All things come to an end, though when it’s related to tech, it often seems like the end comes quicker than the lifespan of a hamster. That might feel like it’s the case with a move by Intel to end routine driver updates for all its graphics chips, bar its recent Alchemist and latest Battlemage GPUs.
As explained in a knowledge base post, Intel has split its GPU drivers into two distinct packages: those for Alchemist and Battlemage-powered GPUs and a set for everything else from the past five years. In the case of the latter, that means the integrated GPUs in every 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th Gen Core processors, as well as anything with an Iris Xe GPU.
These will no longer receive game-specific updates, including ‘day 0 support’ (where a new game gets extra tweaks in the drivers to make it run properly at launch), and instead will just enjoy quarterly driver updates containing security or critical fixes. Unless it’s super-critical, of course, in which case, updates will appear as needed.
Given that gaming laptops are still being released in 2025 with 14th Gen Core CPUs, this might seem like a bit of a daft move by Intel. However, the gaming performance of the tiny iGPUs in all its older processors isn’t exactly great and worse than the paper specs suggest it is.
For example, the UHD Graphics 770 in the Core i9 14900K only has 256 shader units, 16 texture units, and 8 render outputs. In contrast, the iGPU in the Steam Deck only has double all those figures, and yet it runs vastly better than the Intel graphics processor. However, it’s a very unfair comparison as the 770 is really there just to provide a consistent video output on PCs without a dedicated GPU; the fact that it can run any games at all is just a handy bonus.
If you want to use an Intel GPU for ‘proper’ gaming, then grab yourself an Arc B570 or B580, depending on where you live in the world. In the US, there’s not much difference in price between them, and for $250 at Newegg, the B580 is a great deal. For PC gamers in the UK, the price gap is relatively large between the two models, so it makes more sense to get the B570 for £180 at Overclockers.
Anyway, while it does seem like Intel has snipped the driver cord a bit prematurely (the UHD Graphics 770 is only four years old), few people are really going to be impacted by this change because if that’s what you’re using to try and play the latest games with, a lack of day 0 support isn’t going to be the reason behind any performance issues.
At the very least, you’ll be able to join the Nvidia Pascal gang, who’ll be nodding sagely and saying ‘You too, huh?’
Best graphics card 2025
