New Benchmarks Show GTX 1650 and RX 6400 Outperforming Intel's Arc A380 Graphics Card

Intel Arc A380 by Gunnir — "Into the Unknown"
(Image credit: Gunnir)

Intel recently shared performance metrics of its new Arc A380 desktop GPU in 17 gaming titles, with direct comparisons to the GTX 1650 and RX 6400 — which were all tested on the same PC. On average, the A380 lost in comparison to the GTX 1650 and RX 6400, which will make it one of the slowest entry-level GPUs when it arrives on the US market. Even as a budget offering, Intel will have a tough time making our best graphics card list.

The A300 series is Intel's entry-level desktop GPU, using the smaller "ACM-G11" Arch Alchemist chip. Unlike the mobile A350M and A370M, however, it does have all eight of Intel's Xe GPU cores and enabled alongside the full 96-bit GDDR6 memory interface. That's nearly the same core configuration as the entry-level Arc A370M mobile GPU, but with 50% more memory, 66% more memory bandwidth, and significantly higher GPU clocks that can reach up to 2.45 GHz.

TBP (typical board power) is also higher at 75W, perhaps more, and Intel's Arc A380 will come in several variants. Cards that run at less than 75W can get by without a power connector and have a 2 GHz clock speed, cards with up to an 80W TBP will require at least a 6-pin power connector and can run at up to 2.25 GHz, and cards with an 87W or higher TBP can run at 2.35 GHz or more.

We don't know what card Intel used for the tests, and the Gunnir card images shown here with the 8-pin power connector are for reference purposes only. The test PC was equipped with a Core i5-12600K, 2x16GB DDR4-3200 memory, an MSI Z690-A Pro WiFi DDR4 motherboard (actually the same motherboard we use in our GPU testbed), and a 4TB M600 Pro XT SSD, running Windows 11.

For now, the Arc A380 is the only desktop GPU available to look at on Intel's Arc website. But according to previous driver leaks, we should expect Intel's A500 series and A700 series of desktop GPUs to arrive at some point. Here are the numbers, and again these come straight from Intel's Arc A380 reviewer's guide — we're sharing them with permission while we attempt to get a card for our own in-depth testing. Take these figures with a healthy dose of skepticism, in other words, as most manufacturer provided benchmarks attempt to show products in a better light.

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Intel Arc A380 GPU Comparison — Intel Provided Benchmarks
GamesIntel Arc A380GeForce GTX 1650Radeon RX 6400
17 Game Geometric Mean96.4114.5105.0
Age of Empires 48010294
Apex Legends101124112
Battlefield V728594
Control677572
Destiny 28810989
DOTA 2230267266
F1 202110411296
GTA V142164180
Hitman 3778991
Naraka Bladepoint706864
NiZhan200200200
PUBG7810795
The Riftbreaker113141124
The Witcher 38510181
Total War: Troy789875
Warframe779898
Wolfenstein Youngblood9513096

On average, the Arc A380 lost to the GTX 1650 by 19% and lost to the RX 6400 by 9%. When we compare each GPU on a game-by-game basis, the Arc A380 only beats the RX 6400 in four of the 17 titles and beats the GTX 1650 in one of them (Naraka Bladepoint). There's also a three-way tie in NiZhan, where all the GPUs managed 200 fps, though we're not sure why Intel would even bother to include that particular benchmark since it looks like there's a frame rate cap.

Regardless, it isn't exactly encouraging to see the new Intel GPU getting beat out by an entry-level Nvidia GPU released over three years ago, and an ultra low-level Radeon GPU that is literally a cut down Navi 24 mobile GPU slapped onto a graphics card PCB. Over the past few months, we've heard reports that Intel's graphics drivers are playing a significant role in gaming performance with these new A-series GPUs, with poor optimization being a big issue.

Perhaps Intel can turn things around and provide well-optimized gaming drivers in the near future once its A-series lineup makes it to rest of the world market. Intel also recently showed its expected performance for the higher tier A700M mobile parts, which looked at least fairly capable. But if Intel has the same driver problems on its mid-range A500 and flagship A700 series graphics cards, where gaming performance matters even more, Intel's GPU division is going to be dealing with serious challenges in a market that's already quite competitive.

Arc A-Series Mobile Lineup

(Image credit: Intel)

For the entry-level and mobile parts, it's not just gaming performance that Intel is hyping up. Arc includes the Xe media engine, which supports up to 8K encode and decode of AVC (H.264), HEVC (H.265), VP9, and AV1 — and Arc is the only GPU right now with hardware encoding support of AV1. Comparing the A380 against a Core i5-12600K CPU encode of an AV1 video, the A380 took less than a quarter of the time (53 seconds versus 234 seconds).

Arc A380 was also faster in other video encoding scenarios, like an HEVC encode using DaVinci Resolve where Intel's Deep Link feature that leverages the CPU graphics and dedicated GPU allowed it to finish the task in 16 seconds compared to 25 seconds on a GTX 1650 card. Interestingly, just the UHD Graphics 770 or Arc A380 alone required 30 seconds, so encoding performance very nearly doubled thanks to Deep Link.

If you're more interested in the media capabilities, Arc might be a great option when it comes to the US market. For gamers, let's hope additional driver improvements can help narrow the gap that Intel's currently showing.

Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

  • peachpuff
    This is fine, they just need to price it accordingly 🤞
    Reply
  • waltc3
    I was amazed at the 96-bit memory bus--or is that the system interface?---oh, brother, that's entry-level and a half.
    Reply
  • artk2219
    Price it at 80 bucks and theres a fight on our hands. Honestly its not a terrible card, its a decent low power entry level card that actually offers encoding, should have atleast an x8 PCIE connector, and has a higher than 64bit bus, the RX 6400 is missing all of that, hopefully it may even get a little better with time, they just need to price it accordingly for now like peachpuff said. I want to like the 6400 and 6500xt, but they're just so compromised that unless you have a niche system that it wouldn't be throttled by (pcie gen 4 cpu and mobo) they arent worth it.
    Reply
  • thisisaname
    Wonder if my Nvidia 970 will out perform the Intel's Arc A380 :ROFLMAO:

    Just compared the now 8 year old 970 with the 1650 and the are around the same (5% faster), so yes my 970 is faster than the Intel's Arc A380.

    @artk2219 best I could work out is around £125 or $154 converted from 1030 Chinese Yuan). Some had list one up for ¥3999 including VAT, which is roughly $595 USD.
    Reply
  • 4745454b
    This is fine, they just need to price it accordingly

    Agreed. It's not like the card hit 45FPS while the others were at 70+ It was never below 60FPS, and was often "close" to the others. IF priced right its not a horrible card. More so if you factor in driver improvements. This is their entry level card, and the first commercial attempt. Good first try Intel. Keep working on it.
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    Even as a budget offering, Intel will have a tough time making our best graphics card list.
    As was pointed out, it all comes down to pricing. The RX 6400 and GTX 1650 are terrible cards right now, at least as far as price to performance is concerned. RX 6400 pricing starts around $170-180, and the 1650 is typically over $200, when that level of performance should be down around the $100 level at this point. In fact, it was already possible to pick up a notably faster RX 580 bundled with a couple newly-released games several years back for less than what these cards cost. The crypto market has collapsed, and yet these low-end models are still a ripoff at their current pricing.

    If Intel prices this card around $150, then sure, it won't exactly be a particularly attractive offering. But closer to $100 it would be a much more compelling option than what the competition is currently offering in the "budget" category. If Intel wants to make inroads into the dedicated GPU market, I would hope they would bring competitive pricing to the table, especially considering the amount of uncertainty surrounding the hardware and its long-term driver support. And I get the impression that might be what they're planning. I can't see them releasing official performance numbers that show their card performing almost universally slower than the competition unless pricing is significantly better to compensate.
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    4745454b said:
    Agreed. It's not like the card hit 45FPS while the others were at 70+ It was never below 60FPS, and was often "close" to the others. IF priced right its not a horrible card. More so if you factor in driver improvements. This is their entry level card, and the first commercial attempt. Good first try Intel. Keep working on it.
    On the other hand, I don't think it's mentioned what settings these games were tested at. The frame rates shown here don't really seem to align with what reviews show for these cards running at 1080p high/ultra settings. At those kinds of settings, the 6400 and 1650 struggle to maintain 30fps in a game like Control, let alone the 72-75fps Intel is suggesting for those cards. So, clearly settings have been lowered to whatever point Intel was able to show a frame rate over 60fps for their card. That could be 720p low for all we know.

    Likewise, The Witcher 3, now a 7 year old game, is generally shown to not be able to manage 60fps on a 1650 with the settings turned up at 1080p, so the "101fps" Intel shows for that card is similarly suspect. The same goes for some other games, where they are showing around double the framerates one might expect. So they've obviously adjusted the settings to keep the numbers high. You can do that on low-end integrated graphics too, if you're willing to run games at low settings at SD resolutions, so the exact numbers for the frame rates don't tell us much, aside from the relative performance compared to the other cards.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    Another set of benchmarks with no minimum frame rates. These are basically useless, especially on older games which drivers may not be optimized for. We won't really know what the performance looks like until someone actually does some comprehensive testing. From what little has appeared so far it seems like there are still big driver issues.
    Reply
  • LuxZg
    We know that Intel won't start great with drivers, but if this card can eventually close the gap with 1650 (so similar to 970 as others pointed out, but with new features such as AV1 decode/encode) I don't see that as a bad product at all. But it has to be priced accordingly. We shall see. Same with rest of the family, if they price them well they'll sell. Low and midrange has been almost completely forgotten past several years by AMD and Nvidia, rehashing old chips and renaming old cards. These at least have modern features, even if their performance isn't stellar. On the other hand, if AMD would release actual top to bottom RDNA 7000 series, then Intel would surely fail. But while we can expect cards like 7800, 7950 and such, I have a feeling we won't see 7400 or 7500 cards with actual RDNA3, not in 2023, let alone 2022. Same with Nvidia. They've just rehashed 1630 with Turing from 2018 (!!!) so little hope for Lovelace GTX 4630 in 2022/2023.. maybe in 2026 :/ :p
    Reply
  • KyaraM
    Mhmm, I think that Intel will first establish itaelf in the low-end sector, too. There are quite a few opportunities there. Also, the hardware is fine looking at synthetic benchmarks. They need to improve drivers, which will happen over time. About the price, it's of course only a rumor at this point, but I have seen $125 floating around. That would be a reasonable price I think, and if not, the cards will certainly drop soonish. Even Intel, from the last figure I saw start of the year, doesn't expect to get much out of the first generation yet. Which implies to me they are prepared and already calculated entering at low revenue or even a loss, and long-time plans stand at continuation and improvement.
    Reply