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While three of the twelve games we tested (or hoped to test) today are DX11 titles, Intel was very upfront to us about the problem posed by games running on DX11 – and older – APIs. As these APIs place a much larger emphasis on the driver itself, which is an obvious problem considering Intel's newcomer status in the GPU market, performance is likely to suffer versus low-level APIs such as DX12 and Vulkan.
To put this to the test, we benchmarked five titles that support DX11, and either DX12 or Vulkan:
It's quite amusing that the first title tested – Battlefield V – delivers such poor frame times using DX12, that although the average frame rate is 33% worse, DX11 actually offers a better gaming experience here. It's also worth pointing out that I did want to include Kena: Bridge of Spirits in these benchmarks, but it crashed several times when switching from DX11 to DX12, so it goes to show that DX12 isn't a guarantee of good performance for Intel Arc.
Still, DX11 is generally much worse across the board. Some titles, like Control, see fairly similar average frame rates but with a huge reduction to 1% low performance when using DX11. Other games, such as Rainbow Six Siege, get significantly slower across the board.
According to Intel's Tom Peterson, optimising DX11 titles is a task that will last ‘forever' for Intel Arc, and we can see why. It's a major red flag for Intel's first dGPUs.
