Intel didn't drop its day-one drivers for Elden Ring

[mongeese]

Facepalm: Some launch day bugs are causing problems for Elden Ring players, so its publisher, Bandai Namco, is reminding players to update to the latest graphics drivers. But owners of Intel GPUs can't do that because Intel still hasn't released its day-one drivers.

Can any Intel GPUs run Elden Ring? No, according to the game's system requirements, which mandate a GTX 1060 or RX 580 at a minimum, and none of Intel's integrated GPUs come close to that level of performance. Even after Bandai Namco warned players of performance issues and urged them to update their GPU drivers, Intel's first discrete solutions aren't due until next month.

We apologize for the delay in providing an update on the driver for Elden Ring. We’ve found a late breaking incompatibility in the game, and we’re working diligently with the developer to resolve it.

— Intel Graphics (@IntelGraphics) February 25, 2022

Missing drivers is a pretty lousy misstep considering that Intel partnered with Bandai Namco to develop day-one graphics drivers and advertised it all over Twitter. Intel even made a dedicated webpage for the partnership. Under where it says "enter the vast world of excitement with Intel Day-0 graphics driver support on February 24" is a link to a graphics driver from November.

Intel Graphics apologized on Twitter today in response to criticism. There's still no word on the driver's precise release date, but we'll update you when something changes. In the meantime, be thankful that at least Intel didn't make the mistake of releasing a broken driver—I'm looking at you, Polaris-era AMD—and is instead making sure that it's polished.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/93562-intel-didnt-drop-day-one-drivers-elden-ring.html

 

[winjer]

This is reassuring for when Intel releases their discrete GPUs.

 

[Nobina]

Wait, since when did Intel release a GPU capable of running new games? I thought they were supposed to come out soon.

 

[Watzupken]

That’s why I feel Intel will fail to gain meaningful market share. At least not at the get go. Historically, they were never proactive to release GPU drivers in a timely manner. You can argue that Intel only has iGPU, but I feel they will not be able to suddenly go from gear 1 to any higher gear just because they start to target dGPU market.

 

[Dimitriid]

That’s why I feel Intel will fail to gain meaningful market share. At least not at the get go. Historically, they were never proactive to release GPU drivers in a timely manner. You can argue that Intel only has iGPU, but I feel they will not be able to suddenly go from gear 1 to any higher gear just because they start to target dGPU market.

Precisely: Not to drag them into this (too much) but AMD has done the exact same thing: years of inferior and buggy driver support and endless promises of AMD *now* really going to get driver support right from the get go and that just never happens: AMD eventually patches things and gets performance increases in fact for many years a common thing is to revisit AMD performance numbers precisely because how much they end up improving many months later for some games.

At the best of cases, I expect exactly this from intel: Launch will be terrible but 4 to 6 months later several games will have greatly optimized patches on the driver level and *then* it would be a bit more competitive. But that's just the best case scenario, realistically I expect them to be a lot more closer to the intelhd or iris pro level of driver support: 1 in 10 chance a game will just not work at all and similar odds it will be basically unplayable due to constant crashes but when it works even if in theoretical/synthetic bench the Alchemist GPUs aren't that far behind Nvidia or AMD, in actual game performance they will just crap the bed.

 

[yRaz]

I'm going to file this under "nothing"

Their GPUs aren't even out yet. Can you even download ANY drive fore intels new discrete GPUs? This article should read"Intel didn't release updated version of unreleased drivers for unreleased GPU"

 

[pcnthuziast]

If the red and green teams can get any meaningful quantity of gpus in mainstream consumers hands at reasonable prices any time soon, in line with intel's launch, they are sunk and this venture will flounder.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Just people trying to take a shot at Intel because they can't run the game on the onboard graphics since there are no dedicated GPUs out from Intel, that I know of.

Man. What are those 12900k folks that only run the CPU with onboard graphics going to do now that they can't play this game? Oh wait, they probably couldn't even get this game to launch with iGPU only. Seeing as the 12900k can pull 30fps on average for Rainbow 6 Siege at 1080p with high settings.....

A RTX 2060 averages 200fps in R6S at 1080p. The 2060 averages 58fps on Elden Ring at 1080p. That's means a 12900k would only run Elden Ring at around 8-9fps.

