The Chinese tech press is abuzz with slides allegedly from Intel's pre-launch press-deck for the Core Ultra 2-series "Arrow Lake-S." The most sensational of these are Intel's first-party performance claims for the top Core Ultra 9 285K model. There's good news and bad news. Good news first—Intel claims to have made a big leap in energy efficiency with "Arrow Lake," and the 285K should offer gaming performance comparable to the current Core i9-14900K at around 80 W lower power draw for the processor. But then there in lies the bad news—despite claimed IPC gains for the "Lion Cove" P-core, and rumored clock speeds being on par with the "Raptor Cove" P-cores on the i9-14900K, the 285K is barely any faster than its predecessor in absolute terms.

In its first party testing, when averaged across 12 game tests, which we used Google optical translation to make out the titles of, Intel used performance numbers of the i9-14900K as the mean. The 285K beats the i9-14900K in only four games—Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, Age of Mythology Retold, Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, and F1 23. It's on-par with the i9-14900K in Red Dead Redemption 2, Total War: Pharaoh, Metro Exodus, Cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth: Wukong, Rainbow Six Siege. It's slower than the i9-14900K in Far Cry 6, FF XIV, F1 24, Red Dead Redemption 2. Averaged across this bench, the Core Ultra 9 285K ends up roughly on par with the Core i9-14900K in gaming. Intel also compared the 285K to AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X, and interestingly, even the Ryzen 9 7950X3D.

Intel Graphics today released the latest version of the Intel Arc GPU Graphics drivers. Version 101.4577 WHQL comes with support for the new Arc A570M and A530M mobile GPUs. Besides this, the drivers fix an issue with F1 23 where notebooks with certain Arc A-series mobile GPUs experience an application crash. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4577 WHQL

Today Electronic Arts Inc. celebrated the worldwide launch of EA SPORTS F1 23, an official game of the FIA Formula One World Championship across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, via EA App, Epic Games Store, and Steam. Featuring handling upgrades, with feedback from actual F1 teams, and Precision Drive technology for pad play, players will feel a truly authentic experience when competing against every team and driver across all circuits for the 2023 season, including the highly anticipated Las Vegas Sprint Circuit and Losail International Circuit, Qatar. Players will also create headlines with the return of 'Braking Point', featuring a cast of new and returning fan favourites alongside a fresh team, Konnersport, trying to make a name for itself against the established grid.

"F1 23 has everything players love about competing for the World Championship and propels them further into the world of Formula 1. We're connecting more players this season through F1 World, delivering fresh, timely challenges throughout the 2023 season and a new safety rating system designed to promote healthy, respectful multiplayer competition," said Lee Mather, Senior Creative Director at Codemasters. "Whether competing on wheel or pad, players will immediately feel in control thanks to implemented feedback from real F1 drivers. Our Precision Drive controller technology will revolutionise pad play and give players a greater sense of what it's like to handle some of the fastest vehicles in motorsport."

AMD today released a one-off driver update specifically for the Radeon RX 7600 graphics card, with optimization for F1 23 (besides features consistent with the most recent AMD Software Adrenalin 23.5.2. Besides this optimization, the company released a couple of fixes specific to the RX 7600: sub-optimal performance or stuttering noticed in some VR games; and an intermittent application crash with Blender. The company also released AMD Software Adrenalin 22.40.57.06 for other cards (that's RX 7000 and older except RX 7600); with F1 23 optimization. Since this driver release isn't from AMD's main Adrenalin software trunk, we are not hosting it.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software 23.10.01.37 for F1 23 on Radeon RX 7600 | AMD Software 22.40.57.06 for F1 23 on other Radeon SKUs

Intel Graphics today released the latest version of Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.4499 beta adds optimization for F1 23, Aliens: Dark Descent, Forever Skies, and Counter Strike 2. There are major performance uplifts to be had. Counter Strike 2 sees up to 8% uplift at 1440p with high settings, and up to 10% at 1080p with Very High settings. F1 23 players can expect up to 33% uplift at 1080p with Ultra High settings and RT on, and an 18% uplift with RT off; and a 27% uplift at 1440p with high settings. Intel also updated its Destiny 2 optimization, with a neat 11% uplift to be had at 1080p with the highest settings. An error or black screen seen on applications embedding WebView2 frames, has been fixed.

DOWNLOAD: Intel GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4499 Beta

F1 23 is hit by teething problems with its graphics settings. The issue first surfaced on the EA Answers community forum some 3 weeks around by people playtesting the game. F1 23 is expected to release this Friday (June 16), but pre-orders have a 3-day early access head-start, and have started playing the release version. Several players took to online forums such as Steam Community and Reddit to seek answers for what they describe as blurry game rendering at high settings. There are no known workarounds for now, other than to enable low/medium graphics presets that appear to water down motion blur and depth-of-field. Disabling those two in the graphics settings doesn't seem to help when higher presets are enabled, either. Another popular issue appears to be the color palette being "too bright," as one redditor complains.Image Courtesy /u/lebr103