Intel's Discrete Graphics Cards, A770 and A750 - Reviews are out!

[LAwLz]

It's been a long time since we had more than two options for discrete gaming graphics cards on the market, but today that changes. The embargo for Intel's new A770 and A750 graphics cards have finally lifted and it's time to see how it performs.

Intel's own numbers puts it slightly ahead of an RTX 3060, but first party benchmarks are not that reliable.

 

 

I highly recommend people read the full reviews to get a better and more nuanced understanding of these reviews, but I will include some summaries from various reviews.

This is very important because with these GPUs the performance summaries and aggregate scores do not tell the full picture.

 

 

 

TechPowerUp:

A770 review - Finally a Third Competitor

A750 review - Great Value

1080p:

Spoiler

1440p:

Spoiler

 

 

Tom's Hardware:

Intel Arc A770 Review: Bringing Back Midrange GPUs

Spoiler

 

 

 

phoronix:

Intel Arc Graphics A750 + A770 Linux Gaming Performance

Spoiler

After months of hearing all sorts of rumors and FUD online about the state of Intel Arc Graphics, the A750 and A770 testing under Linux the past week went better than expected. There still are some performance issues as shown in this article and other software driver items to be ironed out, but the Arc Graphics A750 and A770 graphics cards were running on Linux -- and using a fully upstream, open-source driver stack.

 

 

PC Gamer:

Intel Arc A770 Review

Spoiler

For what I had at one time expected to be a pretty brutal graphics card launch, Intel has brought Alchemist back from the brink and turned it into something. Something is better than nothing and the Intel Arc A770 is absolutely one better than that. If there was more stability across frame rates I don't think I'd have qualms in calling Intel's first-generation GPUs a qualified success, but as it stands today it's much tougher to make any sort of sweeping statement.

 

You just never know exactly how this graphics card is going to perform. It'll either knock the socks off an RTX 3060 or be buried alive by it. It's both praiseworthy and lacklustre, depending on the game you're playing on it. I'm not sure I expected anything more of a first-generation graphics card release. It's less buggy than I had thought it would be, at least.

 

 

Eurogamer:

Intel Arc A770 and A750 Review

Spoiler

These factors make our recommendations fairly straightforward: if you play mostly recently-released games and have a computer built in the last three years, then the Arc A750 and A770 are awesome choices for 1080p gaming at their listed retail prices. These GPUs can stretch to 1440p and even 4K in some titles, and content creators get some unique capabilities to play with too. If you prefer older titles, eg ones that are likely to have built around DirectX 11, or your computer is too old to support Resizeable BAR, then more mature alternatives like the RTX 3060 or RX 6600 XT provide significantly better performance.

 

 

Gamers Nexus:

 

 

LinusTechTips:

 

 

Hardware Unboxed:

 

 

Hardware Canucks:

 

 

JayzTwoCents:

 

 

Digital Foundry:

 

[Morgan MLGman]

So... To sum it up - Fairly low price, surprisingly good RT performance for its tier, but still pretty terrible products overall

[jaslion]

Competes with the rx 6600 xt which is right in its pricebracket with certain cards/deals and beats the 3060 which is more expensive.

 

Seems to have a lot less issues (not great still be a lot better).

 

Honestly Id say its an alright option to get. If you are ok with living with early adopter pain

[EL02]

forum users racing to post first in the tech news section

[Murasaki]

Intel's GPUs made me realize how old my 6th gen i7 6700 is. It's still perfectly fine for me but those GPUs ain't gonna run well

[Tan3l6]

Being the first gen, it's actually impressive.

 

 

But considering it's Intel - well, so-so.

[LAwLz]

10 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

So... To sum it up - Fairly low price, surprisingly good RT performance for its tier, but still pretty terrible products overall

Still looking through reviews but I don't think it is terrible. Not sure what makes you say that.

 

In modern titles, it performs really well for the price.

The issue seems to be older titles, but even in those it seems to get above 60 FPS in the tests I have seen.

I mean, sure, getting 171 FPS in CS:Go is not impressive when the RTX 3060 gets 400... But if we are serious for a minute, do you really need 400 FPS?

I am not saying you should buy an inferior product, that would be stupid, but is going from 171 FPS to 400 FPS in one particular game worth it?

You have to weight the pros and cons against each other.

 

 

So far my take away from the reviews, of which I am nowhere near done reading and watching, is that Intel's cards are really good in some cases, and really bad in some cases. Overall it is as good as a 3060, but the 3060 is more even.

If you mostly play the games where Intel's GPUs perform well, then it seems to be a really good buy.

If you mostly play the games where Intel's GPUs perform poorly, then it seems to be a really bad buy.

 

It depends. 

 

 

Personally, I am planning on getting a second hand 3060 or 3060 Ti after seeing these reviews.

Not because I think Intel's cards are bad, but because I don't play that many modern games and because I want CUDA.

[Commodus]

I'm with Linus on this one... if you're a tech-savvy person in the market for an RTX 3060-class card (or even 3050), please buy one of these. Intel isn't exactly a counterculture rebel, but the GPU world is desperately in need of competition. I find it amusing how many of the people who rail against Apple's more anti-competitive practices don't flinch at the thought of NVIDIA effectively monopolizing the PC gaming graphics market.

