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

[Morgan MLGman]

1 hour ago, porina said:

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.

I get your point of view here

1 hour ago, porina said:

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.

The 3060s for under $350 are either open-box or refurbs, new ones start from $349 - a slightly faster RX 6650 XT is $299 brand-new, so even the value proposition is questionable in my opinion if anyone was to recommend the Arc cards... But as you said, let's see how pricing & availability settle down and also how much drivers improve over the next few months due to a larger userbase for bug feedback.

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, Morgan MLGman said:

due to a larger userbase for bug feedback.

 

Hope Intel is ready haha

[porina]

15 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

The 3060s for under $350 are either open-box or refurbs, new ones start from $349 - a slightly faster RX 6650 XT is $299 brand-new, so even the value proposition is questionable in my opinion if anyone was to recommend the Arc cards... But as you said, let's see how pricing & availability settle down and also how much drivers improve over the next few months due to a larger userbase for bug feedback.

I'm not really familiar with newegg so I just searched for each model and sorted by price. But good points in general. Forgot the 6650 exists  

 

 

While here, @LAwLz Digital Foundry's video review is up: 

 

[Noble3212]

Just now, porina said:

I'm not really familiar with newegg so I just searched for each model and sorted by price. But good points in general. Forgot the 6650 exists  

 

 

While here, @LAwLz Digital Foundry's video review is up: 

 

Newegg are slowly loosing their reputation as a seller because they've done some things to customers that has left a negative imprint on themselves   

[suicidalfranco]

my take on the phoronix review: ain't gonna be able to pick one until Ubuntu 24.04.01 is out (maybe). Living the LTS live

[tim0901]

2 hours 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.

*looks nervously at 4790K*

[pas008]

considering raja's history on gpus these things could get performance boosts with drivers/bios after they get them out

 

hahaha

[Fasterthannothing]

Better than I thought but not as good as I hoped basically sums up these cards 

[Blademaster91]

The A770 16gb performs better than I expected, although it only works well in newer games, the price seems decent although it requiring newer hardware for full performance is a bit of a downside for anyone buying an Intel GPU based on price. And considering the driver issues like some displays not working, games crashing, and no fan control is bad for a product that is competing with Nvidia and AMD, even if the Intel option is cheaper.

[bramturismo]

3 hours 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 it's hard not to recommend that card that performs on almost 3070 level for just an extra 60 bucks.

 

One thing I notice is the difference between Jayz and GN's benchmarks. In Steve's benchmarks, the A770 performs horrendously, and based from those benchmarks, the RX6600XT is the obvious choice, and you'd be an idiot to buy the A770. In Jayz benchmarks, the Arc scores so much better compared to AMD and Nvidia. Notice especially the difference between the cards in Tomb Raider...

[Bitter]

1 hour ago, tim0901 said:

*looks nervously at 4790K*

Same for my HTPC with a 4950HQ, even at 4ghz it's showing it's age.

[ShawtyT30beTHICCC]

2 hours ago, Morgan MLGman said:

I get your point of view here

The 3060s for under $350 are either open-box or refurbs, new ones start from $349 - a slightly faster RX 6650 XT is $299 brand-new, so even the value proposition is questionable in my opinion if anyone was to recommend the Arc cards... But as you said, let's see how pricing & availability settle down and also how much drivers improve over the next few months due to a larger userbase for bug feedback.

Nvidia cards are just SO much better, as much as a dislike them as a company. I hope RDNA3 changes the narrative. Apparently their drivers have gotten better and the encoder on RDNA3 is much better as well 

[LAwLz]

Just now, CHICKSLAYA said:

and the encoder on RDNA3 is much better as well 

Do we know this or is it just speculation?

 

Sadly, even if they improve their encoder I feel like their software support is lacking. They need to do what Nvidia and Intel does and actively work together with software developers. That's what's so nice about things like Quicksync and NVENC, you just choose them in a program and it works. With AMD's encoder, you often have to use some fairly obscure plugin or fork of the program to get it working at all, and oftentimes it works kind of meh.

[ShawtyT30beTHICCC]

1 minute ago, LAwLz said:

Do we know this or is it just speculation?

