Does Intel have what it takes to gain mid-range GPU marketshare?
Published: 11th August 2022 | Source: Intel | Author: Mark Campbell
It looks like Intel has a strong RTX 3060 competitor
This week Intel has released a suite of benchmarks for its ARC A750 graphics card that compare it to Nvidia's popular RTX 3060, showcasing stronger performance (on average) across a suite of 49 titles, including 43 DirectX 12 games and 6 Vulkan games.
When gaming at a resolution of 1440p, Intel's ARC A750 is 5% faster than Nvidia's RTX 3060 on average. At 1080p, Intel's ARC A750 delivering smaller performance advantages of 3% and 4% in DirectX 12 and Vulkan games respectively.
Intel's ARC A750, the gaming graphics card that Intel has primarily focused on, has the potential to shake up the mid-range GPU market, with Intel promising strong pricing that will make their product highly competitive with existing graphics cards within the performance bracket. That said, Intel has admitted ( more info here ) that they have a lot of work to do to optimise their drivers for games that use legacy APIs like DirectX 11, which continue to be used in many modern PC games.
In DirectX 12 games, Intel's ARC A750 graphics card's performance levels can vary significantly on a game-by-game basis when compared to Nvidia's RTX 3060. At 1080p in Dolmen, Nvidia's RTX 3060 is significantly faster than Intel's ARC A750, offering less than 80% of Nvidia's performance. In other cases, like Resident Evil Village, Intel's ARC A750 can deliver 20+% more performance.
Like in many head-to-head benchmark comparisons, Nvidia's RTX 3060 and Intel's ARC A750 trade blows. That said, Intel's ARC A750 comes out on top more often than not, and it only gets better for Intel at 1440p.
At 1440p, we see Intel's ARC A750 deliver higher performance advantages over Nvidia's RTX 3060 graphics card on average. More games see both graphics cards reach performance parity, and fewer games that have significant performance disadvantages.
If Intel can offer gamers compelling pricing for their ARC series products and improve their drivers for legacy APIs, Intel has the potential to deliver some major competition into the mid-range GPU market. Having three competitors in this area should keep all parties working hard to deliver great products at reasonable prices, though it remains to be seen how much of an impact Intel's early ARC GPUs will have on the graphics card market.
Cherry Picked Results?
What's worth noting here is that Intel is not detailing the performance of any DirectX 11 games or any other games that utilise older graphics APIs. In essence, Intel is choosing to showcase benchmarking results that showcase their ARC A750 graphics card in a positive light. That said, we cannot fault Intel's selection of DirectX 12 and Vulkan titles in any major way.
Showcasing DirectX 11 performance would not be a good advertisement for Intel's ARC A-series of graphics cards, so don't expect Intel to publish such benchmarks in the future. In this regard, Intel is picking and choosing the data that they want to publish about their ARC A series of graphics cards. Every manufacturer does this to a certain extent, as all companies want to showcase their products in the best light. That being said, Intel is intentionally not showing gamers everything that they need to know about their ARC series graphics cards.
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