So like if you want to play really old games, does ARC run them fine? Like Dragon Age Origins, or Stronghold HD, or is it a case by case basis? or is it just as good in really old games as Nvidia/AMD are? or is ARC only for newish games?

Space LynxSo like if you want to play really old games, does ARC run them fine? Like Dragon Age Origins, or Stronghold HD, or is it a case by case basis? or is it just as good in really old games as Nvidia/AMD are? or is ARC only for newish games?

Maybe @Solaris17 would have some insight?

Space LynxSo like if you want to play really old games, does ARC run them fine? Like Dragon Age Origins, or Stronghold HD, or is it a case by case basis? or is it just as good in really old games as Nvidia/AMD are? or is ARC only for newish games?

No, it doesn't, and it's certainly not anywhere near AMD and Nvidia in that respect. It's very hit and miss. In general anything pre-DX12/Vulkan will run a lot worse than it should for a card of this tier. I did some head to head comparisons between my GTX 1070 and Arc A770 and the former was often faster in DX11 games. Even recent DX11 games like Yakuza: Like a Dragon, where the A770's performance is all over the place and incapable of even a locked 60fps. Intel have fixed up a handful of really popular titles like CS:GO, but that's it. DXVK is a very useful tool for getting older stuff running better on Arc, though it's not a magic bullet. Compatibility will be similar to what you'll find on Linux when using that. There's also other stuff that just plain doesn't work, from specific games to Switch emulators.

For all the cheerleading online, you're still getting a heavily compromised experience with Arc if you want to play anything except the most popular AAA games as it stands. That's not to say you 100% shouldn't buy one, but you should go in with your eyes open and be ready to tinker incessently. That will get you around or at least mitigate most problems, though some you'll just have to wait for driver updates to hopefully fix in the future.

AretakNo, it doesn't, and it's certainly not anywhere near AMD and Nvidia in that respect. It's very hit and miss. In general anything pre-DX12/Vulkan will run a lot worse than it should for a card of this tier. I did some head to head comparisons between my GTX 1070 and Arc A770 and the former was often faster in DX11 games. Even recent DX11 games like Yakuza: Like a Dragon, where the A770's performance is all over the place and incapable of even a locked 60fps. Intel have fixed up a handful of really popular titles like CS:GO, but that's it. DXVK is a very useful tool for getting older stuff running better on Arc, though it's not a magic bullet. Compatibility will be similar to what you'll find on Linux when using that. There's also other stuff that just plain doesn't work, from specific games to Switch emulators.

For all the cheerleading online, you're still getting a heavily compromised experience with Arc if you want to play anything except the most popular AAA games as it stands. That's not to say you 100% shouldn't buy one, but you should go in with your eyes open and be ready to tinker incessently. That will get you around or at least mitigate most problems, though some you'll just have to wait for driver updates to hopefully fix in the future.

this is the most important thing no one is telling you, lot of people like to play older games sometimes... thanks for your input.

ScrizzMaybe @Solaris17 would have some insight?

I really need to write my experiences I have all my screen shots and notes.

I was playing never winter nights 1 which was DX8 it was running fine. So were some other older games I was playing. It is much better with recent drivers.

some games are cherry picked optimized like CS:GO but that’s not at all and shouldn’t be representative of the rest of the stack. I think glitches and bugs are expected when you are working with games that are over a decade old and span multiple DX versions. With that said at current I think people cherry pick the bad ones and try to use them as representations of how bad ARC is. From what iv seen the majority of older games on current drivers are playable at decent frames.

I think that in most cases AMD and Nvidia beat these cards at older games; but for example when you are comparing nwn1 100fps vs 111fps is that actually a playability issue? No.

I don’t test emulators, they aren’t representative of a meaningful portion of any kind of gaming and most emulation engines are inconsistent in their own right even on AMD or Nvidia hardware. I mean emulation sites are filled with posts or news about “groups” trying to get “X” game working.

AretakNo, it doesn't, and it's certainly not anywhere near AMD and Nvidia in that respect. It's very hit and miss. In general anything pre-DX12/Vulkan will run a lot worse than it should for a card of this tier. I did some head to head comparisons between my GTX 1070 and Arc A770 and the former was often faster in DX11 games. Even recent DX11 games like Yakuza: Like a Dragon, where the A770's performance is all over the place and incapable of even a locked 60fps. Intel have fixed up a handful of really popular titles like CS:GO, but that's it. DXVK is a very useful tool for getting older stuff running better on Arc, though it's not a magic bullet. Compatibility will be similar to what you'll find on Linux when using that. There's also other stuff that just plain doesn't work, from specific games to Switch emulators.

For all the cheerleading online, you're still getting a heavily compromised experience with Arc if you want to play anything except the most popular AAA games as it stands. That's not to say you 100% shouldn't buy one, but you should go in with your eyes open and be ready to tinker incessently. That will get you around or at least mitigate most problems, though some you'll just have to wait for driver updates to hopefully fix in the future.

Thankfully, after public shaming them, we got them to fix the drivers so Switch emulation is stable now.

Put public pressure, it's the only way to get them to even start moving.

AretakNo, it doesn't, and it's certainly not anywhere near AMD and Nvidia in that respect. It's very hit and miss. In general anything pre-DX12/Vulkan will run a lot worse than it should for a card of this tier. I did some head to head comparisons between my GTX 1070 and Arc A770 and the former was often faster in DX11 games. Even recent DX11 games like Yakuza: Like a Dragon, where the A770's performance is all over the place and incapable of even a locked 60fps. Intel have fixed up a handful of really popular titles like CS:GO, but that's it. DXVK is a very useful tool for getting older stuff running better on Arc, though it's not a magic bullet. Compatibility will be similar to what you'll find on Linux when using that. There's also other stuff that just plain doesn't work, from specific games to Switch emulators.

For all the cheerleading online, you're still getting a heavily compromised experience with Arc if you want to play anything except the most popular AAA games as it stands. That's not to say you 100% shouldn't buy one, but you should go in with your eyes open and be ready to tinker incessently. That will get you around or at least mitigate most problems, though some you'll just have to wait for driver updates to hopefully fix in the future.

Thanks for posting this. As someone who often plays more older games than new ones, it confirms what I've witnessed on a friend's Arc system (having to "emulate" pre DX-12 then spend more timehand-tweaking around the damage whilst AMD & nVidia don't seems to be an absurd compromise). Whilst I'm all for a (much needed) 3rd player in the GPU market, it's sad that there's an enormous amount of cherry-picking reviewing only DX12 / hand-tweaked DX 9-11 titles by reviewers who seem to be reviewing "around" the issue rather than addressing it - basically 'untweaked' performance for a lot of older games looks like this, except CS:GO was fixed / tweaked whilst in the real world it's pretty obvious that out of the 70,000 PC games available to play (of which only a tiny fraction are DX12), Intel aren't going to go back and tweak any more than the "top 50-100" DX9-11 games)...