[leadeater]

Yes, finally probably the most important tech moment of the year! Now to reading/watching 

[Brooksie359]

29 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Still looking through reviews but I don't think it is terrible. Not sure what makes you say that.

 

In modern titles, it performs really well for the price.

The issue seems to be older titles, but even in those it seems to get above 60 FPS in the tests I have seen.

I mean, sure, getting 171 FPS in CS:Go is not impressive when the RTX 3060 gets 400... But if we are serious for a minute, do you really need 400 FPS?

I am not saying you should buy an inferior product, that would be stupid, but is going from 171 FPS to 400 FPS in one particular game worth it?

You have to weight the pros and cons against each other.

 

 

So far my take away from the reviews, of which I am nowhere near done reading and watching, is that Intel's cards are really good in some cases, and really bad in some cases. Overall it is as good as a 3060, but the 3060 is more even.

If you mostly play the games where Intel's GPUs perform well, then it seems to be a really good buy.

If you mostly play the games where Intel's GPUs perform poorly, then it seems to be a really bad buy.

 

It depends. 

 

 

Personally, I am planning on getting a second hand 3060 or 3060 Ti after seeing these reviews.

Not because I think Intel's cards are bad, but because I don't play that many modern games and because I want CUDA.

For csgo yes 170 fps vs 400 is a bog deal tbh. In most other games it probably won't but csgo is not one of those games. 

[Zodiark1593]

7 minutes ago, Commodus said:

I'm with Linus on this one... if you're a tech-savvy person in the market for an RTX 3060-class card (or even 3050), please buy one of these. Intel isn't exactly a counterculture rebel, but the GPU world is desperately in need of competition. I find it amusing how many of the people who rail against Apple's more anti-competitive practices don't flinch at the thought of NVIDIA effectively monopolizing the PC gaming graphics market.

I play a lot of older games myself, so the poor performance in older titles is somewhat concerning. Being pragmatic here. Unless the person plays almost exclusively DX12/Vulkan games, I'd wait to see further benefits from driver updates before recommending an Intel card over the RX 6600.

[porina]

I'd still like one to play with, although it is not a need by any means. Has there been any talk at all if this will be a worldwide launch or is it US centric? I want to use my discount voucher, of which there's still been no news.

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

58 minutes ago, Murasaki said:

Intel's GPUs made me realize how old my 6th gen i7 6700 is. It's still perfectly fine for me but those GPUs ain't gonna run well

Dude that thing is a dinosaur. You know it's time to upgrade when the current $100 chips (I3 12100, Ryzen 5600 on sale) are like twice as fast.

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

It's been a long time since we had more than two options for discrete gaming graphics cards on the market, but today that changes. The embargo for Intel's new A770 and A750 graphics cards have finally lifted and it's time to see how it performs.

Intel's own numbers puts it slightly ahead of an RTX 3060, but first party benchmarks are not that reliable.

 

 

 

 

I don't know why, but I really want one. Not as a main gpu per se, but to play around with.

[Zodiark1593]

1 minute ago, CHICKSLAYA said:

Dude that thing is a dinosaur. You know it's time to upgrade when the current $100 chips (I3 12100, Ryzen 5600 on sale) are like twice as fast.

It's time to upgrade when your system no longer is up to the tasks you give it.

[Morgan MLGman]

31 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Still looking through reviews but I don't think it is terrible. Not sure what makes you say that.

Well, two things: mainly the overall performance... I'd say they were good products if they launched 3 years ago maybe, right now A770 is still 25% slower than an already fairly old RX 6700 XT.
And the other ting is Resizable BAR - it seems like without support for ReBar, the games become unplayable on Arc GPUs due to stuttering issues. And that's only Zen 2 or newer.

My general feelings are very mixed - from one point of view you could say it's not that bad actually, but from another would you really recommend these cards over competing 3060s, 3060 Tis, 6600 XTs or 6650 XT? Not to mention both Nvidia and AMD are right in their next-gen launch window, which usually drops prices of previous generations?

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

10 minutes ago, Commodus said:

I'm with Linus on this one... if you're a tech-savvy person in the market for an RTX 3060-class card (or even 3050), please buy one of these. Intel isn't exactly a counterculture rebel, but the GPU world is desperately in need of competition. I find it amusing how many of the people who rail against Apple's more anti-competitive practices don't flinch at the thought of NVIDIA effectively monopolizing the PC gaming graphics market.

I agree, I really, REALLY hope these sell well. Especially considering for future cards they could use their own Fabs and give TSMC the finger (who we as a country (US)and even as a whole world) rely on WAYYYYYY too much. Intel is building like a 20 billion dollar fab a couple of states over from me. It will be operational in 2025ish I think they said? It will be making the 20a/18a nodes (smaller than 2nm). Nvidia needs to quite literally be knocked off its pedestal 

[leadeater]

Hmm not so great power efficiency but not terrible, was hoping for better though. 

