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Our 2022 GPU testbed consists of a Core i9-12900K processor, MSI Pro Z690-A DDR4 WiFi motherboard, and DDR4-3600 memory (with XMP enabled). We're running Windows 11 with the 22H2 update applied to ensure we get the most out of Alder Lake. We're also running the latest game patches and Intel drivers at the time of testing: Intel 30.0.101.3435.
Intel's drivers have come a long way in the past year or so, but that's also because they had a long way to go. While the Xe Graphics in 11th Gen and later CPUs are more capable than earlier iterations, we've run into plenty of games that just didn't work properly — Deathloop, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Assassin's Creed Valhalla all had issues in the past. There were lots of other games that didn't work right at launch as well.
Of our 14-game test suite, only one game straight up refused to run: Minecraft with ray tracing enabled. Minecraft itself could run just fine, but Microsoft (Mojang Studios) implemented a whitelist of cards that could support ray tracing, rather than just querying the hardware. We had a few other problems, including Fortnite refusing to launch with the initial 3433 test driver, but nothing that absolutely stopped us from testing the games.
That isn't the same thing as saying you won't encounter issues with your PC or the games you want to play. For example, AMD and Nvidia have been building dedicated graphics card drivers for decades and have processes to test and fix bugs. Likewise, Intel has worked to improve its driver team, but only time will tell if it can truly support games to the same level as its competitors.
As discussed in the Arc A770 review, you'll also want to ensure your PC is relatively recent before using an Arc GPU. Intel says that resizable BAR support is required; without it, performance suffers a lot. That should mean that any Intel 300-series chipset or later could work, but not every board actually has the necessary BIOS updates available, and the MSI MEG Z390 Ace WiFi board I use for power testing won't POST (Power On Self Test) with only the Arc GPUs installed; it needs a second graphics card in a different slot to POST.
Our test suite will be the same 14 games as in other recent reviews. Eight of the games are tested without ray tracing, with six more relatively demanding ray tracing games (minus Minecraft for now). While the primary target for the Arc A750 is 1080p and 1440p, we also did some 4K testing just to see how the card fares compared to the A770 at higher resolutions.
The competition consists of ten other GPUs besides the two new Arc A700-series cards. We've included the AMD and Nvidia cards that match up against Arc, along with some GPUs that are at least somewhat close in terms of price and performance. If you want to see every graphics card we've tested, check our GPU benchmarks hierarchy — we'll update that and add Arc to the list shortly.
- MORE: Best Graphics Cards
- MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
- MORE: All Graphics Content
