo Infinite (DX12) may render black and fail to load.
• Stray (DX11) may exhibit a TDR or application hang during gameplay.
• Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12) may experience an app crash or system hang during gameplay.
• Windows Update may incorrectly override a more recent version of Intel Arc A-series drivers.

Arc Control Fixes

• In-Game Overlay Telemetry may stop responding after navigating the Performance Graphs section.
• In-Game Overlay Telemetry graphs may intermittently be unavailable for certain Overlay Metrics.
• In-Game Overlay Telemetry graph value title may be intermittently missing.
• In-Game Overlay Telemetry window may incorrectly be present on desktop after a system restart.
• In-Game Overlay Telemetry "Media Activity" value may incorrectly show a negative percentage.
• GPU Info section in System Info tab may incorrectly show a GPU Frequency of "1MHz".
• Adjusting the filename in Capture or Highlights may intermittently only be changed to numeric values.
• Adjusting the filename in Capture or Highlights may incorrectly ignore desired file output name.
• Disabling certain Menu Customization widgets may incorrectly become re-enabled after a system restart.
• The "Broadcast" toggle in the Studio tab may become unavailable when entering in stream URL information.
• A duplicate custom image may be present when using the Background Replacement in the Camera tab.
• Arc Control may intermittently become unresponsive when using "Go Live" while "Sharp Stream" is enabled in the Broadcast tab.
• Keyboard and mouse inputs may be ignored on a secondary display while Arc Control is opened on the primary display.
• Arc Control may incorrectly retain larger scaled size when adjusting a lower display resolution to a higher display resolution.
• Mouse-scrolling may be unresponsive on certain Arc Control UI elements such as "Your Games" and "Live Performance Monitoring"
• Arc Control now accepts "PrintScreen" for capturing Arc Control screenshots.
• Enabling "Smooth Sync" may exhibit display corruption in certain game titles.
• A one-time disclaimer now appears when adjusting any Performance Tuning values.

Intel Arc Control Performance Tuning (BETA) Fixes

• "Reset to defaults" button in Performance Tuning may not be present.
• An incorrect error notification may be observed when resetting Performance Tuning values to defaults.
• Adjusting GPU Voltage Offset may incorrectly display multiple decimal point values.
• Adjusting GPU Power Limit to the maximum value may display the slider at the middle point.
• Adjusting Performance Tuning values with a keyboard may intermittently be non-responsive.
• Adjusting Performance Tuning values with a keyboard may return an undesired slider value.
• Adjusting Performance Tuning sliders with a mouse may intermittently become stuck to the slider.
• The Apply button in Performance Tuning may be unresponsive when setting GPU Performance Boost to "0".
• The Apply button in Performance Tuning may incorrectly be highlighted after using "Reset to defaults" button.
• The Apply button in Performance Tuning may be unresponsive when changing sliders from higher to lower values.
• A "NaN" value in Performance Tuning may be exhibited when inputting non-numeral entries.

Known Issues

• Marvel's Spider-Man (DX12) may exhibit a soft lock when attempting to take a picture of the Empire State Building.
• Marvel's Spider-Man (DX12) may exhibit an application crash when loading into the game with Ray-Traced Reflections enabled.
• Movies and TV Application may experience a hang during HDR video playback and changing video to Fullscreen.
• Call of Duty: Vanguard (DX12) may experience lower than expected performance in the game menu
• Gears 5 (DX12) may experience an application crash, system hang or TDR during gameplay.
• Some third-party camera applications may exhibit video corruption when playing the recorded video in Fullscreen
• Sniper Elite 5 (DX12) may experience an application crash on some Hybrid Graphics system configurations when Windows "Graphics Performance Preference" option for the application is not set to "High Performance".
• Map textures may fail to load or may load as blank surfaces when playing CrossFire.
• Some Intel Arc A380 series graphics product fans may continue running when the graphics card or system is idle

Arc Control Known Issues

• Windows UAC Admin is required to install and launch Arc Control.
• Some applications may exhibit a transparent or blank window when CMAA is set to "Force ON" globally.
• Some applications may exhibit pixel corruption when Sharpening Filter is enabled globally.
• Opening Arc Control in some game titles with ALT+I during gameplay may not correctly appear.
• Using Arc Control Studio Capture with "In Stream" mode enabled may not correctly record entire clip when under a 1080p resolution setting.
• Recording with Arc Control Studio Capture and "In Stream" mode enabled may not save the output video file at the desired length.
• Streaming with Arc Control Studio Capture and "In Stream" mode enabled may cause unexpected connection instability to the desired platform.
• A 1440p resolution selection in Arc Control Studio Capture may be unavailable when the display native resolution is 4K.
• Arc Control Studio Camera overlay position may not retain desired position and size after a system restart.
• Hot-plugging peripheral devices such as cameras, microphones, or displays while Arc Control is open may cause Arc Control to become unresponsive.
• Arc Control may not scale automatically when changing from a 1080p resolution to a 4K resolution.
• Some image types may not load when using Arc Control Camera "Background Replacement" option.
• Some Arc Control Telemetry metrics may not align with 3rd party applications or built-in OS functions.
• The Arc Control Studio Camera tab may take longer than expected responsiveness upon the first navigation.

