In context: Intel’s Arc A-series family of discrete GPUs may prove to be the most disappointing hardware release this year. And that’s despite the company’s best efforts to break into a tough market where Nvidia dominates the high-end segment and AMD offers alternatives for budget-conscious gamers. The Arc 7 laptop GPUs haven’t made their debut yet, but they’re officially intended for Nvidia’s more modest offerings in the Ampere lineup.
Earlier this week, a review of the Arc A380 desktop graphics card revealed why Intel didn’t want to release it worldwide. Performance lags behind AMD’s slowest RX 6000 series card and even Nvidia’s GTX 1650 which debuted three years ago. Some of that is to be expected, as Nvidia and AMD have been perfecting their drivers for years and a first-generation discrete GPU architecture from Intel is unlikely to challenge their current offerings on anything other than price or power efficiency. .
According to Tom’s Hardware, Intel recently sent out review guidelines for its Arc Alchemist mobile GPUs and their performance in modern AAA games. Specifically, the company is sharing information about the Arc A770M and Arc A730M GPUs, which are based on the ACM-G10 chip. Intel seems to be positioning them as alternatives to Nvidia’s RTX 3050 Ti and RTX 3060 laptop GPUs, which are entry-level offerings in the Ampere lineup.
The A730M has 24 Xe cores running at up to 1100 MHz, 24 ray tracing units, and 12 gigabytes of GDDR6 coupled over a 192-bit interface. Its big brother, the A770M, has 32 Xe cores running at 1650 MHz, 32 ray tracing units and 16 gigabytes of VRAM connected via a 265-bit interface.
Similar to Nvidia’s RTX 30-series laptop GPUs, Intel’s Arc A730M and 770M GPUs will ship with varying TGP ratings that will be configured by manufacturers based on their design goals for computer models. particular laptops. They oscillate between 80 to 120 watts for the A730M and 120 to 150 watts for the A770M.
| Game settings) | RTX-3050Ti | Bow A730M | RTX-3060 | Bow A770M |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (High) | 38 fps | 50 fps | 74 fps | 69 fps |
| Borderlands 3 (Ultra) | 45 fps | 50 fps | 60 fps | 79 fps |
|
Control (high) |
42 fps | 62 fps | 70 fps | 89 fps |
| Cyberpunk 2077 (Ultra) | 39 fps | 49 fps | 54 fps | 68 fps |
| Death Stranding (Ultra) | 89 fps | 87 fps | 113 fps | 102 fps |
| Dirt 5 (high) | 64 fps | 61 fps | 83 fps | 87 fps |
| F1 2021 (Ultra) | 68 fps | 86 fps | 96 fps | 123 fps |
|
Far Cry 6 (Ultra) |
63 fps | 68 fps | 80 fps | 82 fps |
| Gears of War 5 (Ultra) | 58 fps | 52 fps | 72 fps | 73 fps |
| Horizon Zero Dawn (Ultimate Quality) | 63 fps | 50 fps | 80 fps | 68 fps |
| Subway Exodus (Ultra) | 39 fps | 54 fps | 53 fps | 69 fps |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 (high) | 46 fps | 60 fps | 66 fps | 77 fps |
|
Strange Brigade (Ultra) |
98 fps | 123 fps | 134 fps | 172 fps |
| The Division 2 (Ultra) | 63 fps | 51 fps | 78 fps | 86 fps |
| The Witcher 3 (Ultra) | 96 fps | 101 fps | 124 fps | 141 fps |
| Total War Saga: Troy (Ultra) | 48 fps | 66 fps | 71 fps | 86 fps |
| Watch Dogs Legion (High) | 59 fps | 71 fps | 77 fps | 89 fps |
Intel’s benchmarks suggest that its A730M and A770M GPUs can outperform the RTX 3050 Ti and RTX 3060 in 1080p performance across a variety of games by up to 48%. However, Team Blue admits lower performance in some titles like Death Stranding and Horizon Zero Dawn, so the average performance advantage is only 12-13%.
The problem with these results is that Intel didn’t specify the TGP of the Arc GPUs it used for testing, whereas the guidelines show the RTX 3050 Ti with a 60-watt TGP and the RTX 3060 with a TGP 85 watts. Both numbers are below the minimums for the Arc A730M and A770M, and significantly below the maximum configurable TGPs, making it difficult to judge the merits of the Alchemist architecture against the competition.
Intel Arc GPUs are equipped with more VRAM than their supposed Nvidia counterparts, which is a plus point. They may also be capable of better performance when configured to use more power, but the same is true for the RTX 3050 Ti and RTX 3060. Intel’s public documentation suggests that Arc Alchemist GPUs need a resizable BAR to work best, and this feature may not have been enabled on the MSI Pulse G66 (RTX 3060) and Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (RTX 3050 Ti) test machines.
In any case, it seems that Intel is not interested in competing at the high end with this first generation of discrete GPUs. The company has an Arc Limited Edition graphics card for desktop systems that could feature higher clocks than the A770M, but it’s unclear if it will even approach RTX 3070 performance levels as rumored. said.