Intel's Arc Graphics Driver Adds A 3DMark Benchmark Toggle, Here's What It Does

You're tired of hearing it, we're tired of saying it; yes, Intel's Arc graphics are real and out there. They haven't hit store shelves in the US yet, but they're on the way—probably as we write this. Extant hardware needs available drivers, and so Intel's published a new graphics driver for Arc Alchemist.

The driver also fixes a pile of bugs, including texture corruption in Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition, Horizon: Zero Dawn, F1 2020, Crossfire, and Euro Truck Simulator 2. Horizon should also stop crashing when you start a race, The Sims 4 shouldn't crash when you load a save file, and intermittent crashes in Ghostwire: Tokyo should be solved.

As we noted in the headline, the most curious feature of these drivers is a toggle in the Arc Control application labeled "Advanced Performance Optimizations." When this toggle is on—and it defaults to on—the drivers will use targeted benchmark optimizations for 3DMark Time Spy and Port Royale. There's no word on exactly what the practical effects of these optimizations are, but the thing is, the toggle is there to turn them off, not turn them on.

See, Underwriters Laboratories (known more commonly as simply "UL") has a policy in place for 3DMark that published scores can't include any kind of targeted or application-specific optimizations. That's why, until this driver came out, you couldn't see any "approved" scores for Arc Alchemist parts in the benchmark databases for that app.