Leaker Kepler_L2 says AMD will bring RDNA 5+ to its Zen 7 "Grimlock" APUs in 2029. He posted on the NeoGAF forum, replying to a user who guessed RDNA 5 would trickle down to regular mobile chips in 2028 or later. His answer was "RDNA5+ in 2029 with Grimlock." He gave no details on how RDNA 5+ differs from RDNA 5, and AMD hasn't confirmed the name or timing. Grimlock is the codename for the Zen 7 Ryzen generation. This update follows Kepler_L2's January claim that AMD is splitting its APU roadmap in two. Products that don't need strong integrated graphics, like office laptops or laptops with a high-end discrete GPU, stay on RDNA 3.5 until 2029, while "premium" parts get RDNA 5. Medusa Halo is expected to be one of those.

The picture is messy, though. We previously reported that Medusa Point should get RDNA 4m, a tweaked RDNA 3.5 with FSR 4 support, and AMD's HIPRT 3.2 release notes list Medusa support for gfx1170, gfx1171 and gfx115E. The gfx115x family is RDNA 3.5, so it looks like at least one Medusa chip could stick with it. If this ends up being true, anyone waiting on a mainstream Ryzen laptop or handheld with RDNA 5 graphics may be waiting a long time. That's a long run for one iGPU architecture, but of course, this is all leak territory until AMD says something concrete.

A developer who goes by levi on X has announced Utsuro, a new project that runs Xbox One games on Apple devices. It's still very early, but the developer says it already runs Minecraft: Xbox One Edition "extremely well," and the attached video shows it running on iOS with touchscreen controls. According to the project's GitHub page, Minecraft hits around 36 to 60 FPS on the Mac build, and Sonic Mania and Rocket League run there too, complete with screenshots. Sonic Mania is marked as playable at around 57 FPS with sound, while Rocket League renders and drives at roughly 15 to 20 FPS, with dark lighting and no audio yet.

Utsuro also works differently from a typical emulator. Apparently, it skips hardware emulation altogether and runs the console's Windows-based software layer as x86-64 code on Apple's Arm chips through FEXCore, and fills in the system pieces the console itself would normally provide. Graphics go through Apple's Metal API, with the Xbox One's Direct3D 11.X shaders converted to Metal's shader language, while audio runs on CoreAudio. Getting it running isn't exactly simple either. On iOS, the app has to be sideloaded, needs a JIT helper like StikDebug, TrollStore, or a jailbroken device, and expects a decrypted dump of the game. The macOS version currently has to be built from source.

A developer who goes by Panchovix has released three tools that let NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50, RTX 40, and RTX 30-series owners run a modified VBIOS without writing anything to the card's flash chip. The first is a VBIOS editor for Windows and Linux that can change power limits, voltage ceilings, current (OCP) limits, fan channels, and the core and memory offset ranges. Edited images keep NVIDIA's original signature, which no longer matches, so they can't be flashed with nvflash. Patched tools did break NVIDIA's BIOS signature lock for crossflashing back in 2023, but this approach skips flashing altogether. On Windows, the loader stores the edited image in the GPU's driver registry key, where the driver picks it up as an override every time the device starts, and it only needs a quick GPU restart. The Linux loader instead patches NVIDIA's open kernel modules so the GSP firmware starts with the custom image, with Fedora 43 being the only distro tested on real hardware so far.

The screenshots show how this works in practice. On what appears to be an RTX 5090 Founders Edition ROM, the board power ceiling went from 600 W to 700 W and the NVVDD and MSVDD voltage ceilings from 1,110 mV to 1,150 mV. An RTX 4090 ROM had its power ceiling raised from 666 W to 750 W and its core offset range doubled to +2,000 MHz, and nvidia-smi later confirmed that card's power limit going from 550 W to 671 W. Apparently, an RTX 5090 reached 800 W, an RTX 5080 went from 360 W to 500 W, and an RTX 5060 Ti from 185 W to 300 W in the developer's own testing. Laptop RTX 40 GPUs can't be edited yet, and memory timings can't be changed since the card reads them directly from the flash chip.

