You can’t escape the driver issues Updated: Dec 13, 2024 5:16 pm WePC is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Prices subject to change. Learn more Table of Contents Table of Contents Intel’s second version of Arc GPUs has just been released; the single B580 will soon be followed by the B570 early next year. Early reviews of the B580 seem good; they place the GPU well in the market and praise it for being what budget gamers need. All good, right? You can see a familiar problem rearing its ugly head if you read some reviews – not all of the reviews mention driver issues, but it still seems to be a present issue. If we take this back to Alchemist, the drivers were one of the biggest pain points of that generation. The value proposition of the GPU was fine, but the drivers let down the performance of the last generation. To Intel’s credit, the vast majority of issues have now been fixed, and it has done a tremendous job of steadily improving Alchemist’s performance over its lifespan. So you can imagine our surprise when an Intel spokesperson went on record saying the B580 has “no known issues” with its drivers. Intel’s B580 has no known driver problems whatsoever In an interview on the 5th of December, Intel Spokesperson Tom Petersen told PC Gamer that Intel’s Arc B580 GPU drivers suffer from “no known issues of any kind”. Of course, this does not suggest the drivers are perfect, and there are no unknown issues (because who knows something they don’t know?). We’re also not suggesting that Intel Intentionally lied about knowing its product has some driver issues. It’d just not be great for them to mention any hiccups, as we’d likely fear that history is repeating itself. Now, refer to the latest patch notes of driver update 101.6325_101.6252_WHQL. (The newest update and the release patch for Arc B-series GPUs, at least at the time of writing). A whole section of bullet points is labelled “Known issues” with Intel Arc B-series Graphics Products. This was released on December 13, dated at the top of the PDF. Intel Arc B-series known issues – Source: Intel This isn’t any ‘gotcha’ thing we’re trying to pull; 8 days have passed (as of the time of writing) between that interview and now, and these issues could have easily been found in the interim. We think the choice of words was a little poor, as it’s very likely that driver issues will occur, as they pretty much happen to everybody who manufactures GPUs at some point. The very title of the PC Gamer article we are pulling this quote from is also titled: “I want to believe Intel’s claim that the drivers for its new Arc B580 1440p graphics card suffer from ‘no known issues of any kind’” – so we’re not the only ones who thought like this. The article notes how Tom continues by explaining how far the Alchemist drivers came from launch, and he’s absolutely correct. Intel did a fantastic job of turning the performance of its last-generation cards around. But they shouldn’t have been released in that state in the first place. Kitguru experiences issues with Arc B580 when reviewing KitGuru, a well-respected PC hardware publication, noted many issues with the Arc B580 in some games it tested while reviewing the card. This is what it had to say on the subject. “During this review period I’ve encountered non-stop game crashes in Star Wars Outlaws, hard locks in Cyberpunk 2077 when ray tracing is enabled, inconsistent frametimes in F1 24 and Ghost of Tsushima, woeful ray tracing performance in Black Myth: Wukong, alongside performance grinding to a near-standstill in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. Even frame generation stopped working in the only game that currently supports Intel’s implementation of the technology! It doesn’t help that Intel provided us with multiple driver/software updates over the review period, something which just gives the impression the B580 isn’t ready for prime time, and the driver team has been scrambling to catch up as a result. Even now, certain games are basically unplayable on the GPU, and that’s never a good place to be at launch.”KitGuru (Intel Arc B580 review) These all seem like some very big driver issues to me. KitGuru even noted that the driver team was likely scrambling to fix issues as they appeared – supported by the many driver iterations it received during the review process. If you plan on picking up an Arc B580 and don’t want to experience the pains that others faced when picking up Alchemist GPUs, we recommend holding off on the purchase for now. It’s worth noting that not everyone had issues with drivers, a lot of reviewers even praised Intel for it’s much better launch than Alchemist. But even still, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any issues present.
Intel’s B580 driver update calls it’s claims of “no known issues” into question
