Intel Investigates Performance Drop of Arc GPUs with Older CPUs

Intel has started addressing the performance dip seen with its Arc GPUs, particularly focusing on older CPU models.

When Intel first rolled out the Arc B580 and B570 GPUs, they seemed promising, especially with more VRAM than their competitors. Yet, despite this, they hardly made it to the top of performance charts. One reason gamers hesitated with the Battlemage series was due to its not-so-great optimization.

The issue isn’t just about driver compatibility; it’s deeper, affecting how the Arc Battlemage GPUs perform when paired with older processors, like the Ryzen 2000 and Intel’s 9th gen CPUs. If you recall, this was highlighted by Hardware Unboxed as one of the first to reveal how the Arc B580 underperformed on these older platforms.

Intel took some time before responding, finally addressing the issue in a forum announcement. Here’s what Intel had to say:

“We appreciate your patience. We’re aware of the performance issues in certain games when paired with older processors. We’ve expanded our platform coverage during validation and will continue investigating optimizations.”

From their response, it seems Intel knew about this issue but hadn’t prioritized a fix. They’re now working on optimizing more configurations, though they haven’t shared a specific timeline for these improvements.

The primary updates needed are on the driver side, as the Arc GPUs already compete well in newer titles when paired with the latest Intel and AMD CPUs. It’s the unexpected dip in performance on older Intel CPUs that raised eyebrows.

There’s hope that upcoming patches could help Intel stand toe-to-toe with AMD and NVIDIA. However, that alone won’t guarantee Intel a stronger foothold in the GPU space. The Arc Battlemage series is barely visible in the market, suffering from poor availability, and failing to make a mark in the budget segment.

Credit: Intel