Better than his reputation? Intel Arc Control and driver in practical test with feature overview

Intel’s Arc desktop graphics cards should actually have been on the market for a long time, but the company has only released the Arc A380 in China so far – global availability is expected shortly, where the launch has only taken place on paper so far. Software problems in particular are considered a possible reason for the delay: Intel’s Arc driver is not yet mature. However, as a recent update and PCGH field tests show, the company is trying to improve the situation in order to adequately fuel the upcoming Arc Gaming graphics cards A750 and A770. Because the quality and usability of a graphics card stands or falls with the driver, and Intel knows that too.

The previous reviews of the smallest Arc graphics card A380 with older drivers paint a relatively bleak picture, but Intel’s software team is staying on the ball. A new version was released last Friday of the Arc graphics driver such as their control software Arc-Control. At the same time, the company explains in a blog post how the driver is currently doing and how it should continue. Four bugs were fixed in July and the new driver is said to have given another 21 patches for Arc Control. Also apart from these is the changelog long: The August driver (internally dated 08/17) includes improvements for the games Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Battlefield 2042 and Stray.

In the video, we show what Intel’s Arc Control driver control center (not) has in common with AMD’s Adrenalin software for Radeon graphics cards and Nvidia’s Geforce Experience for Geforce graphics cards. We’ll walk you through all the important menus and explain the features of the Arc Control Center. There will be more tests and benchmarks galore at PCGH next week.