Intel Arc A750 and A770 review: Nvidia and AMD plunge to mid-range GPU score

Not so long ago, the notion that Intel would break into the world of discrete graphics cards seemed ridiculous. intel?! The same company that abandoned its last major GPU project in 2009 and spent the 2010s focusing on weak integrated graphics? The same one that turned to AMD when it needed a decent GPU alongside its CPU for enthusiast laptops?

But after Raja Koduri was lured away from AMD, the engineer who spearheaded the powerful yet affordable Radeon RX480, it seemed like Intel was finally getting serious about gaming GPUs. Since then, the company’s new Xe graphics have beefed up its notebook CPUs and popped up in the DG1 developer card.

Now comes the real test: can Koduri and the Intel crew actually make GPUs that gamers want? Having spent some time with the Arc A750 and A770, it’s clear that the company has created cards that easily rival the alternatives from NVIDIA and AMD. But most importantly, they aim to deliver that performance at a lower price point. The A750 starts at $289, while the A770 starts at $329 (with a Limited Edition card at $349).

This theoretically puts the A770 on par with the RTX 3060’s original price. But thanks to the wild GPU market, NVIDIA’s card currently costs around $400. We’ve yet to see how retailers will price Intel’s cards, but company officials have claimed they are urging stores to stick with their low introductory prices. If that’s the case, Intel’s Arc GPUs are going to be something really rare in the graphics card world today: good deals.

I was impressed when I opened the Arc A750 and A770 boards sent for review. Having reviewed Intel’s recent NUC Extreme systems, I was expecting fairly practical but boring gamer chic. But these cards are really elegant. They’re well built, have a matte finish with no fingerprints, and aside from the modest LEDs surrounding the A770’s fans, there’s no annoying glitter in sight. These certainly don’t feel like Intel’s first consumer graphics cards. They’re more like stealth bombers built with the express aim of wiping out NVIDIA’s and AMD’s value for money.

The story goes on

These beauties are powered by the latest evolution of Intel’s “Alchemist” Xe graphics architecture. The Arc A750 has 28 Xe cores, 28 ray tracing units, a clock speed of 2,050 MHz and 8 GB of GDDR6 RAM. The A770 doubles that memory and has more power overall: 32 Xe cores and ray tracing units, and a speed of 2.1 GHz. Both cards have a TDP of 225W, which means they end up drawing more power and heat than the 170W RTX 3060. (I’ve usually seen them hit around 76C under heavy load, six degrees more than the card from NVIDIA.)

I thought the more powerful Arc A770 would outperform the RTX 3060 Ti (I didn’t get a chance to test the 3060 at launch), but I was really surprised at how well both cards performed in our benchmarks. The A750 scored over 900 points better than the 3060 Ti in the 3DMark Time Spy Extreme benchmark, finishing just above the RTX 3070. I was also able to hit 74 fps while gaming Halo infinity in 1440p with all graphics settings at maximum. This is not at all what I expected from a GPU under $300.

The Arc A770 was within reach of the RTX 3070 Ti’s Time Spy Extreme score, a card that launched at $599 (and sold for €599). a lot of more) last year. It also proved to be a decent ray tracing contender (within reason), hitting 76 fps in Cyberpunk 2077‘s benchmark when playing at 1080p with the “ultra” ray tracing profile. Both GPUs scored close to the RTX 3060 Ti in 3DMark’s Port Royal ray tracing benchmark, nearly twice as fast as the Radeon 6600. Given AMD’s disappointing ray tracing performance, I was genuinely shocked that Intel was able to come up with a significantly better one deliver experience.

Still, it’s odd to see the A750 and A770 performing narrowly in some cases. The more expensive card also managed around 75 fps when gaming Halo infinity in 1440p, and both were within a few thousand points of each other in the Luxmark HDR OpenCL benchmark. That’s both a testament to Intel’s graphics architecture and a sign that the drivers might need some work. (Another character: control didn’t think either card was compatible with DirectX 12 Raytracing.)

NVIDIA’s RTX 3060 Ti had a slight edge over both Intel cards hit man 3, although I did get a decent performance boost of 30fps when I enabled Intel’s XeSS technology. Similar to DLSS on RTX GPUs, it uses AI processing to upscale images rendered at lower resolutions. I didn’t notice any artifacts hit man Benchmark, although I haven’t had a chance to spend much time playing it with XeSS enabled.

You’ll find XeSS support on titles like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Naraka blade tip and Shadow of the Tomb Raider when the Arc GPUs start. Much like AMD’s FX Super Resolution (and unlike DLSS), Intel’s upscaling tech can also work with the competition’s GPUs to give everyone a frame-rate boost.

While the Arc A750 and A770 are best for 1440p and 1080p gaming, they also handled my ultrawide monitor’s 3,440 x 1,440 resolution decently. in the Halo infinity, I saw an average of 62 fps on the cheaper card with maximum graphics settings, while the A770 managed a smoother 70 fps. These aren’t groundbreaking numbers, but it was encouraging to see affordable cards holding their own at higher resolutions.

Despite some hiccups, like the lack of ray tracing control and occasional framerate hiccups cyberpunk, I was happy to see that Intel’s Arc drivers didn’t have any major problems. During my testing, there were no game crashes or blue screens of death. Still, Intel needs to show it can optimize its drivers in time for big game launches (and add XeSS support in Modern Warfare II is a start). And with the company’s complete move away from its previous discrete graphics card, Intel also has to prove that it won’t be ditching those GPUs any time soon. After all, most gamers have to rely on their graphics cards for several years.

So sure, I hesitate to wholeheartedly recommend these cards. But if you’re looking for solid deals, especially after years of steadily increasing GPU prices, the Arc A750 and A770 are hard to beat. After doubting Intel’s graphics hardware for nearly a decade, I can’t help but feel like the rugged pawn inside infant: That’s enough Intel, that’s enough.