Positioning & Architecture
With the Arc A380 Genie, Sparkle has released an ultra-compact, affordable entry-level graphics solution that's available at a highly accessible $125 price point. Most graphics cards are sold at well over 300 bucks these days, so it was interesting to see what you can get for a bit above 100 dollars. From a technology perspective, the A380 uses the Intel ACM-G11 graphics processor, which is the company's smallest current graphics chip. It's built using a 6 nanometer process at TSMC Taiwan, and comes with 1024 GPU cores, 32 ROPs and a 6 GB GDDR6 framebuffer. The Intel Arc A750 and A770 are made using the bigger ACM-G10 GPU, in case you were wondering. Sparkle's A380 Genie is optimized to run using PCIE slot-power of just 75 W, which means some compromises had to be made, usually the A380 requires a single 8-pin PCIe power connector and consumes up to 90 W. Sparkle lowered the board power limit accordingly, which means the card now runs at a clock frequency of 2000 MHz, vs 2450 MHz on the reference design—a 23% difference. Given the positioning, it's nice to see that Sparkle includes a low-profile bracket in the box, so that the card will fit into all low-profile scenarios easily.

Performance
Averaged over our whole benchmark suite, the A380 really can't deliver an enjoyable gaming experience. Even Counter-Strike 2, the lightest title on our lineup, runs at only 52 FPS. All our testing is done at maximized settings, and I tested the A380 like that, too, because that's the only way to get numbers that can be compared to other cards, to get a feel for the relative positioning of the card. However, even at lowest details at 1080p, you will not reach 60 FPS in most games. Typically, the switch from highest to lowest details will net you around +50% in performance, which means that our 27 FPS average turns into 40 frames—not the 60 FPS experience we're looking for. We tested GeForce RTX 3050 6 GB last week, and while that's a relatively slow card, too, it's still 60% faster than the A380, which makes a huge difference for gaming. Sparkle's card is even slower than the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT (but a little bit faster than the RX 6400). Aging cards like the GeForce GTX 1060 and Radeon RX 580 are 25% quicker. Intel's own Arc A580 is 2.5x as fast as the A380—that's about the performance level that I'd consider baseline for 1080p gaming in 2024, and you'll still have to run at lowered settings.

On the other hand, very light or older games will run just fine on the A380, compared to integrated graphics solutions like Ryzen 5700G, the graphics performance is still roughly twice as good. AMD's newest IGP in the Ryzen 8000G series will be able to match or beat the A380. The integrated graphics in current Intel desktop processors are much slower, so technically A380 will be an upgrade over such even more entry-level solutions.

DLSS, FSR and Frame Generation
While most gamers are aware of NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR, Intel's XeSS solution is less-well-known. It is supported in around 50 games and works on hardware of all vendors, but Intel GPUs have a special hardware-specific render path that promises better image quality at higher performance. AMD Radeon FSR is hardware-agnostic, which means it will work on the A380, too. Only NVIDIA DLSS requires an NVIDIA card, meaning you won't have an upscaling option in games with DLSS exclusivity—a strong selling point for NVIDIA. Their cheapest card starts at $180 though, which is considerably more expensive in terms of percentages. However, upping their budget by $50 isn't completely impossible for many gamers. FSR 3 Frame Generation is really not an option for the A380, because its base FPS is so low. AMD recommends a base FPS of 50+, so that you don't notice the added latency as much and the artifacts are less visible.

VRAM Size
Arc A380 has 6 GB VRAM, which is more than most other options in this segment, but it really makes no difference because the shading power is so low. No doubt, especially at 1440p and beyond, there are games that will run terribly with just 4 GB VRAM—and they'll still run terribly with the A380 6 GB, because there's just not enough graphics horsepower. When it comes to VRAM, I'd prefer a 4 GB RX 470 or 570 over the A380 any day, because they do offer a bit higher FPS, despite a smaller VRAM size—and they're much more affordable, too.

Ray Tracing
Sprinkling RT effects on top of your game graphics comes with a serious performance hit—making little sense when you're not even hitting 60 FPS, even with RT disabled. We still tested ray tracing, and while it works, it's definitely not useful for a card in this performance class. For AMD that's good news, because their weaker RT implementation shouldn't factor into your buying decision, rather focus on pricing and pure raster performance. Given the fidelity of today's RT effects, I also don't see a reason to do something like 1080p at lowest settings with FSR Ultra Performance just to enable ray tracing for slightly improved lighting, reflections, shadows and ambient occlusion—which will be barely visible because of the low render resolution and all the shimmering from the upscaler.

