One human's journey with an Arc A750

[Mussels]

Day one kill Nvidia drivers with DDU,
Day one install Intel Driver center,
Day one play any Game u want.


On Linux nearly the same, oh wait Intel drivers are Open Source not Closed Source like Nvidia ones.

Not sure what you mean by any of that - on "day one" Intel's graphics drivers were... not good.

 

[eidairaman1]

Not sure what you mean by any of that - on "day one" Intel's graphics drivers were... not good.

Just like the i740 on day 1, was not good.

 

[Space Lynx]

Day one kill Nvidia drivers with DDU,
Day one install Intel Driver center,
Day one play any Game u want.


On Linux nearly the same, oh wait Intel drivers are Open Source not Closed Source like Nvidia ones.

i did not realize intel drivers were open source for dGPU, does this also apply to Intel chipset drivers? I thought only open source drivers on Linux was for AMD cpu/gpu.

this is good to know, hopefully Intel can continue to improve over the coming years. competition is good for us all, and I do want Linux to be my main rig someday.

 

[Mussels]

i did not realize intel drivers were open source for dGPU, does this also apply to Intel chipset drivers? I thought only open source drivers on Linux was for AMD cpu/gpu.

this is good to know, hopefully Intel can continue to improve over the coming years. competition is good for us all, and I do want Linux to be my main rig someday.

They definitely used some open source code as they used DXVK to fix their DX9 performance, but that doesnt mean *all* of their stuff is open source or on every platform.

 

[Blitzkuchen]

Arc drivers on linux are the same like for the XE IGP and its open source

 

[LabRat 891]

Arc drivers on linux are the same like for the XE IGP and its open source

So, what you're saying is that:
Intel ARC will only 'have legs' because of Linux?

Well, considering SteamOS and other Gaming-on-Linux 'improvements' recently; that actually sounds both ironically*-hilarious and amazing.

*Intel and msft have been 'like this' *makes intertwined-fingers motion*, and Intel hasn't ever been exactly "open source friendly".

 

[eidairaman1]

So, what you're saying is that:
Intel ARC will only 'have legs' because of Linux?

Well, considering SteamOS and other Gaming-on-Linux 'improvements' recently; that actually sounds both ironically*-hilarious and amazing.

*Intel and msft have been 'like this' *makes intertwined-fingers motion*, and Intel hasn't ever been exactly "open source friendly".

No linux version is completely open source either

 

[Mussels]

So, what you're saying is that:
Intel ARC will only 'have legs' because of Linux?

Well, considering SteamOS and other Gaming-on-Linux 'improvements' recently; that actually sounds both ironically*-hilarious and amazing.

*Intel and msft have been 'like this' *makes intertwined-fingers motion*, and Intel hasn't ever been exactly "open source friendly".

Many of the fixes come from DXVK, and i've been using that on AMD CPU + Nvidia GPU combos to fix broken old games (borderlands 1 GOTY and 2/presequel, especially)

Many of these gains are from fixing issues with old software, and poorly optimized software no one bothered to fix up back after sales stopped

 

[Blitzkuchen]

if i have the chioce between AMD and Intel on a sys like Debian or ubuntu ill take Intel.
Drivers:
Closed Source Nvidia
Open Source Intel
Closed and Open Source from AMD are Garbage

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Arright, we're getting back on this horse. Due to my travails getting Logi software to work, I went scorched earth and started with a fresh 22H2 install and the latest WHQL drivers (101.4502). Also set 3200 memory out of the gate. Windows Update still doesn't seem to want to auto-install ARC driver, so I did it via Intel's installer, excluding ARC Control and Download Assistant.

First impressions: Pretty good. Specific observations:

- Fan curve's questionable, but it's not intrusive or annoying when it spins up
- Audio driver seems to have some latency on desktop. System sounds tend to cut in late and cut out early
- Reported desktop power draw is pretty high, around 40W
- Getting some brief frame drops in DRG that I don't recall having with the 1070 ti, but framerates are def noticeably higher

Will try to get a sense of some other games over the next few days. For the moment, I'm off to get my Valheim server back online.

 

[Solaris17]

excluding ARC Control and Download Assistant.

First impressions: Pretty good. Specific observations:

- Fan curve's questionable, but it's not intrusive or annoying when it spins up

fun fact the arc control panel has the fan control in it. With several different modes you can choose from.