Intel Arc Control Performance Tuning (BETA) Known Issues

• Intel Arc Control Performance Tuning is currently in Beta. As such, performance and features may behave unexpectedly. Intel will continue to refine the Performance Tuning software in future releases.
• Adjusting Performance Tuning values from a higher value to a lower value may cause tuning values to reset to default.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

So, all those people who were screaming about intel's drivers and how they should have been perfect and intel should just drop out......

Are they going to avoid this article completely, or?

 

[Deleted member 185088]

So, all those people who were screaming about intel's drivers and how they should have been perfect and intel should just drop out......

Are they going to avoid this article completely, or?

They should Intel has been making GPUs for ages and have lots of money, as such one expects a minimum level of quality.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

They should Intel has been making GPUs for ages and have lots of money, as such one expects a minimum level of quality.

integrated display adapters are a completely different beast from gaming or workstation GPUs. Money =! experience with driver development.

 

[ZoneDymo]

So, all those people who were screaming about intel's drivers and how they should have been perfect and intel should just drop out......

Are they going to avoid this article completely, or?

I mean, if they were/are of that opinion, nothing about this article changes that so....why would they avoid it?

On topic, the change is happening, next to updates on Nvidia and AMD drivers, we are getting Intel drivers.

 

[crimsontape]

I'm personally excited to have Intel in the GPU game and working hard on these drivers.

Honest questions and thoughts... Compared to AMD and NVIDIA, whose success depends on product implementation and optimization support with software developers and of all kinds, what's Intel cost barrier? Such a success, for example, is AMD and how they managed to get Zen and RDNA into two competing consoles, and to the advantage of the industry building products and delivering popular services via these consoles. Similarly, I think Intel did well in a similar manner by throwing iGPUs with a lot of streaming-oriented acceleration into the bulk of its line-ups. So, what's Intel's position between being able to push a good bit of hardware because they have actual fabs, but also be appreciably A) late to delivering upper tier products like this, B) the exposure of having few easy wins ahead or clear and easy market ground to gain, and C) internal processes, business flows, and staffing to concretize success in product implementation and optimization?

Am I making sense here? Like, for the successful products, relationships, and money-flows that already exist, what does it cost Intel to enter the game? Per chip function and chip generation, per application, per company? I see where they already have some successes, but it seems like only a loose constellation of success and will leave them lost in the space, where the moon is the real cheese here? lol

 

[HD64G]

And it still hasn't launched properly. I assume there are hundreds more bugs to be fixed. They will need at least 1 (or 2) more year(s) to get their drivers in a proper state for anyone to work with. My 5c.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

And it still hasn't launched properly. I assume there are hundreds more bugs to be fixed. They will need at least 1 (or 2) more year(s) to get their drivers in a proper state for anyone to work with. My 5c.

There likely are, but it's a good sign they've reacted this way. Better then, say, AMD ignoring user omplaints until the media picks up the issue.

 

[Dr. Dro]

So, all those people who were screaming about intel's drivers and how they should have been perfect and intel should just drop out......

Are they going to avoid this article completely, or?

I know the earful I got for saying that I believed they would be working on the software, and this should be just the beginning

And it still hasn't launched properly. I assume there are hundreds more bugs to be fixed. They will need at least 1 (or 2) more year(s) to get their drivers in a proper state for anyone to work with. My 5c.

It's a catch-22, they need to have the product out and in people's hands before people can actually work with it, so this rough period is pretty much going to be necessary. Both NV and AMD went through it in the past, arguably, AMD is still currently going through such a major phase as they are rewriting a vast amount of driver code from scratch, because the old code base had become completely unserviceable.

Most recent and high profile example is the completely new OpenGL driver they've released to the public in Adrenalin 22.7.1, that's not a "performance improvement" release, it's a completely new OpenGL user-mode driver based on the PAL architecture. As a result, i'm sure you've heard that the 22.7.1 and newer drivers actually broke a lot of things, and that they also deprecated many extensions. It's just how these things work, and code newness is something that is antithetical to driver stability.

 

[Daven]

So, all those people who were screaming about intel's drivers and how they should have been perfect and intel should just drop out......

Are they going to avoid this article completely, or?

Intel is still way way late and massively failing with this GPU launch. Why would I avoid yet another article highlighting the sorry state of their drivers for vaporware that is still not available to the world at large?

 

[phanbuey]

Just shows how complex the drivers that we take for granted are. Just the bug fix list alone is enough work to be its own project.

 

[Deleted member 185088]

integrated display adapters are a completely different beast from gaming or workstation GPUs. Money =! experience with driver development.

