Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Microsoft gives thumbs up to Intel’s latest graphics drivers for Surface Pro 4, Book

Microsoft Surface Book
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
Back in June, Intel released new drivers for its integrated graphics installed in a number of its Core, Core M, Pentium, Celeron, and Xeon E3-1500M v5 family of processors (pdf). Intel said the new driver set fixed numerous problems causing hangs, crashes, and graphical corruptions previously experienced in applications and PC games. Now Microsoft has given these new Intel HD Graphics drivers the green light to be used on its Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 devices.

In other words, Microsoft is behaving like a true notebook OEM. Although AMD, Nvidia, and Intel continuously release fresh new drivers to the general public, that doesn’t mean they’re compatible with notebook hardware configurations. Notebook components generally can’t be swapped out save for the hard drive and memory, so everything mounted inside needs to work in harmony. OEMs typically customize all drivers to insure that hardware does just that, but the updates are extremely low or seemingly non-existent.

Recommended Videos

On the Microsoft front, the company apparently spent the last month testing Intel’s new HD Graphics driver on its Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 devices before giving a thumbs up and offering them via Windows Update. Thus, Microsoft can provide customer support if anything goes wrong after the new drivers are installed. Had they not gone through Microsoft’s approval, the company wouldn’t have been able to provide support based on unfamiliar, untested software.

“We’re especially pleased to report that this driver also fixes some long standing and frequently reported graphics issues on Intel’s Support Community, including a scaling issue with Windows 10, and an error found when playing a particular,” Intel said in its release notes last month.

Some of the key issues the new Intel drivers fix include graphics corruption experienced on Windows 10 in Just Cause 3, Forza Apex, XCOM 2, and Ark Survival: Evolved. Another Windows 10 issue solved was a blank screen popping up in League of Legends, a system hang while resuming from Sleep/Hibernation while WiDi is turned on, and a potential crash when playing back videos over WiDi or Miracast.

Overall, most of the fixes the new drivers provide are related to Windows 10, which is installed on the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 devices launched at the end of October 2015. Both units have seen numerous problems since their release, such as poor performance, high temperatures during standby, unexpected reboots, and so on. A good chunk of the major issues were resolved in a huge update released in April. Hopefully, the new Intel graphics drivers resolve a number of remaining problems.

Unfortunately, the new Intel drivers have yet to address crash/hanging problems with a number of PC games running on its integrated graphics chips including Doom (2016), Ashes of the Singularity, Batman Arkham Knight, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Quantum Break, and more. Graphical corruption still exists in Rise of the Tomb Raider, Fallout 4, Mortal Kombat X, Far Cry Primal, and other games, Intel said.

For a list of hardware the new Intel drivers support, check out the list linked in the PDF file above.

Kevin Parrish
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kevin started taking PCs apart in the 90s when Quake was on the way and his PC lacked the required components. Since then…
The new Surface Laptop and Surface Pro are finally living up to their potential
The new Surface Pro on a table.

Copilot+ represents a new era for Windows laptops, and it's a fresh reimagining for Surface as well. You'll notice that the generational number in the name is gone with this new era -- one that comes with a new design, higher performance, and AI features.

Both the new Surface Laptop and Surface Pro come exclusively with up to a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, which brings massive leaps in performance, battery life, and AI capabilities over the previous generation of Surface devices.

Read more
How Intel and Microsoft are teaming up to take on Apple
An Intel Meteor Lake system-on-a-chip.

It seems like Apple might need to watch out, because Intel and Microsoft are coming for it after the latter two companies reportedly forged a close partnership during the development of Intel Lunar Lake chips. Lunar Lake refers to Intel's upcoming generation of mobile processors that are aimed specifically at the thin and light segment. While the specs are said to be fairly modest, some signs hint that Lunar Lake may have enough of an advantage to pose a threat to some of the best processors.

Today's round of Intel Lunar Lake leaks comes from Igor's Lab. The system-on-a-chip (SoC), pictured above, is Intel's low-power solution made for thin laptops that's said to be coming out later this year. Curiously, the chips weren't manufactured on Intel's own process, but on TSMC's N3B node. This is an interesting development because Intel typically sticks to its own fabs, and it even plans to sell its manufacturing services to rivals like AMD. This time, however, Intel opted for the N3B node for its compute tile.

Read more
Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 have arrived — with a catch
A top down view of the Surface Laptop 6, highlighting the Copilot button.

Microsoft has taken the wraps off some new Surface devices today. Though the latest Surface Pro 10 for Buisness and Surface Laptop 6 for Buisness are only for commercial users, the new products preview consumer versions that are expected to be coming later this year.

While not majorly redesigned, the devices pack a promising jump in performance under the hood thanks to the Intel Core Ultra CPU, as well as some features enterprise users will surely appreciate. AI is also a big focus in the form of Copilot.
Surface Laptop 6 for Business

Read more