How Are Intel GPUs Still Advancing This Much? Latest Driver Update Claims Up to 31% FPS Improvement in Resident Evil Requiem

In other games, the boosts are less prominent but still significant.

And in other games the boosts are less noticeable but still noticeable.

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Intel graphics don't spend much screen time against the weight of AMD and Nvidia, but say what you will about Arc GPUs, they're only getting better. That's clear enough from the latest driver, the release notes of which claim significant performance improvements in some games.

The release notes for WHQL driver 32.0.101.9150 ( PDF warning ) claim an average 31% fps boost in Resident Evil Requiem at 1080p at medium settings for Core Ultra 2 (Lunar Lake) integrated Arc GPUs. At high settings it only drops a few percent to 29 percent.

There are other big improvements: 18% for Assassin's Creed Shadows at 1080p, high settings, and 11% for Assassin's Creed Valhalla at 1080p at high, plus some other smaller increases.

Intel Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) integrated GPUs get an average 5% boost for F1 25 at 1080p at medium settings. And Arc B-series graphics cards get a 6 percent boost in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Monster Hunter Rise, both at 1440p at high settings.

Nothing as big as the lunar lake he apparently sees, but still enough to suggest that there is a "fine wine" element throughout the Arc stack. Although based on our experience here at PC Gamer, it's less a case of "good to great" and more "tempered to reliable".

We have measured the lowest available price for any current generation GPU as of August 14, 2025.

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When our dev reviewed the Intel Arc B580, he concluded that it's an affordable GPU that works, but there are games that don't perform well, and some that don't work at all. Things have improved since then, but Intel GPUs are still more inconsistent than Nvidia and AMD.

Both the Intel Lunar Lake (eg Arc 140V) and newer Panther Lake (eg Arc B390) are very capable GPUs that make attractive laptops, especially the latter. But there's always the risk of inconsistency in games, and the giant performance improvements that come from updating drivers are proof of that.

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However, the continuous improvement is great even for older Arc GPUs. Especially considering that Intel graphics cards are among the cheapest modern cards and have been able to avoid the effects of the global memory shortage. As you can see from the chart above, the cheapest Arc B570 and Arc B580 cards have remained relatively stable in terms of price and are very cheap for the current market.

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Jacob put his hands on a gaming computer for the first time when he was about 12 years old. He quickly realized that the local computer repair shop had ripped him off with his build and vowed to never let another soul build his rig again. With this vow, Yaqub the hardware addict was born. Since then, Jacob has led a double life as a hardware geek, semi-philosophical professional, first working as a hardware writer for PCGamesN in 2020, then working on a PhD in philosophy for a few years while working for sites like TechRadar, Pocket-lint, Pocket-lint, and Pocket-lint. Eventually, he gave up the brutal mercenary life and joined the world's #1 PC gaming site full-time. He assures us that it is definitely not a carnal thing.

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