Intel's Day-0 Driver Updates Now Limited to Xe-based iGPUs and Graphics Cards

[btarunr]

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.



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[dgianstefani]

Seems fair, can't think of many people who seriously game on Skylake iGPU.

 

[Bomby569]

i guess they separated the new and the serious products from the legacy "lets pretend this needs serious drivers" integrated graphics. Makes sense.

 

[R-T-B]

Seems fair, can't think of many people who seriously game on Skylake iGPU.

The most anyone does with them maybe is streaming encode/decode, so yeah, not much more to do there.

 

[Ellertis]

i guess they separated the new and the serious products from the legacy "lets pretend this needs serious drivers" integrated graphics. Makes sense.

My guess, there're in the same boat as amd with their gpu arcs. TGL and ICL brought a new gpu arch, and with the "recent" launch of Arc. It'd behove intel to fully concentrate on the latest arch iteration.
Same as amd, gcn isn't anymore their priority, Rdna is

 

[ixi]

The most anyone does with them maybe is streaming encode/decode, so yeah, not much more to do there.

In BIOS - shutdown iGPU

 

[R-T-B]

In BIOS - shutdown iGPU

If you are using it as a steam streaming box and that's your only gpu that isn't going to end well...

 

[Ellertis]

If you are using it as a steam streaming box and that's your only gpu that isn't going to end well...

Also, why not let it render the whole windows and other apps eg browser/discord? Wouldn't it be beneficial to the dgpu to offload these tasks?

 

[Selaya]

Seems fair, can't think of many people who seriously game on Skylake iGPU.

i would if they were but capable of any serious gaming at all ...

 

[chris.london]

Intel still supplies most of the Ice Lake mobile CPUs and yet will not provide full support for them? Sorry guys this is not acceptable.

 

[dgianstefani]

i would if they were but capable of any serious gaming at all ...

They're fine for League of Legends and other lightweight stuff.

 

[ratirt]

They have a new graphics card and for sure they need to start from scratch with the drivers for it. Reusing the iGPU drivers and modify those for the Arc GPU would have been so foolish.
Dedicated driver for dGPU is the right way to go.

 

[TheUn4seen]

I have a question: Do Intel dGPU drivers still require Windows store to install the control panel, like the iGPU ones?

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

They have a new graphics card and for sure they need to start from scratch with the drivers for it. Reusing the iGPU drivers and modify those for the Arc GPU would have been so foolish.
Dedicated driver for dGPU is the right way to go.

Intel recently hired personnel to develop this exact thing. Lets hope they stay the course.

 

[ncrs]

They have a new graphics card and for sure they need to start from scratch with the drivers for it. Reusing the iGPU drivers and modify those for the Arc GPU would have been so foolish.
Dedicated driver for dGPU is the right way to go.

Intel recently hired personnel to develop this exact thing. Lets hope they stay the course.

The breaking point is the introduction of Intel Xe architecture. It's being used both in newer iGPUs and dGPUs. There is no reason to have a separate driver for dGPUs when their architecture is not that different from Xe iGPUs, with dedicated VRAM being the most important distinction.
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.

I have a question: Do Intel dGPU drivers still require Windows store to install the control panel, like the iGPU ones?

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.

Intel still supplies most of the Ice Lake mobile CPUs and yet will not provide full support for them? Sorry guys this is not acceptable.

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.

 

[watzupken]

The older UHD graphics are not game worthy to be honest. So I really don't see the point of having these "game optimized" driver. If anything, the frequent driver may end up breaking something. So older Intel iGPU stands to lose more than gain anything in this case.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Also, why not let it render the whole windows and other apps eg browser/discord? Wouldn't it be beneficial to the dgpu to offload these tasks?

They do this on laptops to save power, and driver wise it's a nightmare, it took years to reach stability and still creates a performance penalty VS dGPU directly to display. On a desktop there little to no reason to do so as desktop load really doesn't make any kind of difference

 

[Vayra86]

i would if they were but capable of any serious gaming at all ...

Borderlands in 720p can run a whoppin 50 FPS on my 3570k ... its not impossible

 

[Fouquin]

498 days since the release of the last Comet Lake CPU with UHD Graphics. Intel beat AMD in the category of: "Shortest time from release to EOL of an in-production SKU." AMD's previous best was around 550 days.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Seems fair, can't think of many people who seriously game on Skylake iGPU.

When traveling, that's all I got!

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.

 

[ncrs]

498 days since the release of the last Comet Lake CPU with UHD Graphics. Intel beat AMD in the category of: "Shortest time from release to EOL of an in-production SKU." AMD's previous best was around 550 days.

The "legacy" iGPUs are still going to be supported.
Comet Lake has a few more years since Skylake's EOL is set to September 30, 2022.

 

[Fouquin]

The "legacy" iGPUs are still going to be supported.
Comet Lake has a few more years since Skylake's EOL is set to September 30, 2022.

They're still going to get security patches, once per quarter, but no longer will they receive any form of performance or compatibility patches. They're EOL in that regard. AMD did the same thing with Richland APUs, ending active support but still shipping security fixes through Windows Update for a couple years. Security fixes don't allow newer applications to run on the hardware though.

 

[ncrs]

They're still going to get security patches, once per quarter, but no longer will they receive any form of performance or compatibility patches. They're EOL in that regard.

If you change the definition of "EOL" to fit your argument then yes. But it's not the definition that everyone else uses.

 

[Fouquin]

If you change the definition of "EOL" to fit your argument then yes. But it's not the definition that everyone else uses.

The definition of EOL changed when side channel attacks became a weekly event, and manufacturers were forced to provide security patches for decades worth of SKUs. When active support for their primary function ends, and only security fixes are in the pipeline, it's EOL.

 

[ncrs]

The definition of EOL changed when side channel attacks became a weekly event, and manufacturers were forced to provide security patches for decades worth of SKUs. When active support for their primary function ends, and only security fixes are in the pipeline, it's EOL.

No, that's Extended or Long Term support. EOL is... the end of support altogether.
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.