NVIDIA has updated its DLSS Frame Generation algorithm to be faster and more efficient. In the latest NVIDIA App beta update, rolling out today, the company introduced "Preset C," the fastest Performance Mode for DLSS Frame Generation. NVIDIA demonstrates that this mode can make frame generation up to 35% faster on the GeForce RTX 5060, with minimal trade-offs in image quality. This improvement applies to the GeForce RTX 40-Series, GeForce RTX 50-Series, and RTX Spark.

According to NVIDIA, there are two models for DLSS: Multi-Frame Generation and Frame Generation. The first model uses a standard AI approach that inputs motion vectors and depth to understand how two rendered frames are constructed. The second model employs optical flow for in-game elements like UI and ray tracing. Today, NVIDIA replaced this optical flow model with a much faster and lighter AI algorithm that boosts FPS across DLSS Frame Generation, Multi-Frame Generation, and Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation. This new model is available for download through the NVIDIA App beta update, so ensure you're running the latest beta version to try out the "Preset C" setting.

The KytyPlus PS5 emulator has reportedly rendered the Unreal Engine 5-powered Silent Hill 2 remake on an integrated GPU. Reddit user Legal_Help_31 shared a test on an AMD Radeon 840M with 512 MB of dedicated VRAM plus shared system memory, paired with a Ryzen AI 5 340 and around 15 GB of shared RAM. Performance is still not where we would want it, of course. The game's content warning screen runs at around 4 FPS, and it looks like the game only starts and sits there for several minutes without crashing. The test includes no gameplay at this time. The developer's own GitHub page calls the work experimental and says it is not a playability claim. FSR upscaling can apparently be used as well.

KytyPlus is a high-level emulation (HLE) fork of the KytyPS5 project. It reportedly runs without Sony's console firmware and uses Vulkan for rendering. The original KytyPS5 reportedly still crashes when launching Silent Hill 2 Remake, even on stronger hardware, so KytyPlus is a few steps ahead there. It is also impressive that this technically ran on an iGPU, but a boot screen at 4 FPS tells us very little about whether this ever becomes playable. The emulation scene has moved quickly in recent weeks, though, with KytyPS5 showing tremendous progress in Demon's Souls Remake and Astro Bot, among other games. KytyPlus developers are apparently now working to improve the performance in Silent Hill 2 Remake.

A developer going by Uzbekunknown on GitHub has gotten NVIDIA's DLSS 5 Neural Rendering running on the Arc 140V integrated graphics of an Intel Lunar Lake system, as Tom's Hardware reports. The project, called dlss-nr-on-intel, is an independent reimplementation of the 71-block network that runs on Intel's XMX units through Vulkan. It has apparently been shown working in Tekken 7, Dead or Alive 5 Last Round, and Mortal Kombat 1. For now it only runs on Linux, and users must supply their own copy of NVIDIA's DLL. As far as performance goes, the developer says Tekken 7 ran at around 10 FPS at 640x360 resolution, and the frametimes are absolutely abysmal too. The author calls it a research port, not a finished product, so photo mode use looks like the only realistic scenario right now.

Perhaps even more interesting is how this port came to be. Apparently, the code was written almost entirely by AI. The developer credits Claude Opus 5 and OpenAI's Astra, saying they themselves only supplied the hardware, the binary, and the direction. They also state they cannot defend the code line by line, and that a driver bug one of the agents hallucinated shaped three development phases. This mod effort follows DLSS 5 reaching RTX 30-series and AMD RDNA 4 cards within weeks of the leak, as well as the technology reaching web browsers. I think whether this is clever or a step too far depends on how much you trust code nobody fully reviewed. It's a fine technical demo, but I don't think we really needed DLSS 5 on Intel integrated graphics.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, a leading brand in gaming PC components, gaming laptops, and Hi-fi audio products, is opening a new chapter in the Japanese market through a strategic partnership with CFD Sales Inc. (CFD), a well-established Japanese hardware distributor. As part of this renewed market expansion, COLORFUL's flagship iGame graphics card series and BATTLE-AX motherboards will officially go on sale in Japan on September 16, ahead of TOKYO GAME SHOW 2026. The iGame graphics card series will also be showcased as part of CFD's new gaming brand, Crowxis, at the event.