Physical Design, Heat & Noise
Sparkle's A380 Genie is a highly compact design, which is fantastic for builders of SFF PCs or systems that are otherwise constrained in the space they offer for a graphics card. While the cooler is really simple in physical construction—it's just a slab of metal without heatpipes, which is perfectly sufficient for the heat load of the card. Unfortunately Sparkle failed the fan settings big time. At load, the card's fans will run at very high RPM, which makes the card VERY loud. With over 42 dBA it's one of the loudest graphics cards we ever tested—definitely not an option for a small and quiet living room computer. I understand that it's desirable to avoid overheating on a small card like this—actually any card, but running the fans at crazy speeds just to keeps the temps as low as possible makes little sense. Had Sparkle allowed higher temperatures, of around 70°C, which is still not even close to overheating, the noise levels could be significantly improved. Noise levels in non-gaming scenarios aren't much better either. For some reason the card doesn't support idle-fan-stop, which means the fans are always running. I'm not totally against this idea, but please run the fans at ultra low speeds, so that there's still some airflow without causing much noise. Unfortunately Sparkle's card is the opposite of that. In idle, the fan will constantly ramp up and down every two seconds, which is very noticeable, because the change in acoustics draws your attention. Imagine trying to watch a movie or working in MS Office while you hear a constant buzzing that gets louder and quieter all the time. Maybe Sparkle can address this with a BIOS update, if they do, I'll retest this part and update the review accordingly.

Power Consumption
As mentioned before, the Sparkle Arc A380 runs with PCIe slot power only, which makes this a unique selling point. The other A380 cards require an 8-pin power cable, the Arc A310 is slot-power-only, too. Although it's an impressive engineering achievement, the card's energy efficiency isn't particularly good when considering both power usage and achieved FPS. Efficiency is comparable to old cards from the GeForce 30 and Radeon RX 6000 Series, the best RX 7000 and GeForce 40 cards are up to 50% more energy-efficient. For Intel's Arc lineup this card is the most energy-efficient one we've tested though, by a +20% margin. The GeForce RTX 3050 6 GB that we reviewed last week runs using only slot power, too, but offers +60% higher performance. Some of the other alternatives with a performance lead aren't doing so well when it comes to power: GTX 1060: 111 W, RTX 2060: 165 W, RX 580: 200 W, Arc A580: 210 W.

Overclocking
Last week's RTX 3050 6 GB impressed with +14% real-life performance gain after overclocking, the Arc A380 Genie reached only +6%—hardly worth mentioning. Just like on the RTX 3050, power limit increases aren't available, and on the current-generation Intel Arc cards there's no memory overclocking either.

Pricing & Alternatives
While the absolute price point of $125 for the Arc A380 might be tempting, the card really is much too expensive for the gaming performance it offers. If you're looking for a card for gaming specifically, and don't care about size and power, then cards like the Arc A580 ($165) and RX 5700 XT ($200) should be worth considering, because they have the muscle you need to enjoy your games at acceptable framerates. If you're aiming to minimize your spending while still enjoying some gaming, you might want to consider the RX 580 ($90), or perhaps even the RX 470/480/570 with 4 GB, which are even more affordable nowadays. For non-gaming tasks such as productivity, internet browsing, and video playback, the integrated graphics in your processor will suffice and won't cost you anything extra. Integrated graphics are included in most modern CPUs. However, if your processor lacks integrated graphics, which is somewhat uncommon these days, then you could opt for the cheapest card available on eBay, which should range from $30 to $50, such as the NVIDIA GT 730, AMD R7 250, or similar options.

Intel Arc does have hardware-accelerated AV1 encode and decode, which is fairly unique in this segment, because older cards don't support it, neither do most IGPs. Only the new Ryzen 8000G processors with integrated RDNA 3 graphics have support for AV1 encode in hardware, which is probably the better solution if you're looking for a living room computer that's small-form-factor and highly compact. Noise is a huge problem on the A380 Genie, a non-issue on the Ryzen, but it's not going to be cheap at $230 for just the CPU alone, plus you'll need a motherboard and DDR5 memory. If you think you need AV1, definitely think twice and consider that all video streaming platforms like YouTube will automatically send the video in a format that your hardware can understand, and they will do so for at least a decade, because they want to continue making money from older computers, and older phones and tablets. If you want to upload AV1-encoded gameplay to Twitch, then please consider a more powerful graphics card first, because it's highly unlikely that people want to see you play at 30 FPS at lowest settings.