Why are graphics drivers so hard?

GRAPHICS DRIVERS ARE HARD. That isn't news. Recently, however, Intel revealed details on its efforts to get its Arc GPUs running really fast. This candor makes me hopeful for its next-gen Battlemage graphics, which could appear this year. The takeaway is that Intel isn't giving up on Arc, and there are reasons to think that Battlemage might just be the bomb.

- Jeremy Laird

The difficulty of getting graphics drivers right and more generally optimizing GPU performance is known. At the same time, it's hard not to be a little exasperated with Intel and its Arc graphics cards.

Intel surely knew how tough it was going to be. It's hardly a newbie in the tech space, so surely it put in all the work to do the job before it launched those first Arc graphics cards in 2022? As it turned out, Arc GPUs launched with frame rates all over the place. It did nothing for Arc's reputation, and Intel has been catching up ever since.

The good news is that lots of progress has since been made-performance in any given game is likely to be well optimized. A revisit of Arc performance by YouTube channel GamersNexus found that 12 out of 14 titles delivered performance in line with what you would expect.