Beginning September 16, Japanese customers will be able to purchase COLORFUL iGame graphics cards and BATTLE-AX motherboards through CFD's local distribution channels. Product and availability details will be available on the official CFD website. COLORFUL's partnership with CFD represents an important step in strengthening its presence among Japanese PC DIY enthusiasts and gamers, while bringing its latest graphics card and motherboard products to the Japanese market.

MediaTek, the world's number one provider of mobile chipsets, today announced the launch of the Dimensity 9600 Pro. This flagship SoC achieved a significant technological milestone, adopting the new 2 nm process node; as the first company to announce reaching this threshold, MediaTek is showcasing its leadership in innovation with the Dimensity Pro 9600. With the next generation of silicon now available in the Dimensity lineup, the Dimensity 9600 Pro will enable many transformative capabilities, combining flagship performance and power efficiency with advanced agentic AI experiences.

"AI is central to the smartphone experience, and devices need greater performance, efficiency, and intelligence to keep pace with rapidly evolving user demands," said JC Hsu, corporate senior vice president at MediaTek and general manager of the Wireless Communications Business Unit. "The Dimensity 9600 Pro meets these demands with a Native AI architecture and dual improvement in performance and power efficiency to deliver new agentic AI experiences."

We recently reported that NVIDIA's RTX 50-series GPU prices rose by a median 41% between August and July 2026, putting the RTX 5090 at a whopping $4,700+. However, it seems as though the DRAM and GPU crisis is not quite done emptying the pockets of gamers just yet. According to one Japanese retailer, Applied Group (アプライド), GPU prices are slated to rise in the coming months or weeks yet again.

Applied Group on X (machine translated)There's talk about graphics card price hikes, but some graphics cards are slated for even further price increases. For those considering an upgrade, I recommend doing so sooner rather than later.

Intel's long-awaited graphics card update is arriving for data centers and workstations with the introduction of "Crescent Island," now detailed. At Hot Chips 2026, the company revealed more about the upcoming graphics card. Based on the Xe3P GPU IP, the graphics card is designed as a 350 W, air-cooled, PCIe format compatible with any configuration. The GPU itself features 32 Xe3P cores, 256 XMX engines, 32 MB of unified L2 cache, and 160 GB of LPDDR5X memory. This memory configuration is exclusive to Intel-branded "Crescent Island" graphics cards, while the company allows its ODMs to equip the card with up to 480 GB of LPDDR5X memory for maximum VRAM capacity. Just a few of these in their maximum configuration could power frontier open-source models locally.

What is particularly interesting about Xe3P is the pipeline, as XMX engines have been redesigned from the four-deep systolic design on the regular Xe3 to 16-deep processing on Xe3P. Additional details include FP4 data format support alongside FP8, as well as massive register files of 1 MB per core and L1 cache of 512 KB per core. In total, there are 256 Vector engines and 256 of the new XMX engines, each split into groups of eight per Xe3P core. Additionally, in Xe3P, there are no graphics processing elements that would output any imagery, as the silicon is designed purely for AI inference workloads that include long context, agentic tasks.

Linux GPU overclocking and monitoring tool, LACT, has officially launched v0.10.0, adding a host of new overclocking and sensor options for NVIDIA GPUs. The update notes mention PowerMizer mode, which allows users to force the NVIDIA GPUs into the highest p-state. The update also adds "Voltage boost," a new slider that allows the GPU to draw more voltage—as opposed to a more traditional voltage offset slider. The developers note that this slider merely adds more headroom for certain overclocks.