 

Sadly, even if they improve their encoder I feel like their software support is lacking. They need to do what Nvidia and Intel does and actively work together with software developers. That's what's so nice about things like Quicksync and NVENC, you just choose them in a program and it works. With AMD's encoder, you often have to use some fairly obscure plugin or fork of the program to get it working at all, and oftentimes it works kind of meh.

I remember linus saying somewhere that he tested it or something and it's much better. I think it was a WAN show. Obviously we won't know until November 3rd for sure one way or another. I hope RDNA 3 blows Nvidias socks off. Especially considering it has Displayport 2.0 and Nvidia does not. Also it is rumored to use a PCIE5 interface. I am waiting for 3nm gpus regardless as I have a 3080. 3nm is supposed to be a much larger jump than 5nm was FWIW. Zen 5 is looking spicy. Unrelated topic but if you are holding out for Zen 4 3d cache, I would just wait the extra year and a half for Zen 5. Apparently 20-25% IPC on top of 40% better single thread. Zen 4 isn't a brand new architecture remember like zen 3 was. It's just on a smaller node with a new LGA pin layout. Zen 5 is entirely new 

[Brooksie359]

4 hours 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?

Tbh if they had the performance of the 3060 without all the caveats then this would have been a good launch. I mean look at how well amd did in the gpu department when they only has the rx 480. The midrange gpus is where the most volume gets sold tbh. 

[Brooksie359]

Honestly if they wanted to really have a good release they would have gpus that were super good at crypto mining. Then gaming performance wouldn't matter. 

[porina]

1 hour ago, bramturismo said:

Because it's hard not to recommend that card that performs on almost 3070 level for just an extra 60 bucks.

If you only look at raster performance and ignore everything else. Which is fine if that's all you want. AMD are nowhere near cheap enough compared to nvidia to be interesting to me.

 

1 hour ago, bramturismo said:

One thing I notice is the difference between Jayz and GN's benchmarks.

Personally I wouldn't pay attention to either. There will be some difference depending on their exact configurations and test settings.

 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

They need to do what Nvidia and Intel does and actively work together with software developers.

I don't know about AMD's GPU side, but before their Zen 4 release they did just that on CPU side. I'm aware of Y-cruncher's author getting early access to optimise it before launch. Don't know who else might have got early access.

[SuperCookie78]

its encoding performance is on 3060 level and for a much better price. if you do light video editing it is a good deal.

[Murasaki]

5 hours 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.

Yeah sure I would do that but its still doing a great job. Got a 3060 and its keeping up with it fine, running everything smoothly on 1080p60/75 ultrawide.

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, CHICKSLAYA said:

I remember linus saying somewhere that he tested it or something and it's much better.

It is much better and it's suitable for a lot of use cases, problem is the Nvidia encoder is still decent bit better and vastly better software support. I have a 6800 XT and two 3060 Ti, so while both could work for what I would use and need I would opt to use the 3060 Ti over the 6800 XT for that task.

[dizmo]

Looking at the performance charts, I'm pleasantly surprised; this looks like it'll be an excellent card for 1440p CoD MW2 gaming, especially with any boosts it gets from XeSS. Plus once you factor in the cost of the game, the value proposition gets even better for me.

 

10 hours 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

I still run 6th gen in my laptop. It's decent if you're not doing anything too intensive. Though that's slated for replacement in the next few months to something with a gaming GPU, and then on to probably 11th gen next year

9 hours 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 wouldn't even look at the cards if you play older titles.

9 hours 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 cheapest 6700XT I could find was $389. Which, granted, isn't that much more, but still.

 

I don't think ReBar is that much of an issue, provided it's something they're going to build on and was required to make their architecture work. If it's more forward looking, then I think it's fine to say 'sorry, your 4 to 5 year old CPUs just aren't compatible.' We can't always let the lowest common denominator hold advancement back.

 

I wouldn't recommend anything but Nvidia cards personally. Maybe AMD cards if they like to tinker. I have a bad feeling for RDNA3s initial launch, but I'm sure it'll improve over time. There's a very small niche where I'd say go for it; those that only play the most recent and most popular AAA titles.

9 hours ago, Commodus said:

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.

I'm skeptical. If it's a game that runs on older DX versions it absolutely tanks performance, though I suppose it depends if you're playing at 1440p, or 1080p, with the former being far more noticeable as it drops into intolerable territory.

