A few weeks ago, we found out that the chip giant distinguishes three performance levels within its Intel Arc Alchemist. These tiers depended directly on the API used by each game and were generally grouped as follows:

• Level 3: is the lowest and games are based on it DirectX 11, deprecated API which is characterized by its limitations at the technical level, the low utilization of multi-threaded CPUs, which contributes to the generation of bottlenecks, as well as the fact that it requires specific optimizations at the driver level (it does not depend so much on the graphics engine).
• Level 2: is an intermediate step where games based on DirectX 12 and Vulkan which have a high degree of optimization and therefore allow us to enjoy a good user experience.
• Level 1: here DirectX 12 based games are perfectly optimized and therefore offer excellent performance with Intel Arc Alchemist graphics cards.

The difference between one level and another can be huge. Intel demonstrated this with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, a game that registered an average of just 39 FPS in DirectX 11 with the Intel Arc Alchemist A770, and which easily reached 80 FPS in DirectX. It is impressive because we’re talking twice the performance. This is not the first time we have seen such a huge jump, we already had the opportunity to talk about this topic in this article years ago.

For resolve doubts Intel shared a video where it touches on this topic by answering an important question that the community asked it. The video is hosted by Ryan Shrout and Tom Petersen, and we’ll tell you the most important keys to it.

“Legacy APIs vs. New APIs, why is there such a big difference in performance?”

The answer Petersen leaves us with is very interesting, as he confirms that Intel Arc Alchemist will perform well in some DirectX 11-based games, although he admits that in others not so much. It also makes it clear that eventually this is going to be a race to the bottomand explains that it’s all because of how DirectX 11 works.

This API is structured to make it easy for developers. As we said when we talked about Tier 1 performance, developers using DirectX 11 are freed from important workloads, including resource management, memory allocation, and other critical optimization-level keys. All this happens in the API and at the driver level, but it has an important counterpart, which is the limitations it brings on the level of optimization and the use of powerful and advanced hardware.

At the hardware level, Intel’s Arc Alchemist graphics cards are very different from NVIDIA and AMD’s solutions, and for this reason Petersen acknowledges that they need to continue working on their drivers to improve performance under DirectX 11. That’s why we said it will be a long shot, because the improvements must be specific and at the driver level. It’s hard work, but Intel is fully committed to so the performance of Inter Arc Alchemist in DirectX 11 will improve over time.

With DirectX 12 and Vulkan everything we said changes completely, the optimization is rather in the hands of the developers, and thanks to this, not only the most advanced hardware of today, but also the most modern technologies can be used much better. DirectX 12 and Vulkan are the way to go, that’s not an option.

Before concluding, I would like to remind you that at that time DirectX 11 also negatively affected the performance of AMD’s Radeon HD 7000 graphics cardsand that until recently it actually hurt even its latest graphics cards, the Radeon RX 6000. It had to do a lot of work at the driver level to improve performance under DirectX 11 by 10%.

Given all of the above, is this poor performance in DirectX 11 a fault of the graphics solutions, or is it an outdated API that should no longer have a place? I think the question answers itself.