The Intel-AMD Kaby Lake-G Architecture Is Getting New Windows 11 Graphics Drivers

Intel NUC NUC8i7HVK
(Image credit: Amazon)

In an amazing twist of fate, Intel has fully confirmed that it and AMD  are working to release updated graphics drivers for the Kaby Lake-G hybrid APU lineup. According to a moderator from the Intel forums, the drivers are already completed and have been transferred over to AMD for final testing. Oh, and the cherry on top -- these drivers are Windows 11 certified!

The Kaby Lake-G architecture was born out of the most bizarre collaboration ever seen in the semiconductor landscape with AMD and Intel working on a single product together. Both companies put aside their competitive natures to make a new APU featuring Vega RX graphics inside a Kaby Lake SoC. It was a powerhouse of a design, focused on fighting Nvidia's first generation of Pascal Max-Q graphics cards.

The first flagship to truly showcase Kaby Lake-G's power was the Hades Canyon NUC 8, featuring a Core i7-8809G with four cores, eight threads, and a 24 compute unit Vega RX GPU. In our review, we noted how impressive its performance was in such a small compact chassis and its gaming performance was surprisingly close to that of a GTX 1060 6GB desktop-class GPU, with a power rating of just 100W.

Despite all this, driver support for the Kaby lake-G chips was barely maintained. In 2019 Intel left users hanging for a full year before new game-ready graphics drivers came out for Kaby Lake-G. Even then the 'new driver' was merely a PDF that redirected users to an AMD download portal, which would allow users to download Adrenalin 2020 drivers instead of Intel drivers.

But even that was short-lived. A few months later in June of 2020, AMD quietly killed off Kaby Lake-G driver support in its mainstream Adrenaline driver program. Leaving users stranded with older drivers that did not have driver enhancements for the then-new Windows 10 2004 update.

Given Intel and AMD's track record, it's amazing to hear a new driver update is coming to Kaby Lake-G and it's a Windows 10 and 11 supported driver as well. This will give Kaby Lake-G some extra life to long-time owners.

Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

  • abufrejoval
    It would seem that Intel is finally ridding itself of the last stock and they had to do a driver update to be able to do so:
    https://androidpc.es/mini-pc-amd-rx/
    https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003228522041.html

    No idea how the Windows 11 lottery will play out for this device.
    Reply