Intel ARC A750 & A770 Reviews

[CAD4466HK]

What a disappointment...

 

[undertaker2k8]

I'm actually pleasantly surprised, most of the issues are down to driver maturity and the hardware when tuned can reach 3060ti plus performance levels, who expected them to emphatically trounce Nv/AMD cards day 1? Not me...

 

[cvinh]

Underwhelming but this is great for the market and consumers. We need more competition.

 

[CAD4466HK]

A few more...

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-arc-a770/

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-arc-a750/
Intel didn't even have enough press kits to sample one for Guru3D smh.

For those wondering, Intel did not select Guru3D as a review partner for the new ARC graphics cards. They do not have enough samples available to even seed enough tier 1 media. Here's what we got back from them:

With regards Arc sampling, we’ve received an extremely limited number of sample kits in EMEA ahead of launch, which has meant we’ve had to make some difficult decisions in this first round of sampling. I sincerely apologize that we’ve not been able to get you a kit straight away, this is a less than ideal situation that we’re having to work around - Intel

 

[XoR_]

I know this will sound unlikely but something good actually happened because of Intel ARC...
Thanks to one of reviews mentioning something like that required Resizable Bar can be found in iCore CPU's from 9th up I got to do some digging to see if that isn't some kind of mistake which I will be able to point that out in comments (as you gotta do when someone is wrong on internets...) and through magic of beta BIOS I now have Intel ARC ready Core i9 9900K system 🤩 One less reason to think about pointless upgrades 🐢

I mean I do not expect much good to happen thanks to these products this year other than maybe increase in aspirin sales 🙄

That said hardware looks pretty nice and in limited number of games it doesn't look half bad.
Now if we had some kind of guarantee that Intel will not suddenly back off and they do not abandon the idea of discrete GPU's and/or supporting this particular silicon it might be good buy with possibly most driver improvements in history. That said with flood of cheap post-mining cards however it will be a hard buy...

who expected them to emphatically trounce Nv/AMD cards day 1? Not me...

After A380 reviews absolutely no one 🥱

 

[vegeta535]

Idk what so disappointing about it. We knew it wasn't going to be great. Once the drivers get worked out a bit it should be a decent card for th money.

 

[NightReaver]

So it's not garbage...but a firm "why buy this"?

 

[CAD4466HK]

The A770 has good specs on paper: 16GB of 16Gbps GDDR6 - 256bit bus - 560GB/s bandwith - 17.2 TFLOPS sp at 225W.
But loses more times than it wins to a : 8GB of 16Gbps GDDR6 - 128bit bus - 256GB/s bandwith -10.6 TFLOPS sp at 160W that is also cheaper.

They need to drop it to around $250 or massively increase the performance of their driver set, for the A770 to be competitive IMO.

 

[Dreamerbydesign]

I expected worse. But I am not impressed especially after the Intel hype. They really over did it.

 

[Spirit_Retro]

Shrugg....

What I got out of these reviews is essentially: "Look.. Intel made a video card.... isn't that cute?"

I mean, I'm glad there is another competitor and all that. But the price needs to drop significantly before I'm actually "impressed".

 

[DooKey]

I expected worse. But I am not impressed especially after the Intel hype. They really over did it.

Raja gonna Raja...

 

[Decko87]

Seems solid for a first try, they're going to have to reduce their price to get people to buy it over the RX 6600 XT and RX 6600 though, ray tracing at that level of card doesn't matter anyway, it's not really feasible. I don't pay attention to marketing at all so I can't comment on the hype. From my perspective it's a solid first attempt, they need to keep working on the driver over the next couple years and they may really have something going for their next generation of cards. Hell, in a year from now these could be a solid mid to low end buy.

 

[Domingo]

I just hope they stick with it long enough to actually have some mature drivers and acknowledge that AMD also makes video cards. I'm not expecting a high end competitor any time soon, but it would be nice if there was someone else in 3-4 years. Otherwise we have Nvidia cranking up prices and pushing proprietary tech.

 

[DooKey]

I just hope they stick with it long enough to actually have some mature drivers and acknowledge that AMD also makes video cards. I'm not expecting a high end competitor any time soon, but it would be nice if there was someone else in 3-4 years. Otherwise we have Nvidia cranking up prices and pushing proprietary tech.

Don't buy Nvidia. Crying about it doesn't do a thing.

 

[pendragon1]

 

[Spirit_Retro]

Oh yea... very innovative....

 

[Starfalcon]

Ive taken apart a few annoying video cards, but that really takes the cake. That is pure nightmare to just replace the fans, and it looks like the card was more designed to be disposable than repairable.

 

[DooKey]

Ive taken apart a few annoying video cards, but that really takes the cake. That is pure nightmare to just replace the fans, and it looks like the card was more designed to be disposable than repairable.

At the $300 price point it is kinda disposable after a couple of years use.

 

[Domingo]

Don't buy Nvidia. Crying about it doesn't do a thing.

