Intel Arc A770 vs Triple-A Gaming: 1440p, 4K, Ray Tracing, XeSS + Settings Optimisation! [Sponsored]

so it's no secret that there's something of a pricing problem in the GPU space the cost of a new graphics card seems to be going up all the time with the Lion's Share of the value increases reserved only for the most expensive Hardware meanwhile the generational increases in performance in the 250 to 350 dollar mark seem to be tailing off right but Intel aims to make a difference it's recent 4A into the discrete graphics Market has delivered the arc a750 and the a770 price between 289 to 349 dollars and in this video brought to you by digital Foundry and Intel we're not going to read fed the review though I will be doing a quick recap instead what I was curious about was the whole idea of what kind of experience the new arc cards can deliver what kind of performance in key titles do I want and how do I get it and can Arc deliver you see don't get me wrong I love benchmarking new hardware and yeah price versus performance metrics are all well and good but ultimately when you actually buy a new GPU you're not plugging it in and running it at ultra settings and comparing it to other gpus it's all about the individual gameplay experience and I think this is something that perhaps we as review us need to improve on there's a kind of Disconnect between the war numbers and actually living with a new piece of PC equipment with that said the war numbers are quite impressive I have to say Intel promised a GPU that would deliver better than RTX 3060 performance and outside of some outlier titles that's exactly what the two cards deliver on games that use the latest graphics apis dx12 and Vulcan however there is still work to be done on dx11 and older apis Intel has said as much but on the flip side Intel also promised raid facing performance that beats the competition and again that's exactly what we get RT is typically combined with image reconstruction technology and Intel developed its own machine learning based upscaler xcss now a while back Alex took a look at that but I'll be checking it out in more titles in this video and of course while Nvidia dlss support is obviously off the table able amd's fsr2 technology works on Arc as well so there are more upscaling options than Intel's alone so here's the deal in its marketing Intel has talked about bringing balance back to the market about delivering more performance for the money at the price points that actually matter to many gamers which brings me on to something else typical GPU reviews everyone reviews a new graphics card with the top of the line CPU of the moment to better isolate pure graphics performance and this is entirely valid of course but maybe it doesn't reflect the way people are actually going to be using the product so I decided to build my own balanced PC stripping back the ultra top end kit and mirroring the kind of price versus performance ideal that Arc represents it all starts with the components of course and I've chosen the core i5 12400f for my balance system paired with two eight gig sticks of 3200 megahertz ddr4 from Corsair these are like the no-brainer advice for a system to match with the arc graphics card but at this point I faced a Crossroads do I go for Ultra budget components or do I invest a little more cash with a view to more upgrade ability down the line and better features and Acoustics in the here and now well there are some power limited Cheapo motherboards out there that would likely do the job just fine with this particular processor but I ended up spending a little more on an MSI b660m mortar Micro ATX motherboard storage no need for a mechanical hard drive these days even for a budget build I picked up a one terabyte crucial P3 plus nvme SSD which slots right into the board good gaming performance no cables required the stock cooler you get with the 12400f works fine but for better temperatures and much less noise I went for a be quiet bk007 puroc 2. all of this was mounted in a phantax eclipse 400a case power supply I went for a course are 650 watt PSU this one is modular in nature which means that I only need to plug in the cables that are actually required for my specific Hardware makes for a more elegant easier to manage build finally the star of the show I used the arc a770 limited edition to complete the build it's the top end Intel card and for the additional 60 dollars over the already very decent a750 you get more performance around 5 to 15 in general but you also get 16 gigs of vram which is very nice to have Overkill perhaps but am I willing to pay that extra sixty dollars for that memory and for that extra performance well yes I am and here's the completed build your notes no real RGB craziness here but you do get a very tasteful RGB Solution on the a770 limited edition itself which sits very nicely in this build once you power up the PC I recommend a couple of options before you install Windows first of all updating the bios of the board is recommended for better compatibility and secondly a lot of people forget to enable the XMP profile of their memory in CPU limited gaming faster memory improves performance so yeah don't leave that on default finally the memory controller on the arc GPU