Intel Beats AMD And NVIDIA To Releasing GPU Drivers Optimized For Baldur's Gate 3
This release is a little bit unusual; typically, Intel's graphics driver packages come as full releases complete with WHQL certification. This driver, on the other hand, is a beta driver that Intel has released specifically to add "Game On" support for Baldur's Gate 3, and that's basically it. The release notes for the new driver package don't mention any other fixed bugs or optimizations whatsoever; it's strictly for Larian's new launch.
We expect that Baldur's Gate 3 will run well on Arc A7 GPUs; the recommended cards for smooth gameplay are the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER and Radeon RX 5700 XT, both of which are a fair bit behind Intel's Arc A750 and A770 graphics cards in performance in most titles—especially those where Intel has put in the work to optimize its drivers.
In particular, the 16GB model of the Arc A770 could find a rare opportunity to really stretch its legs, as some of the environments in Baldur's Gate 3 are both surprisingly large and extremely detailed, with lots of characters milling about. We haven't tested it yet, but we wouldn't be surprised if it's possible to overspill 8GB of video RAM in high resolutions.
While there's no other notes about fixed bugs or optimizations in the release notes, there is the usual litany of known issues, although the only listed issue related to PC gaming is that Shadow of the Tomb Raider, when played in DirectX 11 mode, may crash after loading to the menu. The rest of the issues listed in Intel's release notes are related to professional applications like Adobe AfterEffects, Premiere Pro, and Blender.
If you're keen to jump on Baldur's Gate 3 using your Arc graphics card when you get home from work today, make sure you snag this latest driver. Again, we haven't tested it, but Intel probably wouldn't have rushed out a beta driver if it didn't make significant improvements in the game's performance.
