Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition Review: Bringing Back Midrange GPUs

For our power, temperature, clock speed, and fan speed testing, we use Powenetics hardware and software. We capture in-line GPU power consumption by collecting data while looping Metro Exodus — at 1440p ultra with midrange and higher GPUs. We also test with the FurMark stress test at 1600x900. Our power testing PC uses an open testbed, as that's required for all the extra wires and riser card, and it's the same Core i9-9900K that we've used for the past several years.

As noted earlier, we had to install a second graphics card in the PC to get the A770 to POST, but we disabled the card in Device Manager and our equipment doesn't include the power use from the other PCIe slot. GPU-Z meanwhile monitors the fan speeds, clock speeds, and other aspects of the cards, though it doesn't capture fan speed as a percentage. The GPU core clocks and fan speeds also seen to be getting slightly erratic readings — or perhaps they just expose far more granular data that causes some jitter in the charts.

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For the A770 Limited Edition, average power use while running Metro Exodus was 217W, though peak power spiked as high as 253W. The 8-pin connector maxed out at 146W, the 6-pin at 63W, and the PCIe slot at 48W, so all of the connectors are within spec. While the GPU was under load during the Metro benchmark, power use ranged between 190W and 230W.

As usual, FurMark generated a far more consistent load, and the A770 LE stayed very close to its 225W TBP, averaging 223W during our test. It's interesting that the A750 LE actually consumed more power, indicating the silicon binning is quite real. The A770 can likely maintain lower voltages while running at higher clocks.

While we don't normally discuss idle power use, mostly because it's not much of a concern with modern GPUs, the Arc cards do warrant an extra footnote. Power use at idle with the Arc A770 LE was significantly higher than on competing GPUs. With our Powenetics hardware, we recorded average power draw over 30 seconds of 48.1W. The RTX 3060 meanwhile averaged 15.0W while the RX 6650 XT used just 7.3W. Intel says it's aware of the problem and is working on a potential fix.

While Intel advertises a 2100 MHz typical game clock, our experience suggests the cards will do far more than that on a consistent basis. For example, the A770 averaged 2350 MHz in the Metro test, but more importantly, it also managed to run at 2375 MHz during FurMark's stress test. Considering FurMark often represents something of a worst-case scenario, the fact that the GPU clocked well above Intel's official speed means you'll likely get better performance.

Fan speeds appear to be tuned for peak temperatures of around 75C, at least for our test environment. We saw a maximum temperature of 75C on the A770 in both tests, with peak fan speeds of 2032 RPM in Metro and 2041 RPM in FurMark. Average fan speeds were quite a bit lower, with 1763 RPM in Metro and 1806 RPM in FurMark.

For noise testing, we positioned the SPL (sound pressure level) meter between the two fans at a distance of about 10cm to minimize the impact of the CPU cooling fans — and we ensured the secondary card's fans were stopped. We had a noise floor of 31 dB(A), and even though the fans were spinning, that's what the idle A770 measured: 31.5 dB(A). Under load, after 10 minutes of gaming, the fan speed stabilized at around 2000 RPM, and the noise level increased to 46.0 dB(A).

As with the A380, we couldn't measure fan speed as a percentage of maximum, nor could we set a static fan speed. Still, from a few feet away, the GPU's fan wasn't really audible over other noise sources. 

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