Introduction

Sparkle Arc A380 Genie is a compact, low-profile graphics card, and a refreshing new take on Intel's entry-level GPU. The Arc A380, if you recall, launched in 2022 with a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, a full-height board design, and for all intents and purposes, was mooted as a 1080p gaming graphics solution, if you can lower your game settings. The Sparkle Genie takes a different approach to the A380—it is a low-profile graphics card, albeit one that needs two slots in your system; and more importantly, it makes do with PCIe slot power.

So who really is the Sparkle A380 Genie targeted at? Imagine power users or software developers with three 4K Ultra HD displays, and a processor that lacks integrated graphics—such as a Core i7 or Core i9 KF, or a purpose-built workstation or HEDT processor from the Xeon W3400 series, W2400 series; or even the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series—all of which lack integrated graphics. To this specific crowd, the Arc A380 has the muscle to power up to three 4K display heads with an uncompromising Windows 11 DWM with all its GPU-accelerated UI effects. The A380 also has a solid set of hardware-accelerated video encoders and decoders that support even the latest AV1 format. Add to this, the card has three display outputs despite its half-height board—two mini-DisplayPort 2.0 ports and an HDMI 2.0b. Even if these features don't appeal, how about the full Intel XMX and DP4a AI acceleration?



Alright, so if you're not a power user, and you don't fit into the above use-case, is there enough meat on the bone for you with this card? Of course! It's still an Arc A380, a contemporary discrete GPU that meets the full DirectX 12 Ultimate feature-set, including real time ray tracing; and comes with XeSS performance enhancement. The last A380 we reviewed was way back in 2022, and we've periodically re-tested the card with newer Intel graphics drivers. Intel has been very hard at work on the software side of things, and has significantly increased the performance, compatibility, and game-specific optimizations of its Arc A-series GPUs over the past year.

At the core of the A380 is the Xe HPG graphics architecture, which is Intel's first major attempt at a contemporary gaming graphics architecture in the over two decades since the i740. This graphics architecture has been built from the ground up with not just a contemporary SIMD engine, but also hardware-accelerated real time ray tracing, as well as AI acceleration, which powers XeSS. Its media and display engines meet the latest standards, too. The 6 nm ACM-G10 silicon packs 8 Xe cores, worth 128 execution units, or 1,024 unified shaders, besides 128 XMX AI cores, and 8 Ray Tracing Units. It's wired to 6 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 96-bit memory bus, and features a PCI-Express 4.0 x8 host interface. Resizable BAR is needed to perform as advertised.

The second kind of user that this card might appeal to is the HTPC crowd. You're getting a full size HDMI 2.0b that supports even 8K at 30 Hz, or 4K at 60 Hz; as well as encode and decode acceleration for AV1, HEVC, and most other popular streaming video formats. The low-profile build of this card should make it perfect for SFF HTPCs, where the lack of power connectors also helps. There's even a low-profile bracket in the box. What doesn't help its case is cooling. While the other full-sized A380 cards tend to feature idle fan-stop, the Sparkle A380 Genie keeps its pair of tiny fans running at all times, which imposes some idle fan-noise. More on this in our noise-testing section. Sparkle is asking $125 for this card, as it squares off against an Amazon jungle of sub-$200 graphics card options.