Intel's latest graphics drivers have cut down download size in half, from 1.2GB to 604MB

[Daniel Sims]

In a nutshell: Back in January, TechSpot speculated on why Intel's GPU drivers were around twice the size of AMD's and Nvidia's, possibly stemming from less time for optimization work. Whatever the reason, Team Blue's latest driver slims down to become only slightly larger than Team Red's. The biggest download is again from Nvidia, which has recently fattened up slightly.

Intel's latest graphics driver chopped its download size from 1.6GB to 604MB. The optimization brings the GPU newcomer's software closer to its competitors without compromising on features or performance.

The company credits the accomplishment to improved compression, indicating that the prior bloat was mainly due to a lack of experience packaging dedicated graphics drivers. Intel seems to be rapidly adapting to a market dominated by two competitors who've been doing this for around 20 years.

The massive size of Team Blue's earlier drivers didn't add up because they had to support a far smaller number of GPU models. Intel only has one generation on the market, while Nvidia and AMD's drivers must each support several generations. Furthermore, Nvidia likes to package its GeForce Experience software (which some might consider bloatware) with its drivers. Intel's inclusion of integrated graphics drivers also didn't explain the discrepancy, since AMD drivers also support iGPUs and APUs.

All three companies released new drivers this week in preparation for the just-released Resident Evil 4 remake. Nvidia and AMD also highlight The Last of Us Part 1 and the Diablo IV beta in their release notes, while Intel released its Diablo IV driver last week. Diablo IV's free open beta runs through this weekend, while The Last of Us Part 1 arrives on PC next week on Tuesday.

Intel also notes that it's still improving Counter-Strike: Global Offensive performance on Arc GPUs. Steam's most popular game still uses DirectX 9, which Arc struggled with before recent updates. It's unclear how the changes of Counter-Strike 2 update will impact Arc, but other games utilizing the Source 2 engine upgraded to DirectX 11.

Meanwhile, Nvidia's new drivers, ballooning to almost 900MB, also support Cyberpunk 2077's upcoming experimental ray tracing "Overdrive" mode. The additional graphics preset introduces path tracing to the game and will likely hammer GPUs when it arrives on April 11.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/98072-intel-latest-graphics-drivers-have-cut-down-download.html

 

[hahahanoobs]

Patience, Danielson...

 

[Nobina]

Eventually these might actually become good cards for the price.

 

[rmcrys]

Eventually these might actually become good cards for the price.

If they don't shut down that business, the third gen may be interesting, if they adjust the price. I still think the best deal is to keep improving the iGPU, seeing what AMD did on van Gogh.

 

[Uncle Al]

Well done!

 

[bviktor]

Another halving and I'd say the size is halfway decent...

 

[Guyver1wales]

Patience, Danielson...

Daniel San

 

[Hodor]

You can't cut the size by that much unless you did something very wrong the first time!

Or to make it a proverb:
"Behind every big improvement there's a big screwup".

Drivers having 604 MB still screams crime, but competition isn't any better:
- AMD drivers: 580 MB download
- Nvidia drivers: 850 MB (!!!!!!!!!)

How those people make those files so big is a mystery to me. It sucks that people who should be experts in making optimized code can't even optimize the driver package. Makes you wonder how much optimized is their hardware and everything else they produce.

 

[neeyik]

You can't cut the size by that much unless you did something very wrong the first time!

The earlier packages contained drivers and software for architectures prior to the Arc series and Xe iGPUs. Given that Intel labeled the drivers as just being for those chips, it's clear how it's managed to reduce the package size so much.

AMD and Nvidia's packages are so large because they're covering a huge architecture base, and include a lot of additional software. For example, the latest GeForce drivers cover 9 separate architectures:

Ada Lovelace (AD102, AD103, AD104)
Ampere (GA102, GA103, GA104, GA106, GA107)
Turing v2 (TU116, TU117)
Turing v1 (TU102, TU104, TU106)
Pascal (GP102, GP104, GP106, GP107, GP108)
Volta (GV100)
Maxwell v2 (GM200, GM204, GM206)
Maxwell v1 (GM107)
Kepler (GK106)

These drivers need to compile from multiple APIs (and the associated different revisions of them), including OpenGL, OpenCL, Vulkan, Direct3D, DirectX RT, and DirectML. The package includes a HD audio driver, the PhysX system software, the CUDA system software, the control panel program, and GeForce Experience (which itself incorporates Ansel, Freestyle, Gamestream, and the overlay system). Finally, there are all the different shader replacement systems for various games and optimizations for specific applications.

 

[Roddy_K]

You think that's amazing, in 1995-1996 3dfx drivers were like 16 Mb in size. But back then we were using 56k modems.

 

[hwertz]

It's still rather astounding how big these drivers are. The crocus and iris Linux drivers are under 110MB all told, and that includes both Vulkan and OpenGL support, and supporting cards going back close to 15 years. Cut it in half for iris (which still supports going back about 7 or 8 years, to gen8 graphics).

 

[Hodor]

It's still rather astounding how big these drivers are. The crocus and iris Linux drivers are under 110MB all told, and that includes both Vulkan and OpenGL support, and supporting cards going back close to 15 years. Cut it in half for iris (which still supports going back about 7 or 8 years, to gen8 graphics).

Yeah. There's nothing in the drivers that could justify 800 MB. Simple as that. Except lazy development and chronic lack of cleaning excess files. But hey, they don't have time for cleaning. They are just adding, adding and adding. They don't wanna pay someone to clean.