Official Intel Arc Alchemist A730M/A770M benchmarks are out vs 3050 Ti and RTX 3060 Mobile

[BiG StroOnZ]

Summary

In a new reviewer's guide (only available to Chinese reviewers), Intel claims that the A730M and A770M are faster than Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile and RTX 3060 Mobile. The A730M and the A770M are the top performers from the A-series mobile lineup. The discrete graphics cards feature Intel's ACM-G10 silicon. There is no sign of RTX 3070 in this comparison, not to mention RTX 3080 or RTX 3080 Ti. This probably means that contrary to the rumors, Intel has no intention to compete with RTX 3070 series.  

 

 

 

Quotes

Quote

The disparity between the hardware for the four gaming laptops that Intel used in its tests is evident. The A730M pre-production unit features the latest Core i7-12700H, a 14-core Alder Lake-H chip, and 16GB of DDR5-4800. On the other hand, the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile belongs to the ROG Zephyrus M16, which has the previous octa-core Core i7-11800H Tiger Lake chip and 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory. More importantly, Asus' device uses the 60W version of the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti. For reference, there are 70W and 80W variants, so the one inside the ROG Zephyrus M16 isn't the best-performing SKU.

 

There's even a more notorious difference between the A770M and GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile machines. The A770M's pre-production laptop has a 14-core Core i9-12900HK, the flagship Alder Lake-H SKU, and 16GB of DDR5-4800 memory. The GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile emerges inside the MSI Pulse GL66, which has nearly the exact same specifications as the ROG Zephyrus M16. The GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile has a TGP range between 60W and 115W, and the MSI Pulse GL66 features the 85W variant.

 

• Intel Arc A730M (TGP 80 to 120W): Core i7-12700H, 16GB of DDR5-4800
• Intel Arc A770M (TGP 120 to 150W): Core i9-12900HK, 16GB of DDR5-4800
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti (TGP 60W) (ROG Zephyrus M16): Core i7-11800H, 16GB of DDR4-3200
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (TGP 85W) (MSI Pulse GL66): Core i9-12900HK, DDR5-4800

 

According to Intel's 1080p (1920x1080) results, the Arc A730M was up to 13% faster than the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile. The Arc A770M, the flagship mobile Arc SKU, delivered up to 12% higher performance than the GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile.

 

The performance delta between the Alchemist and Ampere graphics cards was less than 15%. The margins would probably be lower if Intel had paired Ampere with identical processors like the Intel units and used the higher TGP versions.

 

The productivity side of things looks considerably more rosy. Not only does Intel come out on top in every benchmark, in some cases it's by a huge margin. Even if Arc doesn't sweep the benches at gaming, it might make a very attractive option for people who want a laptop to use for both productivity tasks as well as gaming.

 

 

My thoughts

Of course these are provided vendor benchmarks, so they should be approached with carefulness. But with that precaution out of the way, it's nice to see Intel able to deliver 3060 levels of performance in games. The past few leaks we saw had performance all over the place, showing superb performance in synthetics but not so good performance in games. Here it doesn't look too bad, but it definitely is cherry picked to some extent. As these parts are only slightly faster at higher power draw. It's nice to finally see performance numbers for the A770M here, as it seems we were waiting forever to get that. Although, I know most people were expecting more out of the A770M. As always though, wait for independent reviews to verify these claims made. 

 

Sources

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/intel-arc-alchemist-a770ma730m-benchmarks-for-rtx-3060-and-3050-ti-are-available.html

https://videocardz.com/newz/official-intel-arc-alchemist-a770m-a730m-benchmarks-are-out-targeting-rtx-3060-and-3050-ti

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-arc-mobile-benchmarks-a770m-beats-rtx-3060 

https://hothardware.com/news/intel-benchmarks-arc-battles-nvidia-mobile-gpu

[porina]

The rumours claimed the top DESKTOP part would be 3070 class, and didn't talk about laptop versions. We can try to use these numbers and some deltas to estimate where the top desktop part could be. Using techpowerup as reference, 3060 desktop is 116% of 3060 laptop version. A770M would be a bit behind 3060 desktop. Desktop 3070 is about 47% faster than desktop 3060. The A770M is already max configuration so the top desktop model isn't going to get any more silicon. Power will enable it to boost more, but rumoured 225W compares to the top laptop parts 150W, a 50% increase. Due to efficiency scaling +50% power budget is going to result in less than +50% clock and therefore perf increase. Maybe the desktop parts could have faster ram and that might help more. But on this basis, without taking into consideration the specific power claims on the nvidia parts, the desktop model might fall short of a 3070 in gaming although it might still be close enough. Even if it ends up 3060 Ti class, that's still plenty of gaming perf for 1440p gamers. We knew Intel were not going for the top with 1st gen, and they're doing an AMD in offering a good enough product lower in the stack as they work upwards. Heck, if AMD gets credited with "fine wine" similar could apply to Intel as they get their drivers polished.

 

Edit: I tried running the Watchdogs Legion built in benchmark on my laptop for comparison to those numbers. I used defaults, 1080p high, and got an average of 74fps. The problem is I have a 3070 laptop, and that is far below the numbers shown for both 3060 and A770M. I wonder if they listed the max fps number and not the average. My max was 122 fps. Lenovo 5, 5800H, 3070 laptop 130W. I'm downloading Troy now to see how that compares. I only have Metro Exodus EE and since the lack of EE is mentioned I have to wonder if they used the base version which I don't have. I do recall that doesn't have a built in benchmark so it will vary more depending on content.

[Quackers101]

the AI seconds, might be something. as that is what they wanted to focus on with their other GPUs too. and if there is any deep link action going on too.

if you remove their deep link benefits, how much value is it in intel at that point?

[yian88]

The only thing that matters is price/perf, while i dont know the prices intel was never cheap so i dont expect a gaming laptop with A770M for less than 6-700$ which makes it pointless, beyond that price 800$ and up you have amazing laptop offers and saturated market.

[porina]

I tried to run Troy on my 3070 laptop to get some comparison numbers, and again it is unclear what the Intel provided numbers are. The game has three built in benchmark presets:

Battle: Low level view of large number of troops moving/fighting

Campaign: Looks like world overview map, no combat

Siege: elevated view of battle

 

I got 74.3, 177.4, 106.7 fps respectively. Did they pick one? Or an average (119 fps)?

 

When Intel publish results directly to the public they usually give the detailed test conditions. Here it is in a reviewer's guide only, and reviewers apparently are not allowed to republish the contents of that.

[Kisai]

We haven't really learned anything new here, we already knew that laptop x50Ti and x60 parts are basically "baseline 1080p" performance specs, and trying to get desktop performance out of a laptop is just not a thing unless the laptop is at least an inch thick.

 

So I'm going to assume these numbers are just "frame rate while plugged into the wall with cooling set to full performance" and not "battery" or "silent" benchmarks. It's not hard to reach baseline benchmarks, but as the numbers are not really that much higher, it kind of puts the value prospect into question. Like I certainly wouldn't pay more for the Intel part if the performance is only around 10% more while the cost is 20% more.

 

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

I'm happy there is going to be more competition in the low/mid tier GPU space, even if it's just OEM or subpar cards.

Budget PC builders have had a rough two years, hopefully having a third supplier both for IP (AMD/Nvidia/Intel) and silicon (TSMC/Samsung/Intel) will improve competition at the low end.