Intel has released a new Intel Graphics Beta Driver (31.0.101.4514) for Intel Arc A-Series Graphics and Intel Iris Xe Graphics that appears to bring massive performance gains to Ubisoft’s 2014 Assassin’s Creed title, Assassin’s Creed Unity. According to the patch notes for the update that was released yesterday, the new driver offers up to a 271% performance uplift at 1080p with Very High settings in Assassin’s Creed Unity, while those playing in 1440p at High settings will see an even greater uplift, as high as 313%. Per a graphics comparison video from ACVideos, Assassin’s Creed Unity still looks very good despite having been released nearly a decade ago.
From an Intel post:
GAMING HIGHLIGHTS:
Intel Game On Driver support on Intel Arc A-series Graphics for:
- Assassin’s Creed Unity (DX11)
- Up to 271% uplift at 1080p with Very High settings
- Up to 313% uplift at 1440p with High settings
- F1 22 (DX12)
- Up to 36% uplift at 1080p with High settings
- Up to 20% uplift at 1440p with High settings
- Up to 10% uplift at 1080p with Ultra High settings and all Ray Tracing settings on
- Deathloop (DX12)
- Up to 10% uplift at 1080p with Ultra settings
- Up to 8% uplift at 1440p with Very High settings
KNOWN ISSUES
Intel Arc Graphics Products:
- System may hang while waking up from sleep. May need to power cycle the system for recovery.
- GPU hardware acceleration may not be available for media playback and encode with some versions of Adobe Premiere Pro.
- Topaz Video AI may experience errors when using some models for video enhancement.
- Streaming Dota 2 using XSplit Broadcaster may exhibit corruption in Game Capture mode.
- Blender 3.6 may experience an application crash during render operations when Hardware Ray Tracing is enabled.
Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics Products:
- Driver installation may not complete successfully on certain notebook systems with both Intel Iris Xe + Iris Xe MAX devices. A system reboot and re-installation of the graphics driver may be required for successful installation.
Intel Core Processor Products:
- Total War: Warhammer III (DX11) may experience an application crash when loading battle scenarios.
- Call of Duty Warzone 2.0 (DX12) may exhibit corruption on certain light sources such as fire.
- Conqueror’s Blade (DX12) may experience an application crash during game launch.
- A Plague Tale: Requiem (DX12) may experience application instability during gameplay.
INTEL ARC CONTROL KNOWN ISSUES
- Using Arc Control Studio capture with certain games may incorrectly generate multiple video files.
- With Intel Arc Control installed, systems may experience slightly higher than expected power consumption during system sleep or hibernate.
- May observe “could not stop Highlights” notification when stopping Auto-Game Highlights.
- The Camera on-screen preview may incorrectly persist when switching between Desktop and Overlay modes.
- The “Connector” type in the Display page may incorrectly show DP* when using an HDMI display connection.
- Arc Control may become unresponsive after a driver upgrade. A workaround is to perform a clean driver installation using Display Driver Uninstaller.