is designed for high bandwidth throughput so you really need to enable resizable bar in the Bios to get the full performance of the card now this does mean that Arc is best suited for users of 10th gen core or ryzen 3000 class processors or better which is no problem for our 12 400 F though obviously so we've got our balanced PC now so the question is what are we going to do with it Intel talks about the arc products serving 1080P and 1440p gaming but it does seem to be 1440p that is the most popular resolution for gaming these days so that's where I decided to focus but with that said every title has a different performance profile and with upscaling technology like xcss working so well at 4K well for a few games I decided to focus on that instead onto my gameplay tests then and just to be clear while this video may be brought to you in association with Intel these are my game choices my settings and my choice of content from within those games and yeah regular viewers will know about my tastes and my stress tests and you'll be seeing some familiar gaming areas we visited and since this is personal let's just say that even though these are price versus performance orientated cards I still want to tap into cutting-edge rendering features laying down the gauntlet first of all his Metro Exodus enhanced Edition a triple A narrative-based first-person shooter that were only run on gpus that support Hardware accelerated raid facing the games available on consoles and PS5 and series X aim for a 60 FPS gaming with Dynamic resolution scaling that runs from anywhere under 1080p up to 4K at the absolute maximum now it's unfortunate that Dynamic res isn't supported on PC but I'm aiming for a 1440p output here to match a Quad HD display here are My Chosen settings then alt for Quality overall with tessellation on and higher rate facing enabled so consoles don't have tessellation active and the quality settings are a weird hybrid of high Ultra and extreme something you can't do within the settings available on PC so to maintain a solid frame rate I've set resolution scaling to 0.8 so that means that temporal data from prior frames is injected into the current one to make up the resolution difference and it works pretty well here's how it Stacks up against Xbox series X pretty close match overall in this stage but here in the Caspian you can see something interesting for hybrid settings on Xbox means you get extreme detail close-ups so more detailed than PC but detail further in the distance is much lower regardless though we have a fixed resolution on PC we have a Tessellation feature active we have better draw distance we're good to go by and large we get a lock to 60 frames per second here reversing the tiger represents one of the toughest areas in the game it's where the consoles are most often drop to 1080P or lower on PlayStation 5 but we're able to power on regardless here with our Arc build with only the smallest of drops in the densest Forest areas now I'd recommend an Adaptive sync or vrr screen for any PC Gamer it's pretty much a standard feature these days on most monitors this Smooths out dips in performance as minor as they are to the point where they're basically unnoticeable in play regardless though I'd say this is a great start for Arc Metro Exodus enhanced Edition is a Cutting Edge game that's not to be trifled with and it's running great here I'd say next up remedies control which is a game I often return to so on consoles you get a 30 FPS quality mode which is effectively PC on a kind of low medium settings hybrid with rt Reflections and glass Reflections active performance mode 60fps there no RT 1440p I wanted to see how Arc would compare here bearing in mind that we do have more rate facing performance than the consoles but first of all performance mode no problems here I can ramp up almost everything to the max on Arc with no RT and run it at 1440p 60 locked to ensure stability I turned off msaa which isn't really needed and I also reduced volumetric quality down just a touch and no matter how crazy things get in control and the pyrotechnics can be intense well the game just plays out lots to 60 frames per second here I was quite pleased about this but I think it's worth pointing out that the difference between console hybrid low medium settings and higher settings as we're seeing here with Arc isn't game changing but raid facing is so in this comparison I'm running archon console settings which is 1440p with those hybrid rasterization settings and RT Reflections and transparency Reflections active the Arty effects are actually of a higher Precision on PC generally and it actually would have been useful to have those console optimizations ported into the PC build alas it didn't happen still I found that Arc could run a fair amount of the game at 60 FPS anyway when it drops within 50 to 60 territory generally with minimums the absolute minimums in the 40s as you're seeing here in the corridor of Doom we can't really show how this would look on a vrr screen on a YouTube video but it would be my preferred way to play over a non-rt experience that is locked to 60. in trying to get the smoothest footage though I found a rather interesting feature in the Intel Arc control panel it's