There's only one alternative and it doesn't support Nvidia's proprietary RTX that plenty of games are actually using. Although at this point I have no plans to buy anything from anyone. The 30-series hardware pulls 60-100fps in damn near everything in 4K, so I'm not giving Green, Red, Blue, or any other color company a dime until that's no longer the case.

 

[equinox654]

My take on the data in the reviews is way more positive than the actual reviewers.
Great price/perf in DX12/Vulkan and select optimized DX11 titles, some driver glitches.
Even the unoptimized titles looked playable in 1080p/1440p and a lot of those will improve with driver updates.

I hope they sell. We need a 3rd player. Intel really needs to get to work on the drivers though.

 

[Putz]

if they can get the drivers fixed up seems like a decent everyday GPU for the majority of the market who isnt after HEDT stuff where the GPU consumes their entire budget.

 

[whateverer]

My take on the data in the reviews is way more positive than the actual reviewers.
Great price/perf in DX12/Vulkan and select optimized DX11 titles, some driver glitches.
Even the unoptimized titles looked playable in 1080p/1440p and a lot of those will improve with driver updates.

I hope they sell. We need a 3rd player. Intel really needs to get to work on the drivers though.

what price /perf? Assuming you can even find on in retail this month , this is 30% faster for 10% more money:

https://www.newegg.com/asrock-radeon-rx-6700-xt-rx6700xt-cld-12g/p/N82E16814930056

And then add this additional 25 % performance hit without resizable BAR (or if you cant get it working, they are stilt buggy years later,)

and suddenly you're giving up a shitload of performance just to be a first-gen bragging rights fool!

 

[noko]

My take on the data in the reviews is way more positive than the actual reviewers.
Great price/perf in DX12/Vulkan and select optimized DX11 titles, some driver glitches.
Even the unoptimized titles looked playable in 1080p/1440p and a lot of those will improve with driver updates.

I hope they sell. We need a 3rd player. Intel really needs to get to work on the drivers though.

Also as well, I expect drivers will dramatically improve performance. Seems like the API compilation stage, copy operations to card for ARC in the drivers is holding it back severely, the actual hardware pixel processing power is like double that of the 3060, just held back by the drivers. One reason seeing the 1440p results climbing the ladder against the competition. Anyways Raja Kudure explained this in this video:

 

[OFaceSIG]

I am baffled that anyone is crapping on Intel for this attempt. Sure it's clear by the size and power draw they were gunning for the 3070. They examined their efforts and realized they had to pivot. For the money these aren't great but we NEED Intel in the market. We need another player with deep pockets to take shots on Nvidia.

 

[equinox654]

For

what price /perf? Assuming you can even find on in retail this month , this is 30% faster for 10% more money:

https://www.newegg.com/asrock-radeon-rx-6700-xt-rx6700xt-cld-12g/p/N82E16814930056

And then add this additional 25 % performance hit without resizable BAR (or if you cant get it working, they are stilt buggy years later,)

View attachment 516607

and suddenly you're giving up a shitload of performance just to be a first-gen bragging rights fool!

I don’t buy at that low of a tier and I wasn’t speaking in aggregate performance.

I was meaning that in the cases it performs correctly it would be a good deal… assuming the drivers will be fixed.

 

[Axman]

I am baffled that anyone is crapping on Intel for this attempt.

Mostly I think people were really rooting for this, but like, for it to happen this time last year.

 

[XenIneX]

LTT did a 4 hour livestream of side-by-side performance between A770 and RTX3060 with viewer requested games. Pretty rough-and-ready, as they're installing and configuring games on the fly, and not doing rigorous benchmarking. But, might be worth scrubbing through the timeline, if you want comparisons.

Things are very hit or miss. A third of the time they're comparable, with Intel sometimes eking out a slim lead. The next third of the time, Intel is playable, but definitely way behind, running at about 2/3 the performance of the 3060. And finally, the remaining third is absolutely dire -- like, a fraction of the framerate, with absolutely atrocious frame pacing.

Spoiler: TL;DW

Intel A770	Rough performance delta vs RTX 3060
Control	+20% FPS; -20% frame pacing
Witcher	==
TF2	==
Satisfactory	==
HL2	==
Valheim	==
Elden Ring	== (60fps locked)
Skyrim	== (60fps locked)
Doom Eternal	-10% FPS
Cities Skylines	-20% FPS
Destiny 2	-20% FPS
Anno 1800	-30% FPS
GTA V	-30% FPS
Crysis	-40% FPS
Rocket League	-40% FPS
Minecraft	-50% FPS (or worse?)
Battlefield V	-50% FPS (unplayable pacing)
Halo MCC	-60% FPS (unplayable pacing)
BeamNG	-70% FPS
Descenders	-70% FPS (unplayable pacing)
Forza Horizon 5	CTD
Fallout 4	(N/A) (Bethesda is terrible...)

 

[TheHig]

More competition is good certainly but let’s not pretend that a LOT of people want more competition so they can buy Nvidia cheaper..

