Intel has released its new IGP driver for 4th and 5th generation Core processors that will bring significant video playback performance improvements thanks to added hardware acceleration for H.265 and Google's VP9 video formats.


According to Intel's release notes, the new Intel IGP driver, the Intel Graphics Drivers 15.36, is aimed at Core M family, 4th generation Core CPUs with HD, Iris or Iris Pro graphics as well as select Pentium and Celeron processors and includes improved video playback through partial hardware acceleration support for the VP9 video format and GPU accelerated decode of HEVC (H.265) video file format including both 8-bit and 10-bit support, which will bring improved video playback capabilities on platforms.

While the VP9 acceleration is only partial and will not fully offload the CPU cores, this added support should have a significant performance and power results, especially on lower clocked entry-level CPUs, like the Broadwell-based Core M lineup.

The new driver also adds a couple of new OpenCL and OpenGL extensions and is available on directly from Intel's support site and available for Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.



Source: Intel Download Center.