Intel's promised 'day-0 graphics driver' for Elden Ring is MIA

I'm not sure if you heard, but Elden Ring came out this week, which would explain why a number of your coworkers just happened to call in sick. So anyone who was planning on playing the game on a system with an Intel GPU might be a little surprised to see that the promised 'day 0' graphics driver update for Elden Ring, which was scheduled for release on February 24, is still nowhere to be found (as pointed out by Videocardz). 

This does make things a little awkward since Intel partnered up with Bandai Namco promising an "Intel day-0 graphics driver" on February 24, which is still not available as of this posting. When you click on the download graphics driver link on the page, it takes you to a download page for an Intel Graphics Beta Driver update from November 2021. The update's purpose was to optimize performance for Elden Ring running on Intel GPUs.

Intel has been radio silent as far as the reason for the delay is concerned despite Elden Ring already releasing, which would make a point of a delayed day zero patch a bit moot. Nvidia released its Elden Ring driver update more than a week ago in preparation for the big launch. AMD was able to release its day-0 patch for the highly anticipated Soulslike yesterday as well, with no issues.

Though saying this, we're not too sure which of Intel's current GPUs would be cut-out for the task of running Elden Ring anyways. The minimum requirement for the game is a GTX 1060, and even Intel's latest mobile chips aren't going to have the graphical guts to take on that card, or Elden Ring.

The absence of any significant update from Intel Graphics for almost two months is a bit concerning. Intel is set to launch its new Arc Alchemist GPUs pretty soon. This does beg the question of whether this update was meant to include drivers for Arc Alchemist GPUs (in preparation for its upcoming launch) in addition to the current Iris Xe graphics chips?

We've reached out to Intel for a status update on the Elden Ring driver and will update with any response.

We've been closely monitoring several performance issues some users are experiencing with the PC version of Elden Ring. A patch last night did address some of the problems, but we are still getting reports of considerable framerate drops leading to stuttering gameplay. So you can imagine how important it is to make sure all your drivers on your graphics cards are up to date before playing.