The update also adds new sensor read-outs for both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. NVIDIA users on Blackwell GPUs now have access to hotspot sensors and per-memory-chip temperature sensors for both GDDR6x and GDDR7. On the AMD side of things, there is now support for graphical GTT memory display—GPU-accessible system memory—which is noted to be particularly helpful for iGPUs in high-memory-load applications and games, but may also be helpful when using older, low-VRAM GPUs, since those may also require spilling over into system memory more often. Check out the full update notes for more.

The AMD RADV driver is an open-source driver in the Mesa 3D graphics library optimized for running Vulkan games and software. RADV is the default Linux graphics driver on many AMD-powered Linux systems. Until now, Windows has had no open-source drivers for any GPU maker, but Valve is apparently looking to change that by funding development of the AMD RADV driver for Windows.

The actual driver porting is being done by Collabora, who often works with Valve on low-level software development, but Valve has sponsored the first phase of the project, according to a recent blog post by Collabora. The development outfit explains that it has managed to run Counter-Strike 2 on the new driver, but that there are still challenges that need to be solved. One of those challenges holding development back.

Intel today released the latest version of Arc GPU Graphics drivers. Version 101.8864 Beta doesn't include any new game optimizations, but fixes a few important issues specific to its various product lines. To begin with, the drivers fix an issue with "Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced," "Assassin's Creed Shadows," and "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Seige," which causes the game to crash when upgrading GPU drivers if the game's shaders have been compiled with a previous driver version. This fix applies to Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" processor iGPUs, Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete GPUs, Arc A-series "Alchemist" discrete GPUs, Core Ultra Series 1 "Meteor Lake" processors with Arc-branded iGPUs, and Core Ultra Series 2 "Lunar Lake" processors with Arc-branded iGPUs. The drivers also fix display corruption during cutscenes with "LEGO Batman: Legacy of Dark Knight."

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.8864 Beta

AMD has officially released the RDNA 3-focused FSR Upscaling 4.1 model for the Radeon RX 7000 series of graphics cards. This marks the first step towards deploying the FSR 4 technology across all RDNA gaming GPUs. According to a post on X by AMD's Jack Huynh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Computing and Graphics Group, FSR Upscaling 4.1 is now available for RDNA 3 GPUs. With the latest AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 26.6.2 graphics driver download, Radeon RX 7000 series gamers can enjoy more than 300 games running FSR 4.1, providing a significant performance boost and finally offering features that RDNA 4 gamers have been enjoying for a while. You can find some AMD-provided performance comparisons in the slides below.

We have confirmed that AMD's FSR Upscaling 4.1 model for RDNA 3 GPUs is fundamentally different from the RDNA 4 version. RDNA 4 has native processing for 8-bit floating point data, allowing FSR 4.1 on RDNA 4 to run on FP8 data types. To get the FSR 4.1 Upscaling model to run on RDNA 3, AMD must convert this to 8-bit integer data, as RDNA 3 hardware uses INT8 data types without FP8 support. Generally, integer math is sufficient to optimize these models, but the conversion work is necessary, which explains the delay between RDNA 4 and RDNA 3 support. This difference required AMD to completely modify the FSR 4.1 model for the new data type and ensure there is no quality loss in the final visual output. AMD officially states that the visual fidelity is on par with the FSR 4.1 model that runs on RDNA 4.

A report from Hardware Luxx suggested that AMD does not currently plan to bring its upcoming FSR 4.1 upscaling technology to RDNA 3.5-based integrated graphics. If accurate this would leave Ryzen AI 300 and Ryzen AI 400 series APUs without support for the latest iteration of FSR. Back in May AMD previously confirmed that FSR 4.1 which utilizes INT8 processing, will arrive for discrete RDNA 3 (Radeon RX 7000) GPUs in July, while RDNA 2 (Radeon RX 6000) desktop graphics are scheduled to receive support by early 2027. This exclusion affects silicon families that are using the RDNA 3.5 graphics architecture. More precisely Strix Point, Strix Halo, Krackan Point and upcoming refreshes like Gorgon Point and Gorgon Halo. These APU configurations integrate high-performance iGPUs such as the Radeon 890M and the top-tier Radeon 8060S, both capable of running the required INT8 operations.