 

[Mussels]

Article earlier showed that the arc A770 being 2.3x faster than the 4060ti thanks to the extra VRAM and bus width
Intel Arc A770 231% faster than RTX 4060 Ti in ray tracing test | Custom PC

The difference between a 4060Ti and a 4070 shows how borked up nvidia stack is, and why these Arc GPUs came out at the right time

 

[masterdeejay]

12-16gb vram is recommended today.
and the bandwidth also helps:
RTX4060 272Gb/s
RTX4060ti 288Gb/s
RX7600 288.Gb/s
RX6750XT 432Gb/s
RX6800 512Gb/s
A750 512Gb/s (no 16gb version)
A770 512Gb/s (560Gb/s on the LE cards)

And sadly no overclock for the vram.

and the poor A380 is 186Gb/s

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Yup. Too many reviewers talk about how the A750 is a much better value. But when that extra VRAM comes into play, not so much. As new VRAM heavy titles hit, the A770 16GB is going to really hit its stride. Particularly with drivers constantly improving. Now where's that hotkey for recording.

 

[Mussels]

Yup. Too many reviewers talk about how the A750 is a much better value. But when that extra VRAM comes into play, not so much. As new VRAM heavy titles hit, the A770 16GB is going to really hit its stride. Particularly with drivers constantly improving. Now where's that hotkey for recording.

They need the VRAM bus width to benefit, as much as they need more VRAM.

The A750 still has a 256 bit memory bus, while the cards struggling in the chart above all have less

RX 6600, 4060, 4060Ti and RX7600 are all 128 bit
6750XT jumps to 192 bit
6800 is 256 bit, as is the 4070


You can tell that a 128-bit bus is simply not enough for this scenario 192 is good enough and 256+ has headroom, simply because some of those GPU's are incredibly similar, just revision changes with different RAM sizes and bus widths

A GPU with 4x2GB VRAM modules is cheaper than make than one with 8x1GB, so we get this happening every time new VRAM tech comes out. Theres always been cards with higher capacity VRAM and worse performance because of the cut back bus width (Think the GTX 970 and it's 3.5GB+512MB weirdness vs the plain GTX980 with its regular 4GB)

 

[sepheronx]

The only way though to get the 16gb card is, so far, the acer card. Intel stopped the 16gb A770 production for some reason.

 

[Mussels]

The only way though to get the 16gb card is, so far, the acer card. Intel stopped the 16gb A770 production for some reason.

Cost probably - when Nvidia and AMD both changed how their cards are being made at the same time, I'd say there was a shortage of the higher capacity modules

 

[80-watt Hamster]

So it's been a bit, mostly because there hasn't been anything significant to report. Something I did forget to mention earlier: The fan weirdness was total PEBKAC. I let the thing run way too long before popping my head in to discover that a cable was preventing one of the fans from even spinning. Oops. Next set of observations:

- ARC Control limits it to 190W by default, pretty far below the 225W TDP. Even at this power level, temps get up to 80+ pretty easily
- Like many cards, a slight underclock can knock temps down appreciably. 200 MHz got me 5C, IIRC
- Compatibility isn't yet universal. Last Epoch, for example (which granted is Early Access), will simply not run. If you can even get to the splash screen, it will crash before getting in-game. Nothing else I've tried has shown such poor behaviour, however.
- Not A750 specific, but why do modern cards need so much heatsink? Don't remember how much my 190W R9 380 actually pulled, but it operated perfectly happily on half or less the A750's HSF, even with one dead fan. My 2-fan 1070ti operates at the same temp as my 3-fan 5600 XT while pulling 30-50 more watts, on something like 2/3 the cooler (both mass and size). Transistor density, I suppose

Sadly, it's back in its box, which is a shame because it's the most potent card I own. But it's no good for F@H, and Last Epoch is one of the games a friend and I play on our weekly session. I'll see about digging it back out in a few months, but can't promise to remember to record the results here.

 

[Fouquin]

- ARC Control limits it to 190W by default, pretty far below the 225W TDP. Even at this power level, temps get up to 80+ pretty easily

Weird, my A770 rarely breaks 80C on the stock fan curve. With the custom curve it's around 72C at load with an overclock. This is in a Streacom DA2 where the card has access to fresh air via a mesh panel. Though the fan settings like to reset at their own convenience, so I usually check Arc Control every couple days to see if it's still set where I want it. 190W is the correct default for both cards, the 225W rating is technically the TDP, but 190W is the actual operating TDP and any higher is "overclocking" via power limit. That said you shouldn't see any difference between 190W and 225W with all other settings at stock, and depending on the quality of the core you may not notice a performance drop until as low as 165W.