called smart sync when it's enabled on a 60hz panel and when the game runs at 60 FPS you get a vsync presentation with no tearing looks good however when frame rate drops beneath 60 tearing kicks in but this is tearing that looks rather different to what I've seen before and if we freeze me same here you can see what smart sync is doing it's blending the two torn frames together it's a pretty neat solution here now it doesn't solve the problem of wobbling video on lateral movements especially fast moving lateral movement but the teving artifact itself is smoothed out to a certain degree so really interesting option next game and let's go straight into a rasterization Powerhouse Forza Horizon 5. with the settings here I'm essentially using the same quality as Xbox series X in its performance mode thanks to those settings that were provided by playground games and these essentially give you a locked 1440p 60 on a770 a really decent experience a couple of stress points to put this to the test and we'll kick off with the game's actual Benchmark Which flies by exactly as it should it's in a dense cityscape Cycles through weather conditions and keeps a lot of high detailed cars on screen elsewhere I've found that the combination of a lot of foliage along with storm conditions can cause some graphics Hardware some issues and there's a good exhibition showcase that lets us test this and a 770 equips itself with no problems at all so Arc a770 playground games approved settings for console performance 1440p60 job done I was curious about 4K though as series X has a 4K 30 quality mode using Dynamic resolution scaling and it kind of straddles ultra and extreme settings now I just ramped up everything up to extreme engaged the game's inbuilt 30fps cap and just played the game ran perfectly at Native 4K 30 frames per second it just looks absolutely glorious so yeah slightly higher settings than Xbox series X in its quality mode no Dynamic resolution scaling required and the arc a770 just Powers through here looks really impressive sticking with a 4K output at 30 frames per second there are a few games that I can think of that are really really heavy on the CPU to the point where to get the most out of your GPU it may make sense to limit the frame rate and instead double down on detail resolution graphical features or both uh Microsoft flight simulator is an interesting example of this because no matter what PC Hardware I've tested it on I've yet to see this game running flawlessly at 60 frames per second locked so with RK 770 at 4K 30 output I can push for four ultra settings here on one of the most beautiful PC games there is the only compromise I made was to set internal resolution to 75 or 80 the game's TAA solution uses temporal reprojection to scale back up to 4K using detail from fire frames and in a slower paced game like this it's really hard to tell the difference Xbox series X also has a 30 FPS Target uses ultra settings with some compromises and scales up from 1440p resolution to 4K so ultimately with Arc here we're getting a sharper image and no compromises at all from the ultra preset and performance wise well we can't exactly run frame rate tests across the board bearing in mind that the game literally encompasses the entire world but my favorite hotspot testing areas like London run at 30 FPS with little problem it seems almost got there with Rio de Janeiro although I did note that here the 75 resolution scale is required to handle its ultra dense forests with no frame drops it doesn't really make too much of a difference visually compared to 80 but you get that solid performance ultimately though Microsoft flight simulator isn't just one of the most demanding games out there it's also one of the most beautiful and I was happy to see that I could run it well on the arc I guess running at 14 1940p on a 1440p screen is obviously an option but I'd still recommend a frame rate cap in the 40 to 45 FPS turret fee this game has a real stuttering problem and it's not because of the graphics it's not because of the hardware it's because the demands on the CPU which is so intense I'm going to stick with 4K for a little while now because I want to talk about Intel xcss the firm's answer to nvidia's dlss based on very similar principles early days on this technology but Alex has already carried out a deep dive into its strengths and areas where it might need to improve a touch but ultimately for a first effort it's amazing to see an actual competitor to the established dlss and it does mean that in many titles Arc can punch above its weight in delivering 4K at 60 frames per second let's look at death stranding director's cut because I think first of all Kojima Productions deserves praise for supporting all upscaling solutions nobody gets left behind here I should stress that there's no issue at all running this title at 1440p 60 or above no upscaling needed but at 4K xcss works well here in taking a 1080p base image and delivering a very 4K like presentation 1080 CP internal is actually the performance mode for xcss but the vast majority of death stranding actually plays out just fine using balanced or even quality modes the only issue being that you're more likely to find props from 60 FPS in certain