However, AMD's Frank Azor has since pushed back on reports that RDNA 3.5 has been ruled out. Responding on X, Azor stated that "no such decision as being reported and implied here has been made," while adding that AMD is not ready to discuss future product plans at this time. While this does not confirm FSR 4.1 support for RDNA 3.5 graphics, it suggests that AMD has not made a final decision regarding the architecture's inclusion in the technology roadmap.

The Khronos Group, the organization behind the Vulkan graphics API that forms the backbone of gaming on Linux, has officially listed the Valve Steam Machine on its database of conformant products. The Steam Machine showed up on the Vulkan database on May 23 sporting Vulkan 1.4 support and AMD Navi 33 GPU hardware. The spec sheet listed in the database indicates that the Steam Machine in question is still on the Linux kernel version 6.16, which is the latest version recently released in the SteamOS Beta 3.85 in mid-May.

While there is no launch date or other novel information listed in the Vulkan database, the addition of the Steam Machine to the database is an indication that Valve may be preparing for an imminent Steam Machine launch. This is also reinforced by the fact that the Steam Machine was submitted to the database with a current version of SteamOS running—even if it is a beta version—suggesting that SteamOS support for the Steam Machine has progressed beyond the previously indicated "initial support" phase. At this point, it seems like one of the last, if not the last, remaining roadblocks hindering the launch of the Steam Machine is the current RAM crisis and its associated hardware shortages.

Bolt Graphics today announced the successful tape-out of its test chip, marking a key milestone in the development of its Zeus GPU. Zeus is a next-generation compute platform designed to reduce the total cost of compute by up to 17 times across high-performance computing (HPC), rendering, and emerging compute-intensive applications.

Global demand for compute capacity continues to accelerate to support capabilities such as simulations, real-time graphics, and artificial intelligence across a wide range of industries. To address the need, companies optimized existing compute architectures for peak performance rather than cost efficiency, causing infrastructure cost to become a primary constraint. As the majority of workloads remain dependent on these architectures, large segments of the available market remain economically unviable.

NVIDIA has developed a new algorithm for path tracing that will make it 2-3 times faster, deliver better visual quality, and improve the robustness of real-time path tracing. Scheduled for a technology demo at the ACM conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in May, NVIDIA has found a way to make real-time path tracing a fully realistic rendering process, moving beyond the usual emulation, software denoising, upscaling, and other techniques we use today. Since real-time path tracing is extremely compute-intensive, modern GPUs are still not powerful enough to execute the full path tracing technology in all its potential. Instead, we currently rely on emulations in modern games, implemented across many titles to address this computational demand. Below is the abstract described on NVIDIA's paper page, though the paper itself is not yet available as its publication is scheduled for May. However, note that the technology is still in development, and we have to wait more for it to hit commercial games.

NVIDAAlgorithms leveraging ReSTIR-style spatiotemporal reuse have recently proliferated, hugely increasing effective sample count for light transport in real-time ray and path tracers. Many papers have explored novel theoretical improvements, but algorithmic improvements and engineering insights toward optimal implementation have largely been neglected. We demonstrate enhancements to ReSTIR PT that make it 2-3x faster, decrease both visual and numerical error, and improve its robustness, making it closer to production-ready. We halve the spatial reuse cost by reciprocal neighbor selection, robustify shift mappings with new footprint-based reconnection criteria, and reduce spatiotemporal correlation with duplication maps. We further improve both performance and quality by extensive optimization, unifying direct and global illumination into the same reservoirs, and utilizing existing techniques for color noise and disocclusion noise reduction.