- Not A750 specific, but why do modern cards need so much heatsink? Don't remember how much my 190W R9 380 actually pulled, but it operated perfectly happily on half or less the A750's HSF, even with one dead fan. My 2-fan 1070ti operates at the same temp as my 3-fan 5600 XT while pulling 30-50 more watts, on something like 2/3 the cooler (both mass and size). Transistor density, I suppose

The heatsink on Intel's LE card is actually kinda tiny by modern standards. It's very thin. If I had time to disassemble my card and weigh the heatsink against those on the traditional ~200W cards from the last decade I'd love to see how they compare. Intel may have packed more metal in since they really wanted to keep the fans spinning as slow as possible, but with how compact the card actually is I can't imagine it's much more.

- Compatibility isn't yet universal. Last Epoch, for example (which granted is Early Access), will simply not run. If you can even get to the splash screen, it will crash before getting in-game. Nothing else I've tried has shown such poor behaviour, however.

Game compatibility is absolutely still a problem. Even high profile new releases are hit or miss if you expect to play on day 1. I did notice a significant decrease in problems after transitioning to Windows 11 on the Arc machine. Games that previously had a lot of stability issues or straight up crashed on launch now play more consistently. Not sure if that's because Intel has put more time into optimizing Win11 over Win10, or if it's because of inherent improvements within Win11. Could be both, but it was very immediately noticeably improved with Win11.

 

[AusWolf]

- ARC Control limits it to 190W by default, pretty far below the 225W TDP. Even at this power level, temps get up to 80+ pretty easily

Is that GPU chip power draw, or total card power draw?

- Not A750 specific, but why do modern cards need so much heatsink? Don't remember how much my 190W R9 380 actually pulled, but it operated perfectly happily on half or less the A750's HSF, even with one dead fan. My 2-fan 1070ti operates at the same temp as my 3-fan 5600 XT while pulling 30-50 more watts, on something like 2/3 the cooler (both mass and size). Transistor density, I suppose

I would assume so.

 

[Mussels]

The fan weirdness was total PEBKAC. I let the thing run way too long before popping my head in to discover that a cable was preventing one of the fans from even spinning. Oops. Next set of observations:

@JC316 did this, got a new AMD GPU and was complaining of driver crashes only to find one of the fans had snagged a nearby cable

The bigger heatsinks are for the noise, the more metal the quieter the fans can be - and they're also used to cool hotter VRAM chips too, so they need more coverage of the PCB.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Over a year later, and there's finally news fit to print, primarily that the A750 is back in service. Its original home, my Zen3 platform, has been relegated to exclusive game server duty, and the daily driver is now my CML system. After going back to the 1070 ti for a bit, then dropping in a Titan XP for awhile, it seemed time to give Alchemist another chance. And so far? Mostly drama-free. I haven't played or tested very many titles, however. My Big Three are still FFXIV, Satisfactory and Last Epoch.

• FFXIV is... fine. Coming off the Titan, frametimes seem worse, which I suspect is due to the game's DX11 nature. Running windowed at ~80-90% of 1440p. Stability's been stellar, and framerate problems seem the same as ever: CPU, engine or netcode limitations when there's just too much happening on screen (hello, Limsa aetherite plaza).
• Satisfactory's great! Most of my playtime was on the UE4 engine, so the fewer FPS in UE5 is a bit of a downer, but it runs as well on the A750 as anything else in my collection I've tried.
• Last Epoch works now! Framerate feels lower than it should, and high-activity scenes feel like they bog down more than I remember. BUT: it's in 1.x now, and I think there have been some graphical updates since Early Access. First significant observation: either the engine or the driver does not like limited framerate, and gets pretty bad screen tearing when enabled. Things are much better when unlimited. Second significant observation: I've not deduced a cause for this, but the framerate will arbitrarily tank to sub-15FPS for 10-30 seconds. This won't happen every session, but if unlucky can occur every few minutes. Until it doesn't.
• Desktop: Embedded video will sometimes artifact when not in focus. Seems driver related, as a restart will fix it.
• Other games: None of the other small number I've played on it have shown immediate issues, but they've also not been given much time to show any.

I'm still not using any of Intel's software, and Windows as yet doesn't seem to know what to do w.r.t. auto-insallation of drivers. I did what I usually do with graphics drivers these days and extracted the archive and pointed it to the DLL directly rather than run the installer.

The plan is to keep the A750 as my DD until something changes. I'd probably be better served by the Titan or 2060S, but then the Arc's doing nothing again, and those can (and will) be employed elsewhere in the house as space heatersfolders.

Spoiler: Side note on the 2060S

The 2060S is a small story on its own. I saw that it had a 20C hotspot delta, and set about trying to remedy. The pastes I had on hand did not help, so I ordered some Kryosheet. It's better now, but still not great. I suspect uneven clamping force. Removing the backplate helped a little, but artificially bending the PCB off-neutral (either toward straight or more curved) would make it worse again.

EDIT: wording cleanup