Breaking up with your annoying audio stutters or crackles on your MSI Claw 8 AI+ is easier than you think. Well, because there's good news coming-from Intel, as it has just dropped a new graphics driver that specifically targets this insistent bug.
Apparently, it coincided with a new Intel Arc Graphics driver (version 32.0.101.6874) that introduced an audio bug mainly for handhelds with the new Core Ultra Series 2 processors. If you have either an MSI Claw 8 AI+ or a Claw 7 AI+, that means you got swept into it.
Reports were ranging from simple bad audio to actual performance drops because of the bug. Picture yourself trying to enjoy a game while there is so garbled audio and you are experiencing some lags-not fun, of course It even got to the point of 100% CPU usage spiking for some, and they had to wait long to start loading some of the programs.
Until now, the best suggestion before this final fix was to revert to the previous version of the driver (in this case, 6795), a suggestion Intel has already advanced. Some users seem to have searched for some temporary relief through turning off the AI boost of Intel.
Well, Claw users have not hung for too long because of Intel. The newly released Arc Graphics driver, version 32.0.101.6877, solves this problem. The official release notes confirm the fix:
Intel® Core™ Ultra Series 2 with built-in Intel® Arc™ GPUs:
- Poor audio disruption and lower than ideal performance might be experienced in some handheld devices while playing audio.
In fact, anyone out there owning an MSI Claw 7 AI+ or Claw 8 AI+ must surely catch that drive. It should wipe the audio nightmares out, and restore performance for your handheld.
Oh, and sure, if you are one of those who own the old MSI Claw 7 model with a Meteor Lake processor, you should probably not care about this specific issue, as it concerns only those based on Core Ultra Series 2 handhelds.
Download the newly released Intel Arc Graphics driver (32.0.101.6877) directly from Intel's official site, along with the full release notes. Time to get your game audio crisp and clear again.