Intel today released its latest Arc GPU graphics drivers with the version 101.8724 WHQL bringing support for new hardware and new games. Yesterday, the company launched its Core Series 3 "Wildcat Lake" processors with up to six CPU cores and two Xe3 GPU cores. Expected to land in over 70 different laptop designs, Intel today enabled full gaming support with the Arc GPU driver update. In addition to new hardware, the new driver release adds game-ready support for Pragmata and fixes a lot of the old issues that persisted with the previous releases. These include fixes for flickering in Crimson Desert running DirectX 12, No Man's Sky experiencing corruptions on certain terrains, and importantly issues with Adobe Premier Pro crashing when exporting media based on HEVC codec has been fixed. For a complete picture of fixes and remaining issues, we have posted the changelog below.DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc Graphics Driver 101.8724 WHQL

Panasonic Connect North America, Division of Panasonic Corporation of North America, today launched the TOUGHBOOK 56, a powerful, modular rugged laptop purposefully built to empower mobile workers in sectors including public safety, utilities, enterprise and federal. TOUGHBOOK 56 delivers high performance computing, expanded connectivity speeds options, enhanced thermal management, and advanced security. Backed by new warranty options, it provides customers with greater flexibility and long-term peace of mind.

Frontline and field professionals must work with increased efficiency to deliver fast, high-quality service, while navigating unpredictability and resource constraints that make getting the job done infinitely challenging. TOUGHBOOK 56 is engineered with these professionals in mind, bringing advanced performance, security, innovation, and design to the edge, in a rugged, reliable, and dependable package. For IT teams, TOUGHBOOK 56's modular architecture, updated admin management software and expanded support simplify upgrades and extends device lifecycles as operational needs evolve.

Valve's Linux developer, Natalie Vock, has introduced a new method for handling memory management on GPUs with 8 GB or less VRAM. Since a large part of the gaming community uses systems with limited resources, improving performance and VRAM allocation is an excellent way to maximize frames per second. According to Vock's solution, GPUs with 8 GB of VRAM or less on Linux will now benefit from better background VRAM management, allowing more free space for games. Several Linux kernel patches have been submitted to guide how Linux manages resources when a game is loaded. Previously, when a game used too much VRAM on a low-VRAM GPU, the Linux Graphics Translation Table (GTT) would move data to system RAM to prevent the game from crashing. Since Linux doesn't prioritize programs, it could sometimes move the actual game from VRAM to system RAM to make space for something like a browser or another third-party app.

In Vock's testing before these new patches, running Cyberpunk 2077 resulted in the system using only 6 GB of the 8 GB of available GPU VRAM, with about 1.37 GB spilling over to GTT and being allocated in system RAM. This could lead to game stuttering and frame-pacing issues. Now, Vock has developed a real-time dmemcg-booster, which stands for Device Memory Control Groups, to inform Linux when a program running on the GPU VRAM needs to stay there without being moved to GTT and then to system RAM. With the new patch, running Cyberpunk 2077 now uses almost the entire available system VRAM, reaching 7.4 GB, while GTT allocation has been reduced to 650 MB, cutting usage by more than half. In the picture below, you can check the "GameThread" behavior before and after the patch is applied.

SPARKLE, a leading manufacturer of professional graphics solutions and AI computing platforms, today announced the launch of the SPARKLE Intel Arc Pro B70 and SPARKLE Intel Arc Pro B65 series graphics cards. Designed to deliver powerful AI acceleration and workstation-class graphics performance, these new GPUs expand the Arc Pro B-Series lineup for modern professional computing environments.

The SPARKLE Intel Arc Pro B70 delivers up to 367 TOPS (INT8 Dense) of AI performance, enabling accelerated AI inference, engineering simulation, rendering, and advanced visualization workloads. With powerful compute capability and large memory capacity, the GPU allows professionals to handle complex datasets and AI-driven applications with greater efficiency.

