Arc A380: the performance of the Intel graphics card is revealed

Intel has been communicating for almost a year on its Arc Alchemist graphics cards, but it must be admitted that the manufacturer has become more discreet in recent months, between delays and reduced performance. Originally, if Intel GPUs were to compete with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30s, they may eventually arrive at the same time as the RTX 40 series, and the performance gap will inevitably widen in favor of Nvidia…

The first tests fall

Some benchmarks have reached us of the first models of the Arc A380, a small entry-level graphics card sold in China to integrators who can customize it andoverclock slightly. This GPU is clearly not designed to run the triple A titles of the moment in 4K, but is intended for gaming in Full HD (1080p), and it will even be necessary to reduce the graphics on the most demanding titles.

Our colleagues from Wccftech published official Intel data on the performance of this card with some well-known games, in order to compare it to its direct competitors: the GeForce GTX 1650 from Nvidia and the Radeon RX 6400 from AMD which can be found around 200 € right now. For information, the games mentioned were set to 1080p and with average quality graphics.

We can see that the GTX 1650 offers much better performance than the A380 in most games with 10, 20 or even 30 fps more. The Radeon RX 6400 is also faster overall, except in a few titles like The Witcher 3, Total War: Troy Where F1 2021. Rather disappointing results, which certainly show that it is possible to play fluidly at more than 60 fps, but the games selected are not very young or not very demanding.

AMD processors disadvantaged?

A Chinese user has also shown (via Bilibili) that using an AMD CPU with the Arc A380 lowers its performance by an average of 17% in games compared to an A380 + Intel CPU configuration. The explanation may lie behind the fact that the Resizable Bar (a technology that gives the CPU direct access to video memory) is supported by processors used with Intel Arc GPUs. But this is not the case for AMD processors which have their own Smart Access Memory technology.

The Intel Arc A380 is therefore off to a rocky start, and it is hoped that the more high-end Alchemist-series GPUs will be able to better position themselves against the competition. Without offering high performance, these GPUs could possibly benefit from a good price-quality ratio, but it will be necessary to ensure a minimum in terms of performance and compatibility. For the moment, the A380 is only distributed in China at a recommended price of around €160. We shouldn’t see it arrive in Europe before the end of the summer.