Intel Arc A7-powered laptops won't be available in the U.S. market until late summer. But while we wait, Weibo user "Golden Pig Upgrade" has put the Arc A730M through its paces — and it looks like Intel's graphics card can't keep up with Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile.
According to the review, the user's Arc A730M and GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile laptops use the same 14-core Core i7-12700 (Alder Lake-H) processor, so both devices are on an equal playing field. With mobile Ampere, Nvidia gave laptop vendors the freedom to tweak the TDP to their liking. As a result, there are tons of GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile SKUs with thermal values ranging from 80W to 115W. The model used in Golden Pig Upgrade's tests is the top 115W SKU, which has another 15W of provision for Dynamic Boost 2.0. In comparison, the Arc A730M has a maximum graphics power of 120W.
The reviewer ran his tests using Intel's new Arc A730M-supporting graphics driver, Graphics Driver 30.0.101.1735, which was just released today.
Even in his new video, the Weibo user didn't specify whether he enabled Dynamic Tuning Driver (DTT) on the Arc A730M laptop. As a quick reminder, DTT is Intel's equivalent to AMD SmartShift or Nvidia Dynamic Boost, which allows the laptop to reallocate the power that goes to the processor or graphics card depending on the workload. It's a fine piece of technology for battery life and performance optimization, but it can limit the device's performance in gaming.
Intel Arc A730M Benchmarks
Header Cell - Column 0 | Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition | Boundary | Gears 5 | Gears Tactics | Hitman 2 | Civilization VI | Strange Brigade | Counter-Strike: Global Offensive |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile | 72.89 | 76.2 | 133.4 | 151.6 | 100.27 | 22.82 | 200 | 404.58 |
Arc A730M | 77.69 | 20.7 | 90.3 | 116.6 | 76.11 | 13.365 | 188 | 135.15 |
The GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile pulled a resounding victory over the Arc A730M. If we calculate the geometric mean for the average framerates, the GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile finished with a score of 109.58, while the Arc A730M put up 67.63. The GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile was up to 62% faster than the Arc A730M. The performance delta looks accurate, considering that the Arc A730M performed like a GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile in previous gaming benchmarks.
In eight of the titles, the Arc A730M only managed to score a victory over GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile in Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition. On the other hand, Alchemist delivered up to 6.59% higher average framerates than its Ampere rival. Some of the most significant performance margins were in Boundary and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. However, the GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile machine was utilizing Nvidia DLSS in the former, giving it an unfair advantage.
The reviewer also provided some workstation GPU results in the shape of the popular SPECviewperf 2020 benchmark. The scenario didn't change, and the GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile continued to dominate the Arc A730M with performance deltas spanning from 20% up to a whopping 515%.