I beg to differ, they can play games, play multimedia content... Etc so they do have a lot of experience and money to make their teams bigger.
They just messed up, I wouldn't surprised that it was due to poor management and lack of communication within Intel, one has to remember it is a huge company.

 

[usiname]

integrated display adapters are a completely different beast from gaming or workstation GPUs. Money =! experience with driver development.

Who fooled you? IGPU is same as GPU, just different scale, and intel had 2 decades experience with IGPUs.
Imagine if its completely different, how AMD manage to have IGPU + GPU + CPU in same time with 10x less budget , oh and they don't delay their products 4-5 times, nor at the launch, they are so buggy that they must to cancel the production like Intel

 

[GreiverBlade]

So, all those people who were screaming about intel's drivers and how they should have been perfect and intel should just drop out......

Are they going to avoid this article completely, or?

nah, still here and glad they are doing something about it

 

[mechtech]

Let’s hear it for the beta testers!!!! The unsung heroes in the pc world.

 

[phanbuey]

Who fooled you? IGPU is same as GPU, just different scale, and intel had 2 decades experience with IGPUs.
Imagine if its completely different, how AMD manage to have IGPU + GPU + CPU in same time with 10x less budget , oh and they don't delay their products 4-5 times, nor at the launch, they are so buggy that they must to cancel the production like Intel

they used to when Raja was there.

 

[AnotherReader]

I beg to differ, they can play games, play multimedia content... Etc so they do have a lot of experience and money to make their teams bigger.
They just messed up, I wouldn't surprised that it was due to poor management and lack of communication within Intel, one has to remember it is a huge company.

Agreed. They had years to polish the drivers via the IGP route, and in any case, missing frequent BSODs is just puzzling. Still, it's great to see them fix so many bugs in one release. If they keep up this cadence, then they might be a good option for the 3060 Ti and below range later this year.

 

[usiname]

they used to when Raja was there.

The situation never were so bad as is for Intel's GPUs now

 

[phanbuey]

The situation never were so bad as is for Intel's GPUs now

AMDs situation used to be far, far worse. Basically at any point from 2009-2015.

AMDs launches used to be a running joke among my friends who worked at Fry's since the CPUs would show up without motherboards, or not at all, all the time late or wrong. They had no top end GPU and the CPU was basically a disaster. Even the first Ryzen launch was an absolute mess.

I love AMD - don't get me wrong, but let's not pretend they weren't circling the drain for 6 years. I am very glad they survived -- and I am hoping Intel survives in the graphics space as well -- we all win if that happens.

 

[AnotherReader]

There likely are, but it's a good sign they've reacted this way. Better then, say, AMD ignoring user omplaints until the media picks up the issue.

I think you missed that they learnt of these bugs through a Gamers Nexus video. Still, the turnaround time is impressive. Let's see if they keep it up.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Who fooled you? IGPU is same as GPU, just different scale, and intel had 2 decades experience with IGPUs.
Imagine if its completely different, how AMD manage to have IGPU + GPU + CPU in same time with 10x less budget , oh and they don't delay their products 4-5 times, nor at the launch, they are so buggy that they must to cancel the production like Intel

For the most part igpu drivers are the same, yet there are differences that were likely not addressed correctly if at all. An igpu could address the cpu directly where as a dgpu cannot, its like coming in the front door for ages not it has to come in the side door. Sure it could be simple fixes but likely Intel assumed it wasnt an issue.

 

[usiname]

AMDs situation used to be far, far worse. Basically at any point from 2009-2015.

AMDs launches used to be a running joke among my friends who worked at Fry's since the CPUs would show up without motherboards, or not at all, all the time late or wrong. They had no top end GPU and the CPU was basically a disaster. Even the first Ryzen launch was an absolute mess.

I love AMD - don't get me wrong, but let's not pretend they weren't circling the drain for 6 years. I am very glad they survived -- and I am hoping Intel survives in the graphics space as well -- we all win if that happens.

I had an AMD GPU from 2012 and changed 2-3 drivers. Never had issues with stable releases, the only buggy driver was the one that come on disk with the box.

 

[AnotherReader]

I had an AMD GPU from 2012 and changed 2-3 drivers. Never had issues with stable releases, the only buggy driver was the one that come on disk with the box.

My 290X was very well behaved too, even though I upgraded to the latest driver regularly. My Vega 64 was very well behaved too for the first year, and then I had problems due to a motherboard flaking out which I incorrectly blamed it for.

 

[Dirt Chip]

Good progress, need much more but by the time battelmage come driver might be in a different, very good place.

 

[dozenfury]

On the plus side, good on them for being quick to address these bugs. As others have mentioned, the growing pains are somewhat to be expected. That should be part of the buying decision for early Arc adopters.

On the negative end, some of these sound like really obvious bugs that should have been caught in testing. Texture corruption in BF2042? Crashing when setting video options and during gameplay. Windows Update downgrading the driver? I have to question how much testing was done, or if it was just release it to the public and they'll be our beta testers to tell us what doesn't work. They'll need to be a little more proactive.