Intel executives Ryan Shrout and Tom Petersen have dropped some nuggets regarding the chipmaker's Arc Alchemist graphics cards in the latest installment of Linus Tech Tips. The flagship Arc A770, which will compete against the best graphics cards, made a brief appearance, offering a sneak peek of the graphics card's performance.
Petersen explained that Intel had implemented a three-tier strategy regarding game optimizations for its Arc Alchemist graphics cards. Tier 1 includes titles that work exceptionally with Arc. On the other hand, tier 2 encompasses titles that are less optimized but based on modern APIs, such as DirectX12 and Vulkan. These games should perform pretty well. The biggest concern for gamers are titles that fall into the tier 3 category. Arc graphics cards underperform in tier 3 titles, which correspond to games on DirectX11 or earlier versions.
For reference, the top five games on Steam, according to Steam Charts, use DirectX11 and fall into Intel's tier 3 classification. The only good news from all this tier talk is that Intel will reportedly price Arc graphics cards based on internal testing of tier 3 games.
We've already seen a few of the cherry-picked tier 1 titles in Intel-provided benchmarks for the Arc A750. The list consists of F1 2021, Cyberpunk 2077, Control, Borderlands 3, and Fortnite. Peterson enthusiastically stated that "we're gonna kill everyone in price to performance" with tier 1 games. The jury is still out on that one, though. For example, the Arc A380 sells for $192 in China. For comparison, the Radeon RX 6400 retails for $149.99 and outperforms the Arc A380. It'll be interesting to see what Intel charges for the other Arc models.
Linus estimated that the Arc A770 was pumping out between 50 to 60 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 on the High preset at 1440p (2560 x 1440). Additionally, the graphics card pushed frame rates to 180 FPS on F1 2021 at "highish" settings at 1440p. Unfortunately, Intel didn't allow Linus to show off any tier 2 games. However, the celebrity YouTuber did provide a comparison between DirectX11 and DirectX12 in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, allowing us to see how much performance Arc is leaving on the table on older APIs.
The Arc A770 delivered around 80 FPS during the DirectX12 benchmark. On DirectX11, however, the graphics card could only put out 40 FPS. That's a substantial performance difference as the Arc A770 lost half of its performance on the older API. That's just poor optimization. Sadly, that's the current reality for Arc adopters. We can only hope that Intel's team of engineers can work out the kinks in the Arc driver software by the time the graphics cards debut.
During the overclocking segment, Linus' video revealed some details on the Arc A770. The graphics card has a 2.5 GHz clock speed and a GPU power up to 190W. Applying the 20% GPU Performance Boost profile upped the power limit to 285W and the temperature limit to 125 degrees Celsius. Linus reported smoother gameplay but once again didn't provide any numbers. Next, he tried to push the Arc A770 with the more aggressive 30% profile, but the graphics card crashed.
Intel has confirmed that it didn't have any plans to release an Arc A780 so that the Arc A770 will carry the flagship banner. The Arc A770 has the potential to match the GeForce RTX 3070 or Radeon RX 6700 XT. Desktop Arc will hit the shelves in Q3 of this year, so we'll find out soon enough.
