Intel Misses Own Deadline in Elden Ring Driver Release Race

(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

At the time of writing, Intel’s purported launch-day driver with optimizations for Elden Ring is still missing in action, following the chip giant’s publication of a tweet and web page detailing a partnership with game publisher Bandai Namco. Credit to Videocardz for bringing this to our attention.

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(Image credit: Intel)
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(Image credit: Intel)
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(Image credit: Intel)

The graphics driver download page currently gets you an update from back in November, instead of the “Intel day-0 graphics driver on February 24th to ensure your system is optimized for Elden Ring when it launches”.  We have also spotted a link to a more recent driver, dated February 7 , which is obviously before Elden Ring's release date.

The driver, for integrated graphics and not the anticipated Arc discrete boards, should make playing the graphically intensive game on lower-powered PCs less of an onerous experience, but don’t go expecting enormous iGPU performance out of a game currently making even PlayStation 5 owners choose between graphical effects and high framerates.

Released on February 24, Elden Ring, an action RPG developed by From Software and a spiritual successor to the Dark Souls games, is currently reviewing quite well, with 10/10 scores from both well-known gaming publications and the mainstream press, and a Metacritic average of 95% on PC.

At the time of writing, AMD had the newest driver release, having got one out on February 24 with Elden Ring optimizations along with tweaks for Shadow Warrior 3 and GRID Legends, while Nvidia released its driver eleven days ago.