Curious about Intel's driver updates

Monkey34

Supreme [H]ardness
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Seems to me historically Amd and Nvidea drivers have been "across the board" updates and improvements, where Intel has been focusing on individual game improvements.

Is this due to the architecture differences or just because they are new to the scene?
 
Seems to me historically Amd and Nvidea drivers have been "across the board" updates and improvements, where Intel has been focusing on individual game improvements.

Is this due to the architecture differences or just because they are new to the scene?
They have targeted specific games (popular and newer titles) as well as trying to backfill compatibility issues with older API's like DX11 and earlier.

It's absolutely down to them being new to the scene, where Nvidia and AMD can base new drivers on foundations decades in the making, Intel is starting from scratch, which makes their rapid improvements all the more impressive in my opinion.

I did some testing today, there are games here dating back to the 2000s and even the 90s, all played without issue, even the Dos Box Amiga port F117A, there are a couple of real wildcards in there - niche indie titles that haven't been worked on in years like SoW: Waterloo, worked like a dream. Of course this is a tiny sliver of all the games out there, but it shows the card can run older titles, and so far I have a 100% success rate.

played.JPG
 
I just got around to testing their newest WHQL driver on my A770. Generally, small improvements on some games, whatever they are focusing on. Margin of error performance differences on some. A dip in one that had a major game update in between their driver updates (going to check it out on my NV card now as it may be the game). Newer titles getting increased support to get them playable. And as mentioned, they are new to the scene, so there is a huge backlog of games that need some special attention. Look at all the "game ready" updates we've had over the last 5-8 years.

But now I don't wonder if the A770 will work. It's now how well does it work compared to what else is out there at it's price point.
 
I don't have any of the new Intel cards but it was obvious on release that drivers needed a lot of work. So far Intel has been putting that work into them leading to considerable increases in performance as well as compatibility.

As others stated, Intel has come into this brand new so there were going to be issues no matter what. That Intel would improve the drivers was a given but the amount of improvement in such a short time is astounding. So far the improvements have been way beyond even the most optimistic assessments.
 
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