Do NOT Buy the Intel Arc A770 Without Watching This First! - Intel Arc A770 (16GB) VR Performance

This video did not go at all  like I was expecting it to. I bought an Arc A770 GPU, installed it in  my test PC and was ready to play some VR   games and see how the A770 performs and  as I go to launch Air Link I see this. It turns out, Oculus officially, only supports  Nvidia and AMD GPU's. At this point in time   Intel's Arc GPU's are not supported in the  Oculus software. And when and if they will   be remains to be seen. I don't think they're in  any hurry to add support though because taking   a look at the December 2022 Steam Hardware  survey, which is the most recent survey at   the time I'm making this video, there is  not a single Intel Arc GPU on the list. Just because they aren't officially supported  doesn't mean it doesn't work at all though.   Thanks to Guy Godin and his Virtual Desktop  app I was able to run several games and get   an idea of what kind of VR performance the A770 is  capable of in it's unofficially supported state. Now if you've seen my other VR  graphics card benchmark videos;   for those I used the Performance overlay  in the Oculus Debug tool. Since the A770 is   not officially supported though I was unable to  use that tool; so instead, in this video you'll   be seeing Virtual Desktop's Performance  statistics overlay. Also, Virtual Destop   doesn't give you different render resolutions  to choose from like the Oculus PC app does.   You instead choose based on what graphics card  you have, from a Potato all the way up to Ultra. So yah, for Beat Saber I was able to select  Ultra Graphics Quality at 120Hz in Virtual   Desktop and in Beat Saber's settings I set  the render scale to 1.5, turned MSAA off,   turned Smoke and Screen Distortion effects  On and Max Shockwave Particles to 2.   For not having official VR support the A770  performed really well. It was almost always   a few fps below 120 as I was playing but gameplay  was smooth and Beat Saber looked sharp and crisp. Oh, I should mention my test PC is rocking an AMD  Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU, 32GB of Corsair Vengeance   DDR4 3600MHz CL16 RAM and of course the 16GB  Intel reference model of the ARC A770. And as is   recommended to get the best performance possible  out of the A770, Resizable BAR was enabled. Since Beat Saber worked fine through  Virtual Desktop I next fired up my   favorite VR shooter Contractors leaving  the Virtual Desktop settings the same   and in Contractors graphics settings I set  everything to High except for Anti-Aliasing   which I set to Low. At these settings, again  the A770 did well. It wasn't quite able to hit   120fps at these settings but it did stay  above 100fps the majority of the time,   so I turned the refresh rate down to 90Hz and  just to see what would happen increased the in   game graphics quality to Ultra and the A770  delivered some very solid performance. 90Hz   at Ultra Graphics Quality in both Virtual  Desktop and in game were not a problem. With the success of those two games I decided  to try firing up Steam VR and see how the A770   handles Half Life Alyx. Initially I was able to  load into the game just fine and navigate the menu   but as soon as I tried to load up a game that's  when everything went wrong. The game locked up   and eventually crashed out to the Steam VR home  environment. To make sure this wasn't just some   one off fluke I tried loading up Half Life Alyx  half a dozen or more times after this and every   time it crashed. Sometimes I could get to the  menu again but other times the game would act   like it was going to start up but would then  lock up and crash before ever getting there.   Based off it's performance in Beat Saber and  Contractors I'm confident the A770 can run Half   Life Alyx just fine but I don't know who needs to  update their software to get it working properly,   Intel or Steam? I'm guessing it's Intel though.  Anyway, I wasn't able to get Alyx to run at all   so I decided to see if this is a Steam VR  problem or simply a Half Life Alyx problem. I then fired up Assetto Corsa and on my  first attempt things did not go well. So   I tried again. This time I was able to run  the in game benchmark in VR just fine which   is the footage you're seeing right now but when  I tried to actually cue up a race it would fail   to load and I'd be kicked back to the Steam  VR home environment once again. I tried at   least a dozen times to get a race started  and every time I was met with some kind of   problem. Sometimes it wouldn't recognize my  racing wheel and pedals and other times the   race would never load. After about an hour of  messing with it, I just decided to call it. I then tried Microsoft Flight Simulator and  it exhibited similar issues to Assetto Corsa.   To be fair when the game starts up you do  get a warning message saying your computer   does not meet the minimum requirements and  that you may encounter some issues so yah,   there is that. The main problem I had though  was when switching to VR mode sometimes it   would switch over fine and others the game would  lock up leaving me in this infinite Waiting loop. One of the few times I was able to get into  VR and cue up a flight I had Virtual Desktops   Graphics Quality at Medium, and the Flight  Simulator settings as listed on screen. As   you can see I got about 50fps in this  training flight but I should draw your   attention to the bottom right corner of  the Performance Overlay as this was with   Synchronous Space Warp active. Turing it  off cut the frame rate in half meaning the   A770 was only able to muster around 25fps  on it's own at these settings. But again   the majority of the time I wasn't even able  to get Flight Simulator to run in VR so yah. At this point it was looking a lot  like the A770 and Steam VR don't   like each other all that much so  I went back to my Oculus Library   and tested out one of my Favorite VR  games from last year Red Matter 2. Unlike the Steam VR games; it ran great. I  was able to set Virtual Desktops Graphics   Quality to Ultra and the refresh rate to 90Hz.  In Red Matter 2's graphics settings I set the   resolution scale to 1.1 and turned both Indirect  and Dynamic Shadows on. With Synchronous Space   Warp disabled the A770 kicked out an almost  perfect 90fps throughout all my testing. I   did see it dip down close to 80 when I was  playing around with the reflection of my   scanning tool laser in this window but the game  still ran smooth and looked great in the headset. Keeping the settings in Virtual Desktop  the same I then tried out The Walking   Dead Saints and Sinners and was able  to set the pixel density to 100% and   all the other settings to Ultra, except  for Anti-Aliasing which I turned off.   As you can see the A770 had no problem at all  with this game. There were fairly frequent dips   down into the 80's but just like Red Matter  2 overall the game both looked and ran great. The last game I tested was Lone Echo  2. To get this game to run at what I   feel is an acceptable level I had to lower the  Graphics Quality in Virtual Desktop to Medium   and the refresh rate to 72Hz. As for the game  settings I set most things to High but rather   than go over them one by one I'm just going  to list them on screen so you can see them.   Overall the A770 kept the frame rate at our  target of 72fps. In some parts of the game   though the frame rate did fall down into the  60's but the frame times remained consistent   because while playing I didn't notice  the change in frame rate really at all. Even though I was able to get some VR games  to run with the A770, and run pretty well in   some instances, it probably goes without saying  that I would NOT recommend buying one for PCVR. At least for now. The fact that there isn't any official support  for VR at the time I'm making this is a huge   knock against the A770. Yes it can run VR  games, but having to purchase a 3rd party   app in order to run them isn't all that exciting  I'm sure to most people; and the simple fact that   Steam VR games are basically unplayable means  your money will be much better spent elsewhere.

Channel: Maraksot78

Views: 8,515

Keywords: intel, ARC, alchemist, ARC alchemist, A770, A 770, VR, Virtual Reality, performance, fps, 90Hz, 120Hz, 80Hz, 72Hz, air link, airlink, oculus, meta, quest link, quest, quest 2, qust, qest, best, better, vitural reality, vitural, virtual, improve, resolution, gaming, Beat Saber, Contractors, Red Matter 2, Microsoft, Flight Simulator, Assetto Corsa, Lone Echo 2, Half Life Alyx, walking dead, saints and sinners, saints & sinners, Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, frames per second

Id: KwP49-Vk0rc

Length: 8min 15sec (495 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 04 2023