New Intel HD drivers 11/20 for those interested

[be77solo]

Just a quick heads up for those running the Intel HD graphics drivers instead of the Microsoft drivers for the HD 4400, Intel released new drivers 11/20/13.

Installed them a few minutes ago, will report back if there are issues, but they installed just fine over my existing Intel drivers, which have improved gaming performance in newer games (BF4 particularly) over the Microsoft drivers, plus provides access to the Graphics control panel.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=23405&lang=eng&OSVersion=Windows%208.1%2C%2064-bit*&DownloadType=%0A%09%09%09%09%09%09%09Drivers%0A%09%09%09%09%09%09

 

[demandarin]

Oh yeah, thanks! Ive fell behind in my thread..lol

This driver also good for HD 4000/f.y.I.

 

[be77solo]

Oh yeah, thanks! Ive fell behind in my thread..lol

Ha, no worries! I was updating my laptop drivers and ran across them, so went ahead and updated the SP2 as well.

 

[demandarin]

just installed the .exe on my pro1. everything went fine. I will update my thread also with this. credit to you of course. as I use my pro plugged up most of the time, ill take the graphics performance increase over any slight battery drain increase anyday.

 

[Nitemare]

How much of a potential game are we talking with these drivers? I use the device for school, so I want to keep battery life up for now... but I'll be using it considerably for gaming in a few months when I'm overseas. Curious what the trade off may be...

 

[be77solo]

How much of a potential game are we talking with these drivers? I use the device for school, so I want to keep battery life up for now... but I'll be using it considerably for gaming in a few months when I'm overseas. Curious what the trade off may be...

I haven't done a direct <battery> comparison, but I used the SP2 for a few weeks with stock drivers and now have used the Intel drivers for a few weeks and honestly haven't noticed much of a difference in battery life. I also haven't done any formal battery life testing with either driver however, but battery life has yet to be an issue. My usage pattern only needs battery for a few hours a day of actual use, the rest is sleep mode while traveling between jobsites. And of course, while doing any serious gaming I make sure to plug in as that kills the battery in 1-2 hours.

Performance is noticeably smoother in the more demanding games with these drivers and Intel control panel set to max performance. It's very easy to swap between drivers, so my best advice would be just try them and compare for your actual usage patterns.

And as a followup, after a day of use these drivers have been totally stable so far without issue.

EDIT: Clarification

 

[Pochowandpoch]

I tried the new drivers in games (Batman Origins and Max Payne 3) ,it shows a slight improvement in the smoothness,the problem now is that the battery is drunk in 1 hour.

I will restore the previous drivers.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[be77solo]

I tried the new drivers in games (Batman Origins and Max Payne 3) ,it shows a slight improvement in the smoothness,the problem now is that the battery is drunk in 1 hour.

I will restore the previous drivers.

Thanks for sharing.

So you noticed better performance but a difference in battery life while playing those games? Curious, what do you normally get while gaming? Even with stock drivers while gaming with modern games battery life is terrible ha. I always do serious gaming plugged in, mainly to keep from destroying the battery from rapid draining, but also to not be limited to an hour or two of gaming or usage.

Biggest game that made a difference for me with Intel drivers was BF4, kept things smoother and actually playable. Still low with reduced res, don't get me wrong, but actually enjoyable at 30FPS.

 

[Zuldan]

Agreed! always plug in your power adapter when doing gaming.

Reasons:

1. You will kill your battery very quickly (as in it will only last 1 to 2 hrs)

2. When your Surface is plugged into power, the CPU/GPU running mode changes to max performance, meaning you will get a lot more FPS

 

[sockfish]

Anyone else having trouble installing this update? I'm getting an error that says the drivers are not compatible with my hardware..

 

[D1vad]

when you first want to install the Intel drivers it is a three step process. you must first download and unzip the zipped version.
then you need to open device manager and choose update drivers, and choose browse computer for driver software, search for driver software in this location, (browse to the folder you unzipped), next, choose the Intel Graphics family, that's from memory...

once the initial driver gets updated you can then run the setup.exe to install the utility. future updates can be installed by just running setup.

 

[jollywombat]

Because I was curious, I did a test with 3dmark Icestorm three times, averaging 40,000 score with the microsoft provided drivers. I updated the intel drivers to the latest release and re-ran the tests. Scores remained the same averaging 40,000 again, very little margins of variance.

This is on a SP2 256gb fyi.