Intel HD Graphics may not be the most exciting GPUs in the world to have, but for those who only do a bit of light gaming from time to time, or for those who simply cannot afford a discrete GPU, it is nice to know that the Intel HD Graphics are there and that Intel are taking serious steps to improve them. Typically we only expect to see major improvements as they are redesigned at a hardware level, for example the transition between Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge saw a significant redesign that resulted in large performance improvements. However, we are hearing now that Intel is preparing a driver update that will boost performance by 10%.
A 10% improvement isn’t going to suddenly turn Intel HD Graphics into gaming machines but it will help performance. What’s interesting is that the 10% performance update also optimises power usage, so you get more performance and less power consumption, great news for people using Intel HD Graphics on mobile devices like notebooks. In Windows if you use the update utility to check for and install the update then you can get these new drivers right away, manual downloads aren’t available at the current time but they should be available in the next week or so.
Owners of Apple devices, like the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, will have to wait longer. In fact, Intel hasn’t even said if it will bother to prepare the update for Mac users.
Be sure to check these updates out if it applies to you. Let us know if you notice, or measure, any extra performance!
10% performance increase??? I’m gobsmacked. How did they do it? Watch out GTX Tian, they’re coming for you.