It's no secret that Borderlands 4 launched with some serious performance issues, but 2K and Gearbox have long promised performance updates and fixes to improve stability and the overall gaming experience in the latest installment in the looter-shooter franchise. In a new update, 2K Games has walked through a number of changes that have been implemented and shown off some of the performance improvements that have been made in Borderlands 4 since the game's launch. Gearbox and 2K tested the game's v 1.5 update compared to the v 1.0.2 launch version across a number of in-game quality settings and with hardware configurations representing the minimum and recommended specs, as well as a typical high-end gaming rig, and found significant improvements in both average, 1% low, and 0.1% low FPS. The blog post detailing the testing and results claims around 20% performance improvement when comparing the launch version of Borderlands 4 to the March update, but things become more interesting when you look at how performance changed depending on the hardware and resolution.

The biggest changes noted in the test results were seen in the native resolution with no DLSS, with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 and Intel Core i7-9700K gaining around 43% FPS at 1080p Low, while the RTX 3080 and i7-12700K gained 26% at 1440p native and high graphics presets. Lastly, the NVIDIA RTX 4080 paired with an Intel Core i7-13700K went from 54.96 FPS to 78.43 FPS at 1440p native with very high graphics settings. The performance improvements with DLSS upscaling were less impressive, at between 17 and 35%, although that's still a notable improvement, especially on the low-end, where frame rates jump from 53 to 67 FPS. 1% and 0.1% lows are up across the board, with some tests seeing 0.1% lows get nearly a 100% improvement, which will make the game feel significantly smoother. The Borderlands development team attributes the performance uplift to general efficiency improvements as well as refinements to the Shader PSO process (Pipeline State Objects). The developers also worked on reducing polygon counts for effects and optimizing features like effects, physics, cloth simulations, and Unreal Engine 5's Virtual Shadow Maps, all of which helped reduce CPU and GPU usage during gameplay.

With the latest Arc 101.8626 WHQL graphics driver, Intel has extended its precompiled shader delivery service to Intel Arc B-series GPUs and Intel Core Ultra Series 3 and Series 2 SoCs with built-in Intel Arc GPUs. This enhancement aims to significantly reduce game loading times. Intel's service gathers game shaders in the company's private cloud infrastructure, where they are processed and precompiled. When you install the Intel Graphics Software App, the service identifies the games you play and downloads the precompiled shaders for those games, using the Intel app as a distribution service and creating a folder with the precompiled shaders. This approach allows games to load much faster, reduces stuttering on the first launch, and automatically updates shaders whenever they are revised, with Intel's service pulling the new shaders into the shared folder on your PC. If this sounds familiar—Microsoft is working on a similar mechanism called "Advanced Shader Delivery," for release later this year. Intel's approach is separate and independent. For TechPowerUp, Intel confirmed the following:

IntelIntel Precompiled Shaders is custom built and run by Intel. We are also working with Microsoft's on launching Advanced Shader Delivery later this year. Together, both services will provide users of supported Arc GPUs with more game and game store coverage of technologies that reduce waiting times and in-game stutters due to shader compilation.

Intel has released its latest 101.8626 WHQL Arc GPU graphics drivers, adding day-one support for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and Everwind games, as well as introducing the new Intel Graphics Shader Distribution Service, which should improve first load times by up to 2x on Intel Arc B-series and Intel Core Ultra Series 3 and Series 2 CPUs with Intel Arc GPUs. The Graphics Shader Distribution Service is currently limited to a dozen games, so hopefully Intel will extend the list further with the future driver release. In addition, the new Intel Arc GPU 101.8626 WHQL graphics drivers also improve game performance in the Nioh 3 game on Intel Arc B-series GPUs by up to 9 percent at 1080p resolution with Ultra settings.

The new Intel Arc GPU driver release also fixes a couple of issues seen with previous driver releases, including an application crash with ray tracing enabled in the Naraka Bladepoint game, cinematic corruption in Hogwarts Legacy, and visual corruption in the viewport while resizing the window with HDR enabled in Davinci Resolve Studio. These issues are fixed on Intel Arc B-series GPUs and Ultra Series 3 CPUs with Intel Arc GPUs. Since it is a major WHQL release, Intel is listing all new known issues that are left to be fixed with future driver releases.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc Graphics Driver 101.8626 WHQL