The highly anticipated open beta for Battlefield 6 just kicked off this weekend, and, unfortunately, for many Intel Arc A-series owners, it's been less about firefights and more about crash reports. Players using first-gen Alchemist GPUs—from the entry-level Arc A380 to the flagship Arc A770—have described freezes during matchmaking, failures to load specific maps, and abrupt drops mid-game. The problem doesn’t extend to Intel’s newer Arc B-series cards; the B580 is even listed among Battlefield 6’s recommended specs for 1440p High settings, while the A380 appears in the game’s minimum requirements.
The trouble started despite Intel releasing its WHQL-certified Game On driver (v32.0.101.6987) just before the beta went live. That update brought support for Battlefield 6 and Mafia: The Old Country, as well as a 6% FPS boost in Doom: The Dark Ages at 1080p with path tracing. However, on Arc A-series hardware, the new driver hasn’t played well with Battlefield 6. Reports from Intel’s community forums, EA’s boards, Reddit, and even Bilibili indicate that the default “Borderless” display mode is a common crash trigger, suggesting a driver-level handling issue rather than a hardware fault.
Two unofficial workarounds have emerged. The first, shared by Reddit user u/Ok_Tomato_O, is straightforward: change the game from Borderless to either Full Screen or Windowed mode. This alone has stopped the crashing for many players. The second, from Arc A770 owner “Muza” on Intel’s forums, is more involved — it requires reverting to the old Intel control panel, manually adding bf6event.exe under Games → Game Compatibility → Advanced, and applying the setting. While some report success, this method comes with the risk of using legacy software and should be approached with caution.
Intel quickly acknowledged the issue, confirming that it only affects Arc A-series discrete GPUs and promising a fix. “Our team at Intel is aware of the crashing issue… We’re working hard to develop a fix and will be rolling out a driver update to resolve this as soon as possible,” the company said in a forum post. With the Battlefield 6 open beta scheduled for just two weekends, that update can’t come soon enough for affected players.
The situation is reminiscent of Starfield’s launch, where Intel’s GPUs also struggled from day one. Given that the Arc A770 and A750 have previously outperformed AMD’s RX 7600 XT and Nvidia’s RTX 4060 Ti in specific 1440p scenarios, the Battlefield 6 crashes are more a driver misstep than a sign of weak hardware.
Intel has now released a follow-up driver aimed at resolving the issue entirely. However, until this fix is confirmed, switching display modes or using the control panel tweak remains the best way for Arc Alchemist owners to prevent their session from ending before the match begins.
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