Intel has finally decided to tackle the performance issues plaguing their Arc GPUs, particularly when paired with older CPUs, by launching an investigation to address and fix these problems.
### How Intel is Addressing Arc GPU Performance Issues with Older Processors
When Intel introduced their Arc B580 and B570 GPUs, they seemed promising, offering more VRAM compared to competing models. However, they didn’t manage to make a significant impact in the market. A major reason? Subpar optimization.
This isn’t solely about Intel’s GPU drivers. It’s about a larger issue that has been holding back the Arc Battlemage GPUs from outshining their competitors. Think back to when Hardware Unboxed first drew attention to the poor performance of the Arc B580 when used with older processors like those in the Ryzen 2000 series and 9th generation Intel Core lineup.
For some time, Intel seemed to ignore or overlook these issues. But they’ve finally broken their silence. In a recent forum post, Intel addressed the matter, saying:
> “Thank you for your patience. We are aware of reports of performance sensitivity in some games when paired with older generation processors. We have increased our platform coverage to include more configurations in our validation process, and we are continuing to investigate optimizations.”
It appears from Intel’s statement that they were indeed aware of these performance hiccups but hadn’t prioritized optimizing for them. They now plan to expand their optimizations to a wider array of configurations, suggesting we might see a resolution soon—although they haven’t pinned down a specific timeline for these updates.
Improvements on the driver side are essential, as the hardware itself is already competitive with its rivals in contemporary games. It’s particularly perplexing to see such performance drops when using the Arc B580 and B570 with some of Intel’s own older processors, while newer Intel and AMD CPUs sail smoothly.
Even as Intel works on patches to enhance competitiveness with AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, this doesn’t guarantee an immediate upswing for Intel in the GPU market. The Arc Battlemage GPUs have mostly been elusive in the market, and their limited availability has effectively pushed them out of the current budget GPU race.
Source: Intel
