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To hear Intel's take on the new Arc graphics cards, the A750 is the better value compared to the A770. I'm not convinced that's the real story. Yes, by a pure FPS per dollar metric, the A750 beats the A770. But that might not be the best way of looking at things.
Your graphics card doesn't exist in a vacuum — it has to go into a PC. So the cost of the rest of the PC should certainly be considered, or at least some fraction of the cost. Then there are things like the extra VRAM on the A770 LE, which definitely helped smooth out performance in at least a few of the benchmarks, not to mention driver concerns.
But let's go ahead and put together a value chart. I will use FPS/$ for the graphics card, with performance being the geometric mean of the 1080p and 1440p standard performance results and 1080p medium ray tracing performance. That eliminates any GPU that doesn't support ray tracing, and I also dropped cards that aren't currently being sold brand-new at retail. Here are the results:
| Rank | Graphics Card | Retail Price (Sept. 2022) | Overall Perf | Perf/$ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Intel Arc A750 | $289 | 68.7 | 0.2378 |
| 2 | Radeon RX 6600 | $248 | 57.7 | 0.2326 |
| 3 | Radeon RX 6650 XT | $300 | 69.6 | 0.2319 |
| 4 | Intel Arc A770 | $349 | 78.1 | 0.2239 |
| 5 | GeForce RTX 2060 | $237 | 52.8 | 0.2223 |
| 6 | GeForce RTX 3060 Ti | $400 | 88.8 | 0.2221 |
| 7 | Radeon RX 6600 XT | $310 | 67.9 | 0.2191 |
| 8 | Radeon RX 6700 XT | $420 | 84 | 0.2 |
| 9 | GeForce RTX 2060 Super | $320 | 61.7 | 0.1928 |
| 10 | Radeon RX 6750 XT | $470 | 89.1 | 0.1896 |
| 11 | Intel Arc A380 | $140 | 26.3 | 0.1879 |
| 12 | GeForce RTX 3070 | $520 | 97.3 | 0.1871 |
| 13 | Radeon RX 6800 XT | $600 | 111.4 | 0.1857 |
| 14 | GeForce RTX 3060 | $369 | 68 | 0.184 |
| 15 | Radeon RX 6800 | $550 | 99.9 | 0.1817 |
| 16 | GeForce RTX 3050 | $290 | 49.5 | 0.1708 |
| 17 | GeForce RTX 3070 Ti | $599 | 102.3 | 0.1707 |
| 18 | GeForce RTX 2070 | $380 | 64.6 | 0.1701 |
| 19 | Radeon RX 6900 XT | $700 | 117.1 | 0.1673 |
| 20 | GeForce RTX 3080 12GB | $750 | 124.7 | 0.1662 |
| 21 | GeForce RTX 3080 | $730 | 116.7 | 0.1599 |
| 22 | Radeon RX 6500 XT | $160 | 24.8 | 0.1548 |
| 23 | GeForce RTX 3080 Ti | $821 | 123.9 | 0.1509 |
| 24 | GeForce RTX 3090 | $950 | 127 | 0.1337 |
| 25 | Radeon RX 6950 XT | $950 | 125.8 | 0.1324 |
| 26 | GeForce RTX 3090 Ti | $1,100 | 133.9 | 0.1217 |
And there you have it: the Intel Arc A750 is the best value graphics card right now — using some rather questionable math. What if you factor in a system cost of $200? That puts the RTX 3060 Ti into the top slot, with the Arc A770 in second place. Or a $400 system cost would make the RX 6700 XT the top value, followed by the 3060 Ti and the 3080 12GB; Intel's Arc A770 lands in seventh place, with the A750 in 13th place.
The point isn't that only one of the above value ranking scenarios is the right way of doing things, but that there are lots of possibilities. If keeping costs down is your most important criteria for a graphics card, and assuming you don't already have something, AMD's Navi 23 GPUs are tough to beat. Still, by some metrics, the A750 certainly warrants consideration.
The real benefit of having Intel Arc A750 entering the market is that it will pressure AMD and Nvidia to lower the prices on other cards. Maybe we all would have appreciated it more last year when even older cards like the GTX 1050 Ti were selling for $300 or more, but having more competition in the GPU space would be good.
Intel doesn't get a free pass on its drivers, though, which is something any gamer seriously considering an Arc GPU needs to factor into the buying decision. Arc could be the best value proposition and then some, but if Intel doesn't keep improving the drivers, you could end up with a lemon.
Hopefully that won't be the case. Intel says it's working hard on the next generation of Arc GPUs now, codenamed Battlemage. However, it's also learned a lesson about promising things too early, so there's no firm release day for Battlemage yet. Maybe the first parts will arrive next year and tackle the high-end segment as well, but if performance increases, then it's a safe bet the pricing will also be higher.
For now, we can't help but be a bit excited about Arc. New GPUs architectures normally only come once every two years, and we're due for AMD and Nvidia updates in the very near future. Intel might be the 800-pound gorilla of the CPU world, but when it comes to graphics, it's definitely the underdog. We'll see if it can mark out some territory in the budget and midrange segments, and maybe even manage to keep AMD and Nvidia a bit more "honest" about pricing.
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