Intel Arc GPU's Main Problems List (personal list)

[n1ck]

Hi guys, I’m making this post to list all the problems I’ve had with my Intel Arc GPU. I’ll break them down into three categories.

Those will be:

NEED TO BE FIXED

ANNOYING

ACCEPTABLE

ps: Some of those problems may not happen on everyone’s system, so be aware of that.

(sorry for the bad english, i wrote the whole post but i used AI to help me with my english, hope people don't find it bad.) 

my specs before anything: 

GPU: Intel Arc B580

CPU: Ryzen 5 5500X3D

Motherboard: Asus Prime B450M 

RAM:2x16 3200MHZ 

1 SATA SSD 500GB

1 NVME SSD 1TB

650w MSI MAG PSU

-------NEED TO BE FIXED--------

Let's start with the main problems with the gpu (most part of them are related to an driver issue) 

1 - GPU OVERHEAD (already reported multiple times)

Although this issue has been significantly reduced over time, it’s still happening in many games. Honestly, I feel like this is more related to the GPU architecture than to the drivers, despite what many people say. My reasoning is that whenever a game has an overhead issue, the Intel Arc team seems to need to optimize that specific game instead of releasing a broader fix—but I may be wrong about this.

Some games were completely unplayable for me, such as Spider-Man 2, Necesse, Minecraft and Dead Space. 

Enjoying the fact that i'm already writing this post, i need to say that Dead Space Remake performs really bad on this gpu, the game simply don't work and i think that there was 0 optimizations for this game.

2 - BAD COMPATIBILITY WITH OLDER API'S (DX11 and  below and OPENGL)

This is another issue that anyone who likes to play “older” games will face: poor compatibility with games that don’t support Vulkan or DX12. A good example is Necesse, an indie game that runs on OpenGL. This GPU performs very poorly in this game, to the point where I was getting only around 30 FPS in a 2D pixel-art game.

Other games like Minecraft and Hytale (both running on OpenGL) also suffer from this issue. They perform much better than Necesse, but are still far from using the full potential of the GPU.

I know Intel has stated that this GPU is focused on DX12 games, but the problem is that if you’re not playing AAA titles, it’s very rare to find games that run on DX12. On top of that, most of Steam’s library still runs on DX11 or older APIs.

The oddest part is that if you install Linux (or any other system with Mesa support), most of these OpenGL games run significantly better than they do on Windows. I’m not a hardware expert, so it’s hard for me to say whether this is something Intel can fully fix or not, but it’s very strange to see Linux performing much better in these kinds of games.

3 - BAD COMPATIBILITY WITH SOME DESKTOP APPS

For me, this is by far one of the worst aspects of this GPU. It seems to struggle a lot with desktop applications in general. For example, when you try to screenshare a game on Discord, the framerate can drop massively for no clear reason. In some cases, my system even glitched and almost crashed just from trying to screenshare on Discord.

On top of that, OBS also has several issues with Arc GPUs. Even with optimized settings, leaving hardware acceleration enabled can result in very laggy recordings, and some games may not perform well. The main problem is that if you disable hardware acceleration in your system settings, you lose frame generation option in some games, or they will not perform well with the frame gen on.

-------ANNOYING--------

Those issues are not for everyone, and probably will not bother everyone that uses this Intel Arc.

1 - NO OPTIONS FOR CUSTOMIZING RESOLUTIONS ON DRIVER APP

This is a must-have feature for most people who play competitive games like CS2 and Valorant. I think the title says it all: the GPU app doesn’t offer any way to customize resolutions. You can’t create custom resolutions, and if you really want to do that, you have to rely on third-party tools like Custom Resolution Utility. While it works, it can be a bit complicated if you don’t understand how it works—but it’s something you can get used to.

2 - BAD COMPATIBILITY WITH APPS OVERLAYS (and not having an app built-in overlay as well)

Some applications that use overlays (like Discord) can reduce performance much more than they do on other GPUs. I also kind of miss having an overlay that lets you change GPU settings in real time.

-------ACCEPTABLE--------

Those “issues” are more related to the fact that Intel is still relatively new to the GPU market, and we all hope they add the features I’m about to mention in the near future.

1 -  INTEL GRAPHICS SETTINGS IS A LITTLE BIT USELESS (for me.)

Once again, the title says it all. I rarely feel the need to open the GPU app, mainly because it offers almost no options to the user. It’s extremely clean—to the point where you mostly install it just to get driver updates. Some people may find this appealing, but I really miss having more options, like those available in NVIDIA and Radeon apps.

2 - NEW FEATURES CONSISTENCY

I feel like it often takes too long for Intel to release a driver update that actually feels worth installing, and I wish there were more frequent updates focused on fixing the main issues with the GPU.

That’s it for now. I’ll probably edit this post later, but I just want to make it clear that I really like Intel Arc. This list was made with the goal of gathering all the issues I’ve personally experienced and reporting them to the driver team, in the hope that they can be addressed. If even one or two of these problems get fixed as a result, I’d already consider this post worth it.

[PatrickV_Intel]

Hi n1ck, 

Thank you for reaching out to the Intel Community Forum.

We appreciate your feedback and suggestions. Please rest assured that your input is being thoroughly reviewed by our team, and we truly value your comments regarding the Intel® Arc™ B580 Graphics.

Additionally, please be advised that I will now proceed to close this thread. This thread will no longer be monitored by Intel. If you need further assistance, kindly create a new thread, and we will be happy to assist you accordingly.

Thank you once again for your time and feedback.

Best regards, 

Patrick V. 

Intel Customer Support Technician