 

I don't really agree with the view of people buying GPUs for the future. Perhaps if they're very new to gaming this would be the case, but anyone who's been in the hobby for a while has an extensive library going back years with games we still like to play.

9 hours ago, CHICKSLAYA said:

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

IIRC Jay said that if you take it at the gains in performance, the pricing of the new RTX cards isn't absolutely unreasonable.

People just need to realize that as PC gaming grows as a hobby, and there's people with more expendable income entering it, then the prices will go up, as there's people that will pay the price. Anti consumer in terms of pricing doesn't really make a ton of sense. People are always going to want to pay as little as they can. That's now how businesses operate.

5 hours ago, bramturismo said:

Because it's hard not to recommend that card that performs on almost 3070 level for just an extra 60 bucks.

 

One thing I notice is the difference between Jayz and GN's benchmarks. In Steve's benchmarks, the A770 performs horrendously, and based from those benchmarks, the RX6600XT is the obvious choice, and you'd be an idiot to buy the A770. In Jayz benchmarks, the Arc scores so much better compared to AMD and Nvidia. Notice especially the difference between the cards in Tomb Raider...

I wonder if Jay had newer drivers. If so, it's good to see noticeable increases in performance coming that quickly.

5 hours ago, CHICKSLAYA said:

Nvidia cards are just SO much better, as much as a dislike them as a company. I hope RDNA3 changes the narrative. Apparently their drivers have gotten better and the encoder on RDNA3 is much better as well 

I, on the other hand, worry. AMD doesn't have the best track record with drivers, and they're going to an entirely new architecture. It just spells bugs for the first few months. i hope they fix them quickly, but...

5 hours ago, CHICKSLAYA said:

I remember linus saying somewhere that he tested it or something and it's much better. I think it was a WAN show. Obviously we won't know until November 3rd for sure one way or another. I hope RDNA 3 blows Nvidias socks off. Especially considering it has Displayport 2.0 and Nvidia does not. Also it is rumored to use a PCIE5 interface. I am waiting for 3nm gpus regardless as I have a 3080. 3nm is supposed to be a much larger jump than 5nm was FWIW. Zen 5 is looking spicy. Unrelated topic but if you are holding out for Zen 4 3d cache, I would just wait the extra year and a half for Zen 5. Apparently 20-25% IPC on top of 40% better single thread. Zen 4 isn't a brand new architecture remember like zen 3 was. It's just on a smaller node with a new LGA pin layout. Zen 5 is entirely new 

Does anything use DP2.0 though? I doubt it'll be an issue before they release their next series of GPUs.

Don't put any weight into rumoured claims of IPC gain. They always start out by saying things like that (usually incited by clowns like Moores Law Is Dead), then it comes out to a more reasonable percentage.

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

Intel is bringing something genuinely new to the table. A new architecture that is built around re-bar and has better high fidelity and RT scaling than both nvidia and AMD.

 

I'm mostly with Linus on his assessment, and yet I'm not buying one  I have a RTX3080 and don't need to build a new desktop system, at least until the Nvidia 5000 series launches.

 

I would totally consider ARC for a Team Blue laptop with Intel 13th gen processor and discrete ARC mobile graphics. I don't need lots of battery, and would like a laptop that can play games better then IRIS integrated graphics, and has some vram and tensor acceleration for ML.

[Morgan MLGman]

11 hours ago, dizmo said:

The cheapest 6700XT I could find was $389. Which, granted, isn't that much more, but still.

 

I don't think ReBar is that much of an issue, provided it's something they're going to build on and was required to make their architecture work. If it's more forward looking, then I think it's fine to say 'sorry, your 4 to 5 year old CPUs just aren't compatible.' We can't always let the lowest common denominator hold advancement back.

 

I wouldn't recommend anything but Nvidia cards personally. Maybe AMD cards if they like to tinker. I have a bad feeling for RDNA3s initial launch, but I'm sure it'll improve over time. There's a very small niche where I'd say go for it; those that only play the most recent and most popular AAA titles

That's not a huge issue, just kind of reduces their potential userbase, which is definitely a downside when you're judging those cards as products. Especially that these are not high-end cards.

