With the release of its Arc Alchemist GPUs, Intel jumps into the desktop graphics market, and for the first time in two decades, PC users will be able to choose a graphics card made by a company other than AMD or Nvidia. However, Intel won’t make it to the end of this generation and will instead focus on the low-end and mid-range segments of the market, which AMD and Nvidia have largely ignored.
The Arc A750 is Intel’s second fastest GPU and takes aim at Nvidia’s RTX 3060, one of the most popular GPUs today. This is how the A750 measures up.
Prices and availability
Intel
Although the RTX 3060 launched in early 2021 with an MSRP of $329, it’s rarely (if ever) found at that price. Today most 3060s sell for around $400. At one point, that price was considered firmly on the high-end, and Intel called out Nvidia directly for this.
Available today for $289, the Arc A750 knocks the 3060 down by almost $100 and has about the same MSRP as 2016’s ultra-popular GTX 1060. MSRP doesn’t mean real price though, something we’ve all learned the hard way. the last two years. It wouldn’t be surprising if the A750 were in short supply at launch, but hopefully it will be available a few weeks later.
Glasses
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
Just as it’s hard to compare AMD and Nvidia GPUs based solely on specs, the same is true for Intel GPUs. Still, it’s important to lay out the raw specs to see if a card has a particular advantage in one area.
| Arc Alchemist A750 | GeForce RTX 3060 | |
| cores | 448 | 3584 |
| RT core | 28 | 28 |
| turn up the clock | 2050MHz | 1780MHz |
| Memory | 8GB GDDR6 | 12GB GDDR6 |
| memory bus | 256 bit | 192 bit |
| Broadband | 512GB/s | 360GB/s |
| TDP | 225W | 170W |
One big difference that might catch your eye is the difference in core counts, but at the architecture level, these GPUs are so different that there’s no point in comparing core counts. Similarly, you may notice that both GPUs have the same number of ray tracing cores (or “units” as Intel calls them), but again, these GPUs are very different and these ray accelerators may not be directly competitive.
However, it is worth comparing the memory between the two GPUs. The A750 has a huge advantage in memory bandwidth, and while some GPUs require more bandwidth than others for optimal performance, it’s certainly nice that the A750 has more. The RTX 3060 has a larger capacity, but 12GB is definitely overkill for this performance class; the faster RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070 are 8 GB and still much faster.
The A750 also has a higher TDP than the 3060, which means it will use more power. You’ll have to consider whether the extra 55 watts required for the A750 is worth it.
gaming performance
That it is cheaper than the 3060 does not mean much if it is also much slower. However, it turns out that the A750 is actually quite a bit faster at 1080p on average, based on our tests. Considering Intel is a newcomer (and what you may have heard about Arc buggy drivers), these results are pretty surprising, in a good way.
The story is the same at 1440p: the gap between these two GPUs hasn’t changed. In most games at any resolution, the A750 is equal to the RTX 3060, but in red dead redemption 2, we actually found the A750 to be more than 20% faster. This is a difference, but it may be a sign that the A750 has untapped potential that could be unlocked with better drivers or better game optimization.
One area where the A750 does lack a bit is the low 1% frame rate, which is indicative of stuttering and poor frame rate. The A750 has slightly worse 1% drops than the 3060, but not enough to make it unplayable. Still, it would be nice to see Intel try to increase these frame rates, as a smooth gaming experience is always better.
Driver situation aside, another big caveat is the need to include a variable base address register (or ReBAR). Arc GPUs perform terribly when this feature is disabled, which is a problem for older systems that may not allow users to enable ReBAR. Intel says this won’t be an issue with future Arc GPUs, which is good, but in the here and now, you’ll need to make sure your motherboard and CPU support ReBAR before switching to Intel graphics.
Ray tracing and scaling
While ray tracing is mostly reserved for high-end GPUs with the power to deliver a 60fps experience with ray tracing enabled, both the A750 and RTX 3060 support ray tracing, so which we also tried. However, as you can see, the A750 is way behind the 3060, even though both GPUs managed to hit 30fps on average.
However, the difference narrows down a bit at 1440p; perhaps the A750’s higher memory bandwidth comes into play, or perhaps it’s easier to power the A750’s cores at higher resolutions. While these benchmarks are certainly interesting, you probably don’t want to turn on ray tracing at 1440p whether you have an A750 or an RTX 3060, as neither GPU managed an average of 30fps.
Just like Nvidia has Deep Learning Super Sampling (or DLSS), Intel has its own software upgrade called Xe Super Sampling, or XeSS. Like AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution, XeSS is a brand-agnostic scaler that runs on any GPU, but is probably optimized for Intel’s own Arc cards. It comes with four different modes: Ultra Quality, Quality, Balanced, and Performance.
as you can see in contract killer 3, which we tested in 4K resolution, even the highest quality XeSS mode managed to improve performance. If you’re only interested in frames, Performance mode managed to deliver a 43% boost, pushing the frame rate to over 60fps. We also tested the 3060 with DLSS enabled and the results were pretty similar, although the 3060 managed to hit 71 fps with its Ultra Performance mode.
That being said, this is not an analysis of visual quality. XeSS certainly has performance, but that doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t have the visual quality to match DLSS, something we’ll have to test at some point.
A third player, not a third wheel
Intel’s Arc is the first blue GPU team it’s worked on in over a decade, but this lack of pedigree shouldn’t deter those interested in becoming early adopters. The Arc A770 and A750 are capable GPUs that seem to offer credible competition to the mid-range graphics market at a time when AMD and Nvidia don’t have much new and exciting to debut, at least at this kind of price point. and performance
The A750 is a worthy competitor to the RTX 3060, and while supply and price will be huge components in determining how well these cards sell and how far Intel can make inroads into a market dominated by two big names, it’s a good start for the RTX 3060. path.
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Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn