This update addresses several previously found issues and includes new features. Please see the release notes and excerpt below for details. As always, feedback is appreciated.
The 15.36.21.4222 has been posted to Intel Download Center at the following direct links to the drivers:
32bit - http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=24965
64 bit - http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=24964
This driver supports the following:
5th Generation Intel® Core Processors with Intel HD graphics, Intel Iris™graphics, Intel Iris™Pro graphics and select Pentium®/ Celeron® Processors with Intel® HD graphics for Microsoft Windows* 8.1, Microsoft Windows* 8 and Microsoft Windows* 7 operating systems.
4th Generation Intel® Core™Processors with Intel HD graphics, Intel Iris™graphics and Intel Iris Pro graphics and select Pentium®/ Celeron® Processors with Intel® HD graphics for Microsoft Windows* 8.1, Microsoft Windows* 8 and Microsoft Windows* 7 operating systems.
New Features in this release:
- Support for the newly launched H-series, R-series, and S-series 5th Generation Intel Core processors.
- Display Scaling Option is Now “Sticky” User Preference
Scaling support in control panel has been changed to improve user experience. Previously, the set of scaling options available to the user was tied to the currently selected resolution and any change to the resolution caused the user selected scaling option to be lost. In the new implementation, the user selected scaling option is orthogonal to the current resolution and expresses the user’s preference/intent for scaling behavior, regardless of the current resolution. The driver will remember this scaling preference and apply it for future display mode sets performed either in the graphics control panel OR via OS control panel.
- Forced Application Scaling
The control panel also offers a new “forced application scaling” option where the user selected scaling option above for desktop will also be applied for full screen applications (generally games or media players), overriding whatever scaling mode the application and/or DirectX runtime/Operating System specify. This is intended to allow users to force “Stretch Full Screen” or “Maintain Aspect Ratio” scaling to address problems reported by users with games running in “Centered” scaling mode - particularly DirectX10 and 11 games and/or on Windows 8/8.1. Centered mode gives a bad user experience when running games as significantly lower than native resolution (e.g. to improve frame rate) on displays with very high resolutions. Intel has identified several root causes for this behavior:
![untitled.png]()
a) Some games request “Unspecified” scaling to the DirectX runtime upon full screen mode set. On Windows 8 and 8.1, for touch enabled systems, Windows converts this to “centered” scaling in the mode set call into the display driver. Microsoft has acknowledged this issue (CSS case 115021712411905/MSBU bug 5500783); the forced scaling option provided in this driver is a workaround for this Win8/8.1 operating system issue.
b) Several games explicitly request “Centered” scaling. Intel has reached out to the game developers to educate them to request “Stretched” scaling instead and several games (such as Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare) have been patched to correct this behavior, but other applications may still have this issue.
In both cases, the new forced application scaling option provides a solution to allow the user to specify their preferred scaling mode.
This option is not enabled by default because it technically means that the graphics driver is not honoring operating system requests for mode sets and would cause WHCK test failures during driver certification. However, Intel strongly recommends users set this option when playing games at non-native resolutions, especially on Windows 8/8.1, especially for DirectX10/11 games.
- Dedicated Memory Reporting
The graphics driver now reports some amount of fictitious “dedicated” graphics memory to the operating system (128MB by default) to work around applications issues in a number of games. These games incorrectly look for some amount of “dedicated” graphics memory because they weren’t coded with the unified memory architecture for processor graphics.
The amount reported can be modified or disabled if desired by changing the following registry value:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Intel\GMM, create a REG_DWORD value named “DedicatedSegmentSize”. The value is interpreted as number of MB to report (0-512MB). A value of 0 disables reporting the dummy memory segment. If the registry key/value is not found, the driver will report the default 128MB.
Please see the release notes for issues resolved with this release.
Thanks
Robert