But I'm not sure honestly why the Nvidia or nothing mentality appeared - I've had both, I actually have both right now (6900 XT & RTX 3060 laptop) and I've had problems with both drivers, however since I bought a 6900 XT after ditching my unfulfilled 3080 order in March of last year I've had pretty much no driver issues (actually, many improvements in performance and features were made over that time) and the driver suite actually looks and works much better than the ancient Nvidia Control Panel that hasn't changed since I owned a GTX 660... Note that I don't do content creation and I don't stream, so I'm not aware of any issues in that regard. I've had to reinstall the 3060 Laptop drivers more than any driver I've had so far, so not a great experience with Nvidia this time around. And if you think Intel's drivers will be even remotely as good as Nvidia's or AMD's are right now, you're going to be very disappointed

With regards to new Intel Arc GPUs - their problem is that they try competing on value with Nvidia, and in a vacuum that may make sense, but AMD also competes on value and is in a much better position than Arc even with their now almost 2 years old architecture. As I said a 6650 XT is faster than both a 3060 and the A770, and quite a bit cheaper starting from $299 right now. Intel cannot undercut it without losing money on each A770, so this is where my poor opinion on those products comes from.

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

30 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

But I'm not sure honestly why the Nvidia or nothing mentality appeared 

I used to buy cheap ATI/Nvidia cards when I was broke, then I shifted to expensive Nvidia cards. The difference is night and day.

 

From Team Red:

• I bricked a 5500 upgrading the firmware
• An 1800 had memory artefacts and died
• My 1900 lost the thermal control and I built a new one with an LM35 and a AT324 to keep using it. Until the card just started artefacting

From Team Green:

• I had an original GeForce256, always worked (as well as a gpu worked back in the day ^^')
• 4600. Drivers were a pain, that card gave me so many bluescreens...
• My used 9500GT still works
• My used 450GT still works to this day as backup video output card
• I resold my 1070 for cheap to a friend during height of mining where cards were absurdely expensive.
• I'm using my 3080 which is a dream

Now, i never tried expensive AMD cards. Maybe they work just as well as Nvidia, now. But if I have money, I want the test and tried option that I know will never let me down. And that's Nvidia. Plus, Nvidia has better support for features I like, like CUDA and RT.

 

My personal opinion is that anything that is not Nvidia, IS the cheap option. You pay for it with hassle down the line.

[Morgan MLGman]

7 minutes ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

I used to buy cheap ATI/Nvidia cards when I was broke, then I shifted to expensive Nvidia cards. The difference is night and day.

 

From Team Red:

• I bricked a 5500 upgrading the firmware
• An 1800 had memory artefacts and died
• My 1900 lost the thermal control and I built a new one with an LM35 and a AT324 to keep using it. Until the card just started artefacting

From Team Green:

• I had an original GeForce256, always worked (as well as a gpu worked back in the day ^^')
• 4600. Drivers were a pain, that card gave me so many bluescreens...
• My used 9500GT still works
• My used 450GT still works to this day as backup video output card
• I resold my 1070 for cheap to a friend during height of mining where cards were absurdely expensive.
• I'm using my 3080 which is a dream

Now, i never tried expensive AMD cards. Maybe they work just as well as Nvidia, now. But if I have money, I want the test and tried option that I know will never let me down. And that's Nvidia. Plus, Nvidia has better support for features I like, like CUDA and RT.

 

My personal opinion is that anything that is not Nvidia, IS the cheap option. You pay for it with hassle down the line.

I see - well, I'd say that no drivers are perfect because of the virtually inifite amount of hardware & software combinations you can have. I've owned a 660, 970, 980Ti, 1080, 1080Ti and RTX 3060 (mobile) and all of those had some problems with the drivers at some point, I've also owned an R9 290X, R9 Fury, RX 560X (mobile) and the RX 6900 XT now and there were certain problems with each of them as well. AMD has come a really long way since the Catalyst Control Center times and its software nowadays has way better & more modern GUI than Nvidia, doesn't have two separate components (Control Panel & Experience) and doesn't require a mandatory login (like Experience). Their drivers are also unified now for Mobile & Desktop, unlike Nvidia which has separate mobile releases on different dates.

Still - I'm not saying they're better, I'm saying it's just not so cut-and-dried anymore. Now imagine that Intel has yet to go through all those issues and refinements.