I buy purely on what I’m willing to spend and what I’m trying to accomplish. The right too for the job for the right price mentality.

If someone wants the best ray tracing experience then as of today it’s team green. Suck it up and pay to play unfortunately. The best bang for the buck right now IMO is Rx 6000 series. The best of the best for the money is of course used -period. However I understand people have concerns there.

As of now these Intel cards are much better than the total disaster I expected but not great compared to the alternatives for the price. So yes I agree that they need to come down in price or get better , drivers and so on, before I’m considering them myself.

 

[ultimatebob]

Steve from GN seemed to kinda like the Intel A750:



I'll be curious to see what the real-life pricing looks like on these a few weeks from now. If they get down to around $250, they might become a good bargain option compared to the AMD 6600 series.

 

[horrorshow]

Based on what I've read, outside of driver maturity - it would appear for a first gen product: Intel is on-track.

Would I buy an A750/770, no.

But, Intel's ray-tracing performance numbers I've seen are impressive compared to AMD's implementation..

 

[emphy]

I am baffled that anyone is crapping on Intel for this attempt. Sure it's clear by the size and power draw they were gunning for the 3070. They examined their efforts and realized they had to pivot. For the money these aren't great but we NEED Intel in the market. We need another player with deep pockets to take shots on Nvidia.

I'd also much prefer another competitor in the market. However, since I've been beaten to death with the "companies are not charities"-argument every time they do something shitty (or don't do something nice for a change) I will now gladly return the favor: if intel wants to release a sub-beta product, they'd better provide pricing that takes that into account. After all, it's intel that is one of the bigger multibillion dollar companies to ever exist, not me.

 

[OFaceSIG]

I'd also much prefer another competitor in the market. However, since I've been beaten to death with the "companies are not charities"-argument every time they do something shitty (or don't do something nice for a change) I will now gladly return the favor: if intel wants to release a sub-beta product, they'd better provide pricing that takes that into account. After all, it's intel that is one of the bigger multibillion dollar companies to ever exist, not me.

For sure, they need to price it accordingly for wide adoption.

 

[noko]

Where is the A790? I can see the drivers handicaps not only the A750, more so the A770 where some games the two are almost identical, that the A790 would show no real significant performance increase with the current drivers. Once Intel, if they ever do get it better as in much better with the drivers, the A790 may come out. Otherwise they would be better to just downgrade the A790 into a LE 16gb A770.

The drivers have to compile the games shader code into what the hardware understands which Intel is way behind AMD/Nvidia there. Plus game developers did not optimize yet for ARC, older games will probably never be except a very slight few and even newer games for the next couple of years.

 

[Spirit_Retro]

Where is the A790? I can see the drivers handicaps not only the A750, more so the A770 where some games the two are almost identical, that the A790 would show no real significant performance increase with the current drivers. Once Intel, if they ever do get it better as in much better with the drivers, the A790 may come out. Otherwise they would be better to just downgrade the A790 into a LE 16gb A770.

The drivers have to compile the games shader code into what the hardware understands which Intel is way behind AMD/Nvidia there. Plus game developers did not optimize yet for ARC, older games will probably never be except a very slight few and even newer games for the next couple of years.

This is an unpopular opinion... and perhaps I'm wrong...

However, if I was a betting man my bet would be that Intel intends to wind this GPU business down after the 1st of the year.

Nothing is getting optimized.

 

[Armenius]

Oh my god, I guess Intel doesn't care about the cost to manufacture and assemble every card. These could probably be sold for $50 cheaper if they simplified the design.

 

[ultimatebob]

Oh my god, I guess Intel doesn't care about the cost to manufacture and assemble every card. These could probably be sold for $50 cheaper if they simplified the design.

It's a first gen product, they'll probably figure out the "right" way to do it next time.

I'd also imagine that the partner boards will be built better as well.

 

[Axman]

I'd also imagine that the partner boards will be built better as well.

Do they have any?

 

[ultimatebob]

Do they have any?

They are supposedly coming...

https://videocardz.com/newz/custom-intel-arc-a770-and-a750-graphics-cards-have-been-revealed

 

[Axman]

They are supposedly coming...

You keep doing you, Asrock, that's why we love you...

I kinda want to get one of these but most of what I play are older games. Still weirdly tempted...

 

[Unknown-One]

I really want to shove an Arc A380 into my Plex server for transcoding, but the lack of DirectX9 support actually makes that a non-starter for the moment.

Plex depends on DXVA2 for decoding video, and that's a DirectX9 feature. Both Arc, and 12th gen integrated graphics, only supports DirectX9 via the D3D9On12 wrapper, which doesn't support hardware accelerated DXVA2 video decoding.

We either need an improved version of the wrapper than can handle DXVA2 in hardware, or we just have to wait for Plex's developers to transition to a more modern decoder.

If this gets sorted out, Arc cards could literally be the #1 go-to card for Plex servers. When transocding works, it's at least as good as Nvidia's NVENC transocding, and intel doesn't limit how many simultaneous streams you can attempt like Nvidia does.