Are the Intel Arc GPUs any good?
As you all know, long-awaited Intel Arc GPUs were finally out on October 12, 2022. These GPUs, I think, have received way more criticism than they deserved, so today I’d like to share my honest opinion about them.
Intel’s Goal:
From what one can see, the goal of the Intel Arc series(A750, A770) is to either run games at medium-low settings on 1440p or high-ultra on 1080p. From what I’ve seen, they perform quite similarly to an RTX 3060 and an AMD RX 6700 XT. I think the main target Intel wanted to achieve was to get their customers the best performance for as little cost as possible. But I think this goal is going to be hard to achieve for them, as this same goal is being successfully achieved by AMD by offering top-notch GPUs at a way lower price than that of Nvidia
Let’s talk more about it by seeing its performance.
Performance:
Dx12 Performance:
The performance of the Intel Arc GPUs shines in games utilizing DirectX 12. Let’s take a look at a 1080p benchmark first:
From what we can see here is that the 1080p performance of these GPUs as I mentioned earlier is very similar to that of a RTX 3060 and believe it or not the intel arc GPUs don’t perform the best at 1080p, wait till you see the 1440p benchmarks to further clarify your image about these GPUs.
Now, from what we can see, these GPUs shine when the resolution is cranked up to 1440p. We can see that not only do the Arc GPUs beat the 3060, but they also beat the 6650xt which I think is a big win for Intel I also noticed that the performance of the Arc A770 was almost identical to that of an RX 6700, which is also an impressive feat to achieve by Intel.
Dx11 Performance:
Now, what I’m going to talk about right now is the sole reason why Intel GPUs received such criticism. Just as the GPU impressed me with its performance in DX12, it also shocked me with its performance on DX11 titles, where you might believe it or not, its performance falls to half of what it was capable of at DX12.
Intel Arc’s issue with Rebar:
For all of you who don’t know, Rebar is a feature offered by the new Intel CPUs(9th Gen and higher)that improves performance a bit for AMD and Nvidia GPUs.But if we talk about Intel Arc GPUs, the reality is different. These Arc GPUs are dependent on this feature a lot. They are so dependent that without Reba, these GPUs don’t even perform half of their potential.
This declares that the Intel Arc is a no-go for all the people who have older Gen CPUs(8th gen and older), which is kind of sad as it limits a lot of potential customers for Intel.
DLSS and Raytracing:
If we talk about titles where DLSS and raytracing work, the Intel Arc GPUs perform quite close to the RTX 3060 and even better in some titles like the Shadow of hee Tomb Raider, which makes this a small redeeming point for Intel. Is this enough to justify its massive gap with other GPUs inDX111 titles? That is something I’ll leave to you guys to decide.
Conclusion
From what I’ve seen from my experience, if you are a persowith aha CPthatth is 8th gen or older CPU, do not consider buying this GPU. But if you have the newer CPU that supports rebar and you want to run RuDX1212 titles, then this GPU is quite the bang for the buck. An p lease let’s stop criticising Intel as it is their first time entering the GPU competition. Mistakes are well-expected to be made in the development phase; everyone knows that.
