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It’s Alchemist, Battlemage or nothing: Intel driver support for every other GPU from the past four years moves into legacy mode

Nick Evanson

23 September 2025

No game-related fixes or tweaks, just quarterly security updates.

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(Image credit: Fritzchen Fritz)

All things come to an end, though when it’s related to tech, it often seems like the end comes quicker than the lifespan of a hamster. That might feel like it’s the case with a move by Intel to end routine driver updates for all its graphics chips, bar its recent Alchemist and latest Battlemage GPUs.

As explained in a knowledge base post, Intel has split its GPU drivers into two distinct packages: those for Alchemist and Battlemage-powered GPUs and a set for everything else from the past five years. In the case of the latter, that means the integrated GPUs in every 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th Gen Core processors, as well as anything with an Iris Xe GPU.
These will no longer receive game-specific updates, including ‘day 0 support’ (where a new game gets extra tweaks in the drivers to make it run properly at launch), and instead will just enjoy quarterly driver updates containing security or critical fixes. Unless it’s super-critical, of course, in which case, updates will appear as needed.

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The end is probably nigh for full Windows driver support for GTX 10, 9 and 7 Series graphics cards as Nvidia announces that its next major Linux driver fork will be its last for those GPUs

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Given that gaming laptops are still being released in 2025 with 14th Gen Core CPUs, this might seem like a bit of a daft move by Intel. However, the gaming performance of the tiny iGPUs in all its older processors isn’t exactly great and worse than the paper specs suggest it is.

For example, the UHD Graphics 770 in the Core i9 14900K only has 256 shader units, 16 texture units, and 8 render outputs. In contrast, the iGPU in the Steam Deck only has double all those figures, and yet it runs vastly better than the Intel graphics processor. However, it’s a very unfair comparison as the 770 is really there just to provide a consistent video output on PCs without a dedicated GPU; the fact that it can run any games at all is just a handy bonus.

(Image credit: Future)
If you want to use an Intel GPU for ‘proper’ gaming, then grab yourself an Arc B570 or B580, depending on where you live in the world. In the US, there’s not much difference in price between them, and for $250 at Newegg, the B580 is a great deal. For PC gamers in the UK, the price gap is relatively large between the two models, so it makes more sense to get the B570 for £180 at Overclockers.
Anyway, while it does seem like Intel has snipped the driver cord a bit prematurely (the UHD Graphics 770 is only four years old), few people are really going to be impacted by this change because if that’s what you’re using to try and play the latest games with, a lack of day 0 support isn’t going to be the reason behind any performance issues.

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At the very least, you’ll be able to join the Nvidia Pascal gang, who’ll be nodding sagely and saying ‘You too, huh?’

Best graphics card 2025All our current recommendations

1. Best overall: AMD Radeon RX 9070
2. Best value: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB
3. Best budget: Intel Arc B570
4. Best mid-range: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti
5. Best high-end: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090

👉Check out our full guide👈

Nick Evanson

Hardware Writer

Nick, gaming, and computers all first met in the early 1980s. After leaving university, he became a physics and IT teacher and started writing about tech in the late 1990s. That resulted in him working with MadOnion to write the help files for 3DMark and PCMark. After a short stint working at Beyond3D.com, Nick joined Futuremark (MadOnion rebranded) full-time, as editor-in-chief for its PC gaming section, YouGamers. After the site shutdown, he became an engineering and computing lecturer for many years, but missed the writing bug. Cue four years at TechSpot.com covering everything and anything to do with tech and PCs. He freely admits to being far too obsessed with GPUs and open-world grindy RPGs, but who isn’t these days?

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The end is probably nigh for full Windows driver support for GTX 10, 9 and 7 Series graphics cards as Nvidia announces that its next major Linux driver fork will be its last for those GPUs

Nvidia says it’s game over come October for GTX 10, 9 and 7-series graphics cards driver support but RTX owners running Windows 10 are getting an extra year of grace

Intel says Arc GPUs aren’t going anywhere just yet despite the new Nvidia collaboration

The latest version of Intel’s XeSS 2 now lets other GPUs run its AI-based frame generation system, throwing RTX 30-series owners a Team Blue-shaped bone

Intel engineer reassures gamers the company is ‘still 100% vested in APO and in growing the capabilities of the technology’ though not on older chips

Packaging for Intel’s high-performance Battlemage gaming GPU has popped up in a shipping manifest but I’m not sure I dare to hope it will really launch or actually be any good

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