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

1 hour ago, Tan3l6 said:

Being the first gen, it's actually impressive.

 

 

But considering it's Intel - well, so-so.

People are forgetting how HUGE of a company intel actually is. AMD is the David to Intel's Goliath. I REALLY hope they don't cancel these and they start making them with their own silicon

[Commodus]

1 minute ago, Zodiark1593 said:

I play a lot of older games myself, so the poor performance in older titles is somewhat concerning. Being pragmatic here. Unless the person plays almost exclusively DX12/Vulkan games, I'd wait to see further benefits from driver updates before recommending an Intel card over the RX 6600.

I don't see this as much of an issue. Many of those older games are still going to run very, very well; I don't need extra frames in CS:GO when it's already going to run smoothly at just about any reasonable resolution. I could see some exceptions, of course, but people typically buy a new GPU to focus on future games, not the past.

[porina]

2 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Well, two things: mainly the overall performance... I'd say they were good products if they launched 3 years ago maybe, right now A770 is still 25% slower than an already fairly old RX 6700 XT.

They're selling it at 6600 class, not 6700, so why pick the 6700 for comparison? It's no 3070 either.

 

2 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

And the other ting is Resizable BAR - it seems like without support for ReBar, the games become unplayable on Arc GPUs due to stuttering issues. And that's only Zen 2 or newer.

On Intel side I've got ReBAR support on Coffee Lake and Skylake-X systems, both released in 2017 so that's 5 years old already.

 

2 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Not to mention both Nvidia and AMD are right in their next-gen launch window, which usually drops prices of previous generations?

Probably wont see nvidia price drops around the 3060 tier for some time. RDNA3 launch is still a way off.

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

4 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Well, two things: mainly the overall performance... I'd say they were good products if they launched 3 years ago maybe, right now A770 is still 25% slower than an already fairly old RX 6700 XT.
And the other ting is Resizable BAR - it seems like without support for ReBar, the games become unplayable on Arc GPUs due to stuttering issues. And that's only Zen 2 or newer.

My general feelings are very mixed - from one point of view you could say it's not that bad actually, but from another would you really recommend these cards over competing 3060s, 3060 Tis, 6600 XTs or 6650 XT? Not to mention both Nvidia and AMD are right in their next-gen launch window, which usually drops prices of previous generations?

The sad thing is I don't think prices will drop that much this time. It seems like Nvidia is just pricing everything up a whole tier and then some. The "4080" 16gb is $1199 (launch price of 3080ti), the "4080" 12gb is $899, a $199 price increase over the 3080 10gb but really it's a 4070 so actually a $399 price increase. Nvidia is doing what Apple does every year and using their old gpus as part of the lineup. Now the whole "geforce family" "starts at $329" with the 3060 and then goes up from there with a price every $100 bucks or so. $329 3060, $399 3060ti, $499 3070, $599 3070ti, $699 3080 10gb, $899 "4080" 12gb, $1199 "4080" 16gb, $1599 4090. This is EXACTLY what Apple does with it's iphones. The "entry" into the iphone lineup this year is the iphone 12 from 2 years ago at $599. The actual entry to the new phones is the $999 iphone 14 pro as the 14 is literally the same SOC as the 13. It's scummy.

 

I don't think Nvidia this time around is going to do a "4060ti" at $399 that's ~40% faster than the 3060ti. They just won't. If they do a 4060ti, it'll be like $599. It's gross and very anti consumer

[Morgan MLGman]

1 hour ago, porina said:

They're selling it at 6600 class, not 6700, so why pick the 6700 for comparison? It's no 3070 either.

 

On Intel side I've got ReBAR support on Coffee Lake and Skylake-X systems, both released in 2017 so that's 5 years old already.

 

Probably wont see nvidia price drops around the 3060 tier for some time. RDNA3 launch is still a way off.

You could argue each of the points to some degree, but the question remains - would you really recommend it over the competing products? And if not, could you say they were good products?

1 hour ago, porina said:

They're selling it at 6600 class, not 6700, so why pick the 6700 for comparison? It's no 3070 either.

Because the A770 is priced at $350 MSRP, and you can get a brand-new RX 6700 XT on newegg for $389 and its price is only going to get lower...

[Bitter]

Much like the A380 we still need Resizable Bar for the best performance from these, yeah?

[porina]

1 hour ago, Morgan MLGman said:

You could argue each of the points to some degree, but the question remains - would you really recommend it over the competing products? And if not, could you say they were good products?

If a not technically inclined friend were to ask me for a GPU choice in that gaming performance tier, I'd just say get a 3060 and we're done. I could not recommend AMD or Intel. Take that for what you will. 

 

1 hour ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Because the A770 is priced at $350 MSRP, and you can get a brand-new RX 6700 XT on newegg for $389 and its price is only going to get lower...

Just popping to newegg to see for myself, currently 6600 XT is from $320, 3060 is from $325. A770 8GB is $329 so right in with them. The $350 part is the 16GB model so it becomes less of a like for like comparison there. Let's see where pricing actually is on launch day.