Yeah, good job there with everyone trying to bash Intel for not releasing a driver for a game that none of their iGPUs can run....stupidass click bait stories are popping up everywhere.

 

[KaitouX]

Just people trying to take a shot at Intel because they can't run the game on the onboard graphics since there are no dedicated GPUs out from Intel, that I know of.

Man. What are those 12900k folks that only run the CPU with onboard graphics going to do now that they can't play this game? Oh wait, they probably couldn't even get this game to launch with iGPU only. Seeing as the 12900k can pull 30fps on average for Rainbow 6 Siege at 1080p with high settings.....

A RTX 2060 averages 200fps in R6S at 1080p. The 2060 averages 58fps on Elden Ring at 1080p. That's means a 12900k would only run Elden Ring at around 8-9fps.

Yeah, good job there with everyone trying to bash Intel for not releasing a driver for a game that none of their iGPUs can run....stupidass click bait stories are popping up everywhere.

Their XE graphics in some more recent ultrabooks could probably run it on 1080p low or 720p medium/high, naturally not without proper drivers/optimization so this is an issue.

I'm going to file this under "nothing"

Their GPUs aren't even out yet. Can you even download ANY drive fore intels new discrete GPUs? This article should read"Intel didn't release updated version of unreleased drivers for unreleased GPU"

Intel ignoring their already existing iGPUs by not properly supporting them doesn't look good for their upcoming dGPUs. Intel iGPUs have been decent performance wise in notebooks after Ice Lake, at least in games where it works properly, but many games either have horrible performance or straight up don't work with Intel graphics.

 

[Sausagemeat]

This is biased garbage reporting. My AMD 3500u laptop with Vega 8 graphics gets about 1-2 GPU updates a year at best and there also isn’t a driver update out for AMD APUs for Elden Ring. Where’s the headline for that? AMD have been consistently ignoring their APU drivers for years and rarely get called out for it.

Whilst this doesn’t bode well for Intels desktop GPUs we shouldn’t judge Intel for not releasing driver updates for GPUs that don’t exist yet!

 

[Watzupken]

Precisely: Not to drag them into this (too much) but AMD has done the exact same thing: years of inferior and buggy driver support and endless promises of AMD *now* really going to get driver support right from the get go and that just never happens: AMD eventually patches things and gets performance increases in fact for many years a common thing is to revisit AMD performance numbers precisely because how much they end up improving many months later for some games.

At the best of cases, I expect exactly this from intel: Launch will be terrible but 4 to 6 months later several games will have greatly optimized patches on the driver level and *then* it would be a bit more competitive. But that's just the best case scenario, realistically I expect them to be a lot more closer to the intelhd or iris pro level of driver support: 1 in 10 chance a game will just not work at all and similar odds it will be basically unplayable due to constant crashes but when it works even if in theoretical/synthetic bench the Alchemist GPUs aren't that far behind Nvidia or AMD, in actual game performance they will just crap the bed.

I feel to the defense of AMD/ Radeon, they were never anywhere close in size and have a massive budget like Nvidia and Intel. They actually had a rough time, but still survived. The same cannot be said for Intel with massive budget as they want to get into the market. I don't expect driver to be optimal on day one, but when they say they will release a driver for a game, I do expect them to keep to it.

 

[Dimitriid]

I feel to the defense of AMD/ Radeon, they were never anywhere close in size and have a massive budget like Nvidia and Intel. They actually had a rough time, but still survived. The same cannot be said for Intel with massive budget as they want to get into the market. I don't expect driver to be optimal on day one, but when they say they will release a driver for a game, I do expect them to keep to it.

These are not bad points, though I wouldn't frame them as positively: AMD over-extended into graphics way too early if you look at their market cap there vs intel now (Or Nvidia's failed attempt to extend into CPUs). Now it's probably going to pay off for them but it's still largely due to the success of their CPUs, not their GPUs.

But other than that I mostly agree. Only other thing I would point out is something I touched upon already: all new products but specially the first one to market by them requires time to get to maturity. Having lots of cash to get and retain the talent is one thing but you can't just endlessly add more software engineers to the team to speed up driver development at one point it gets counter productive and you just gotta give them time to work on the drivers.

I feel this point will balance out intel's large pockets you mention, so the end result although for very different reasons to AMD, it's still just bad driver support.