[리뷰] Intel Arc A770·A750’s shocking new arrival graphics card

Intel’s new ‘Arc 700 series’ graphics card, which has been a hot topic in the PC market in recent years, has finally appeared. Although there is a feeling that it is later than originally expected that it will be released in the second quarter of this year, he announced the appearance of a ‘newbie’ as a ‘useful product’ in terms of price-performance ratio. From a user point of view, it can be evaluated positively as there is one more option besides Nvidia and AMD.

The graphics cards that Intel officially announced at the innovation event at the end of September are ‘Ark A770’ and ‘Ark A750’, which correspond to the mainstream line.

In June, a finished PC with the low-end graphics card ‘Intel Arc A380’ was released in China, but as the negative evaluation exists, it is true that expectations and concerns are mixed about this new product.

However, as Intel’s official announcement that it has higher performance and a reasonable price compared to Nvidia’s ‘GeForce RTX3060’, a competitor’s product, consumer expectations are also exceptional.

What are the features of ‘Intel Arc A770·A750’ and how much performance is it?

‘Intel Arc A770·A750’ has the latest technology

‘Intel Arc A770·A750’ is manufactured with TSMC N6 6nm process and supports PCI-Express 4.0 x16 interface. It is designed based on Intel’s new Xe HPG microarchitecture and supports XeSS, an artificial intelligence (AI) upgrade technology through the XMX engine, so you can enjoy games with stable frames at high resolution.

In particular, AV1 and VP9 codecs support not only decoding but also encoding, which increases power efficiency through active power management along with built-in graphics. It also has Intel Deep Link technology, which helps improve performance when used with Intel’s latest Core processors.

It uses 8 + 6 pins as auxiliary power, and 3 display ports and 1 HDMI port are provided as output ports, so you can connect up to 4 monitors.

First, ‘Intel Arc A770’, corresponding to the top model, is equipped with 32 Xe cores, 32 ray tracing units, 512 Intel Xe Matrix Extensions (XMX) engines and Xe vector machines.

It runs on a GPU clock of 2100 MHz and has a maximum power of 225W. Products with 16GB and 8GB GDDR6 memory will be released, respectively. Among them, the 16GB model operates at a speed of 17.5 Gbps, and is known to have a bandwidth of 560 GB / sa interface of 256 bits.

It supports ray tracing, DirectX12 Ultimate, Vulkan, OpenGL/CL, and features like H.264, AV1, and XeSS. The MSRP is $329 for the 8GB model and $349 for the 16GB model, which is similar to the GeForce RTX3060, which can be called a competitor.

‘Intel Arc A750’ has 28 Xe cores, 28 ray tracing units, 448 Intel Xe Matrix Extensions (XMX) machines and Xe vector machines.

It runs on a GPU clock of 2050 MHz and has a maximum power of 225W. It has GDDR6 8GB of memory, operates at a speed of 16Gbps, and has a bandwidth of 512GB/sa 256bit interface.

As before, it supports ray tracing, DirectX12 Ultimate, Vulkan, OpenGL/CL, and features like H.264, AV1, and XeSS. MSRP is 289 USD for the 8GB model, which is definitely cheaper than similar products.

For reference, the reference model, ‘Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition’, has RGB LED bars applied to various parts of the cover including the substrate. The LED lights up when the power is applied, so it seems to be suitable for tuning.

Performance beyond the competition

We checked the performance and power consumption of ‘Intel Arc A770·A750’ through benchmark programs and games. ‘Intel Arc A770’ used a 16GB model, and Nvidia GeForce RTX3060 and RTX3060Ti were chosen for comparison. As the graphics driver, Intel version 101.3435 was used.

CPU: Intel 12th Generation Core i9-12900F
MB : Gigabyte Z690 Gaming X
RAM: Samsung DDR5 4800MHz 16GB x2
SSD : NVMe 1TB
PSU: 1000W rating
SW: Windows 11 Pro

First, after running ‘3D MARK Fire Strike’, I checked the graphics score. The ‘Intel Arc A770’ scored 33,598 points, showing a high score similar to the competitor’s equivalent model as well as the GeForce RTX3070, the top model.

‘Intel Arc A750’ also recorded a high score of 3252 points, and it can be confirmed that it is 40% ahead of GeForce RTX3060. At first, ‘Intel Arc A770’ was known to match the RTX 3060, but if you look at the MARK 3D results, it can be said that it is a much higher product than the top model.

Then, after running ‘3D MARK Time Spy’, the graphics score was measured. Like the previous FireStrike test, ‘Intel Arc A770·A750’ showed high performance that overwhelms its competitors. In particular, the score of ‘Intel Arc A770’ is 12,839 points, which is 46% higher than RTX3060.

Next, after running ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ with the Ultra option at FHD resolution, the average frame rate was found to be significantly different from the MARK 3D test.

GeForce RTX3060Ti recorded the highest score with 80.2 points, while ‘Intel Arc A770’ scored 64.2 points and ‘Intel Arc A750’ scored 60.7 points. GeForce RTX3060 scored 63.8 points, which is almost identical to ‘Intel Arc A770’.

The result of running Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on the highest option in FHD resolution was also similar. The GeForce RTX3060Ti measured the highest, and the Arc A770 performed slightly better than the RTX3060. In the case of A750, it can be seen that the frame is slightly lower than other products.

As a result of running Shadow of the Tomb Raider in FHD, the GeForce RTX3060Ti recorded an extremely high score, and the A770 can be seen slightly ahead of the GeForce RTX3060.

Finally, we found out how much energy was used in these products by measuring the total power in the system. The test recorded the section with the highest power consumption after driving MARK 3D.

As mentioned earlier, TBP ‘Intel Arc A770·A750’ is 225W. Considering the GeForce RTX3060 is 170W and the RTX3060Ti is 200W, it’s pretty high.

The test results also reflect these figures. A770 Arc was measured the highest at 316W, and it can be seen that A750 is also quite high at 305W. On the other hand, the GeForce RTX3060 is measured at 267W, which is relatively low.

Of course, if it is big, it can be said that it is a small difference, but if it is big, it can be said that GeForce is better in what is called performance per watt.

The launch price of ‘Intel Arc A770·A750’ is the key

‘Intel Arc A770’ showed slightly higher performance in most games compared to GeForce RTX3060, which can be said to be a competitive product. Of course, the difference is not that big, so it is difficult to say that it is significantly better, but it can be given a good evaluation in the sense that it shows enough performance as expected.

‘Intel Arc A750’ also showed a decent appearance. Again, although the frame rate is slightly lower than that of the RTX3060, it has been confirmed that it has the ability to play high-definition games without problems in FHD resolution, so it can be evaluated positively in terms of price-performance ratio.

However, the driver’s stabilization and power consumption are a bit disappointing. In the 3D MARK, which is used as the most common test program, it outperformed the competition, but showed a completely different attitude in the game.

Additionally, in some games, when ray tracing was implemented, the framerate was not consistent, which is also an area that needs to be improved by updating a driver.

The key is the launch price. Although the MSRP (manufacturer’s recommended price) is quite low compared to competing products, the actual launch price is expected to be higher than this, taking into account external factors such as exchange rates and inflation. If the A770 is sold at a level close to that of the GeForce RTX3060, it is expected that it will be able to play the role of a dark horse that shakes up the PC market.

Reporter Jo Sang-rok jsrok@chosunbiz.com