New Intel Arc Drivers Enable Game-Ready Support for Pragmata and Wildcat Lake Laptops

Intel has officially released its latest Arc GPU graphics drivers, version 101.8724 WHQL. This update is a major milestone for the company, providing the essential launch-day support for the newly unveiled Core Series 3 processors, codenamed “Wildcat Lake”. These processors represent a fresh push into the entry-level and value-oriented laptop market, featuring a hybrid architecture with up to six CPU cores and the debut of the integrated Xe3 GPU architecture.

Wildcat Lake and Xe3 Graphics Integration

The headline feature of the 101.8724 driver is the enablement of full gaming support for the Wildcat Lake platform. Built on the Intel 18A process, these “Core 300 series” chips are expected to power over 70 laptop designs throughout 2026. The integrated Xe3 graphics, though scaled down to two cores in these specific models, offer a significant efficiency and performance jump over previous budget silicon.

Beyond hardware enablement, the driver adds “Game Ready” support for Capcom‘s highly anticipated title, Pragmata. Players using Intel Arc B-Series, A-Series, or Core Ultra integrated graphics can now expect an optimised experience from day one.

Resolved Issues and Performance Fixes

This WHQL release addresses several persistent bugs that have affected users across various hardware generations. One of the most critical fixes involves Adobe Premiere Pro, which previously suffered from application crashes when exporting media using the HEVC codec on certain Windows builds.

Key features and fixes in this release include:

• Wildcat Lake Support: Full launch driver functionality for Intel Core Series 3 processors.
• Xe3 Architecture: Initial support for integrated Xe3 GPU cores.
• Game Ready: Optimisations for the launch of Pragmata.
• Crimson Desert Fix: Resolved flickering corruption on plant life when running in DirectX 12.
• No Man’s Sky Stability: Fixed terrain-related corruptions for users on Core Ultra Series 2 and 3 platforms.
• Adobe Premiere Pro: Stabilised HEVC media exports to prevent application crashes.

Ongoing Development and Known Issues

Despite the broad range of fixes, Intel has highlighted several known issues that remain under investigation. Notably, Fortnite may still experience system crashes on launch for the new Core Series 3 hardware, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 may show intermittent water corruption on Arc B-Series desktop cards.

Users of the PugetBench for DaVinci Resolve Studio benchmark are also advised to increase the timeout slider to 1,500 seconds or higher to avoid intermittent crashes during testing. Intel continues to refine the Arc Control software, noting that some users may experience crashes when resetting all settings or re-arranging performance metrics for the first time.

Changelog

Hardware Support

• Launch driver for Intel Core Series 3 with built-in Intel GPUs (Codename Wildcat Lake).

Game Ready

• Pragmata

Fixed Issues
Intel Core Ultra Series 3 with built-in Intel Arc GPUs:

• Crimson Desert (DX12) may exhibit flickering corruption on plants during gameplay.
• No Man’s Sky (VK) may exhibit corruptions on certain terrains during gameplay.
• Adobe Premiere Pro may experience an application crash when exporting HEVC codec based media on Microsoft Windows OS 26200.7840 or later
• Crimson Desert (DX12) may exhibit flickering corruption on plants during gameplay.
• No Man’s Sky (VK) may exhibit corruptions on certain terrains during gameplay.

Intel Arc B-Series Graphics Products:Intel Core Ultra Series 2 with built-in Intel Arc GPUs:Known Issues
Intel Core Series 3 with built-in Intel GPUs:

• Fortnite (DX12) may experience a system crash on launch.

Intel Core Ultra Series 3 with built-in Intel Arc GPUs:

• The Finals (DX12) may experience an intermittent application crash.
• Mafia: The Old Country (DX12) may experience an application crash during gameplay.

Intel Arc B-Series Graphics Products:

• Call of Duty Black Ops 6 (DX12) may exhibit intermittent corruptions on certain water surfaces during gameplay.
• Dune: Awakening (DX12) may exhibit flickering corruptions during gameplay.
• PugetBench for Davinci Resolve Studio may experience an intermittent application crash while running the benchmark. Recommendation is to change the timeout slider to 1500 seconds or higher, to wait for each test to complete, in PugetBench benchmark settings.

Intel Arc A-Series Graphics Products:

• Crimson Desert (DX12) may exhibit corruption when using upscaling during gameplay.
• PugetBench for Davinci Resolve Studio may experience an intermittent application crash while running the benchmark. Recommendation is to change the timeout slider to 1500 seconds or higher, to wait for each test to complete, in PugetBench benchmark settings.
• Battlefield 6 (DX12) may exhibit intermittent corruptions on certain maps during gameplay.

Intel Core Ultra Series 1 with built-in Intel Arc GPUs:Intel Core Ultra Series 2 with built-in Intel Arc GPUs:

• Call of Duty Black Ops 6 (DX12) may exhibit intermittent corruptions on certain water surfaces during gameplay.
• Battlefield 6 (DX12) may exhibit intermittent corruptions on certain maps during gameplay on some notebooks with Intel Core Ultra Series 2 with built-in Intel Arc GPUs.

Intel Graphics Software Known Issues

• When using the settings, preferences, reset all settings option in Windows 10 the application may experience an intermittent crash. Settings can be reset from individual pages without issue.
• Intel Graphics Software may sometimes experience a single application crash on the first re-arrange of metrics within the select metrics window. Subsequent usage will not be affected by this crash again.
• Performance page in Intel Graphics Software may not hide the graphs when using the hide graphs button.
• Performance page in Intel Graphics Software may not function as expected when adding new metrics.