After countless rumors, Intel has finally officially announced that its next-generation Arc Battlemage graphics card will soon be available to PC gamers, aiming to compete with Nvidia and AMD in the $250 price range. Along with that, the company also unveiled a new Intel Graphics Software toolkit, which will completely replace the Intel Arc Control companion toolkit that has been used with Intel graphics for the past few years.
Intel calls the new Intel Graphics Software application an 'all-in-one' utility that helps users optimize games, download new graphics drivers, and adjust driver settings on a game-by-game basis. Like other Nvidia or AMD companion applications, the toolkit will adjust features and driver settings via a profile configurator depending on the game or application being run. General settings packages, such as enabling Low Latency Mode for faster response times, limiting FPS, adjusting image sharpness, etc., will also be able to be flexibly customized through the software.
Display customization options ranging from basic to advanced are also a highlight of the new Intel Graphics Software toolkit. Everything from color adjustments to scaling and VRR are available on a per-monitor basis.
Furthermore, the performance of the currently used Intel GPU can be easily checked using the Intel Graphics Software, which provides live telemetry of "FPS, memory usage, clock speed, temperature, voltage, etc." As shown in the screenshot below, comprehensive performance tuning options can be found here, allowing Intel Arc owners to overclock the graphics card, change the fan curve, etc.
It's unclear exactly when the new Intel Graphics Software toolkit will be available to all Intel graphics card users worldwide, but the fact that it's been announced as a finished product on Intel's official website means that Graphics Software is likely scheduled to launch alongside the new Battlemage GPU next week.