Intel Reveals First Arc A750 Desktop GPU Benchmarks

The first Arc A750 desktop graphics card performance numbers were shown for Intel’s upcoming GPU in a new video(opens in new tab), showing how it stacked up against the GeForce RTX 3060 in a selection of five games. That’s one of the best graphics cards, delivering mainstream gaming performance roughly in the middle of our GPU benchmarks hierarchy.

All the usual caveats apply for these Intel-provided benchmarks — the choice of games and settings were almost certainly done to paint the Arc A750 in the best light possible — but the results do show promise. We’re still waiting for the official worldwide launch of the Intel Arc Alchemist GPUs, which should happen in the next few months.

Ryan Shrout, formerly of PC Perspective and now part of the Intel Graphics marketing team, takes us through the upcoming GPU and shows a short segment of the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark sequence. All testing was performed at 2560×1440 and ‘high’ settings, a reasonable target for a mainstream GPU. You can see the results halfway through the video, but we’ve pulled Intel’s numbers from the end to create the following table.

The GeForce RTX 3060 is no slouch when it comes to gaming performance. It can easily handle 1080p at maxed-out settings in most games, and 1440p at high quality should typically deliver 60 fps or more. All of that basically agrees with Intel’s numbers, but the more important bit is how the Arc A750 stacks up.

Across the five games, Intel’s GPU delivered 13% higher performance on average (geometric mean), with a lead ranging from 6% in Fortnite to as much as 17% in F1 2021. That’s a pretty good showing for a graphics card that we hope will cost somewhere in the $300–$350 range.

Of course, these are Intel’s own benchmarks in a handful of games. We know from independent testing of the Arc A380 desktop GPU that drivers for Arc are still developing, with performance that can vary greatly between games. While AMD and Nvidia have optimized their drivers for many games over the past couple of decades, Intel’s integrated graphics drivers often felt like an afterthought. Things have improved, but there’s still plenty of work to do.

None of Intel’s benchmarks used ray tracing effects, despite Control, Cyberpunk 2077, and Fortnite supporting DXR (DirectX Raytracing). We’d really love to see some ray tracing benchmarks for Arc, if only to satisfy our own curiosity. The maximum number of RTUs (Ray Tracing Units) for Arc A-series graphics cards is 32, and the A750 likely has 24. The RTX 3060 only has 28 RT cores, but those are Nvidia’s second-generation RT cores and we still don’t know how those compare to Intel’s RTUs.

Intel hasn’t detailed the official specs for all the Arc desktop GPUs it plans to launch, but we expect the A750 will have 24 Xe cores and 3072 GPU shaders, with 12GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, probably clocking in the 2.0–2.3GHz range. On paper, that should at least put it in the same performance realm as the RTX 3060, which would also put it into direct competition with the Radeon RX 6650 XT.

Assuming Intel can get performance in most games up to a similar level shown in this video, it could be a welcome addition to the desktop market if it comes priced accordingly. The RX 6650 XT outperformed the RTX 3060 by 15% at 1080p ultra in our GPU testing, and you can currently find the Radeon RX 6650 XT for $349(opens in new tab).

That’s effectively a price ceiling for the Arc A750 in our minds, at least if Intel wants gamers to show interest. The Arc A380, meanwhile, is supposed to have a $129–$139 MSRP when it arrives in the US, hopefully by next month. That shows Intel is willing to be aggressive on pricing, but the clock is definitely ticking with Nvidia Ada and AMD RDNA 3 slated to launch later this year.