It seems the folks at Intel have some work to do with their latest on-board graphics drivers. With the 4th generation Intel processor, also came update HD 5000 graphics. It turns out they don’t work so well under Windows 8.1. Now before you jump to point out that this is just a preview release, I’m well aware of that. This doesn’t however change the fact that lots of people have bought new hardware and want to run the latest software.
You can see from the screenshot below that the display of web pages (regardless of the browser) has large crosses through some of the graphics. This doesn’t just happen with Facebook, but almost every other website. I have visited some that don’t have this issue which is weird, but the issue in the driver makes it virtually unusable.
The second issue I have is that Visual Studio crashes on launch after installing the drivers. I’ve tested with both the 2012 and 2013 preview versions and both are effected. This means trying to be a developer and run the latest software is very broken while Intel’s driver is broken.
The reason I’m able to pin the blame on Intel is that when I uninstall the driver and return to the default OS driver, the problem goes away. The issue with the default driver is that you don’t get brightness control, which drains the battery and you also can’t use dual displays.
I am running Windows 8.1 on a 2013 Macbook Air using Bootcamp, but have exactly the same setup running on my 2011 Macbook Air without issue. I want to enjoy the battery life and performance of the new hardware, but with Intel’s driver issue’s that’s currently not possible.
Intel, please get your engineers to release a Windows 8.1 driver update and fix this issue, and fast.
Here’s another example of Neowin.net
Update
After doing some more searching on the issue, I did discover a Intel HD Graphics 5000 beta driver that did include support for Windows 8.1. After already searching on Intel’s site for such a thing and coming up empty, I didn’t hold much hope, but the driver available from softpedia actually worked. The problem is now completely resolved, browsing issues have gone and VS2013 launches and runs just fine.
You can get the HD Graphics 5000 beta driver for Windows 8.1 (64-bit) from Softpedia. For those wondering about version numbers, this one is Intel Graphics Driver: 9.18.10.3214.
Image credit: Flickr user dibec.