circumstances cutscenes can be pretty heavy here but this isn't really a problem if you have an Adaptive sync vrr screen which as I said earlier I think it should be kind of standard equipment for any PC Gamer at this point it really is a killer feature more 4K with Marvel Spider-Man remastered which I've spent a lot of time with across a range of videos now this is another game I admire for its upscaling support it Embraces everything basically dlss fsr2 and xcss the way it should be this game is very heavy on CPU which is why I've gone through a 4K 60 presentation on this one frame rates can run higher at 1440p but with raid facing active in particular the 12400f gets pushed to its limits quite easily so it's better to cap the frame rate and divert GPU resources into features like higher resolution 4K 60 on balanced xcss mode works fine and looks really decent actually and we're effectively running on optimized settings here as defined by Alex in our DF tech review I think the arc a770 could actually push further in RT settings at 1440p but the CPU requirements do so it's pretty intense optimized settings gives the best bang for the buck keeps you at 60 pretty much constantly and looks pretty phenomenal the only issue I had here in my testing was game stability a few crashes here and there something I have experienced before on other platforms but certainly intrusive to the experience here I had no stability issues at all on any other title I should add I also wanted to spend some time with Hitman 3 as opposed to just benchmarking it as we usually do what you're actually seeing here is a similar approach to what we did with Marvel Spider-Man which is to use optimize settings the best bang for the buck in terms of rendering cost versus quality of presentation although this time the settings weren't chosen by us but rather by developer i o interactive itself in setting the Baseline for what the console versions should run at we made a couple of changes to that the biggest one being to improve simulation quality this is really heavy on CPU but definitely worthwhile and well within the capabilities of the 12400f rendering wise this game runs at 1800p on PS5 84k on series X here we're using xcss on balanced modes to get to 4k on those same quality settings this is an absolute Feast visually looking extremely clean for a first gen take on machine learning based image upscaling xcss is delivering some really nice results here however I O has also added raid facing support to the game which isn't available on the consoles two RT options available here Reflections which look really impressive alongside RT Shadows which aren't quite so impactful but certainly contribute to a big hit to performance by dropping down to 1440p and sticking to xcss balance mode you can still enjoy those RT Reflections and still hit 60fps for the vast majority of play it's not quite a lock to 60 frames per second here in all scenarios but nothing that a vrr screen wouldn't smooth out or of course you could simply drop down to xcss Performance mode so two great options for Hitman here with Arc 4K without RT running flawlessly or 1440p with rt Reflections and either one just looks great I really enjoyed my time with this game so hitman's RT mode is notorious for being exceptionally heavy on the GPU but I think Arc pulls off a quality experience here still io's assault on the GPU doesn't hold a candle to what developer techland does with rt in its Ultra raid facing mode in Dying Light too so yes RT shadows and ambient occlusion as on consoles are available but there's more much more Reflections are added and most crucially raid face Global illumination is included in the mix and that is the feature that fully elevates the game the question is the extent to which a mainstream card like the arc a770 can accommodate those high-end features at our Target 1440p again all good upscaling Solutions are supported now meaning dlss fsr2 and yes X ESS 1440p performance mode keeps you in 50 to 60 FPS territory on the ultra RT setting so not quite the 60fps lock I'd like for a fixed frequency monitor but perfectly great actually for a vrr screen I'd usually recommend xcss balanced as a minimum at 1440p but in this case performance actually looks pretty good but this is PC right and we have options optimize settings on this one essentially involves starting with the ultra RT preset then dipping into the advanced settings menu disabling RT Reflections and the RT flashlight these can be turned off without too much of a hit to the game's visuals and in return the upshot is that we get a lock to 60 FPS in xcss performance mode or you can move back to the balanced mode as you're seeing here with the kind of minor drops beneath 60 that once again adaptive sync or vrr Smooths out for you okay then so that's a whole lot of testing right it was actually a luxury to play PC games non-stop for a few days to put Arc through its paces and I kind of wish I could produce content like this for every major GPU release percentage differentials against competing gpus are obviously extremely important information but once you've defined a set level of performance for me it's all about what you can do with it and I have a number of takeaways from my time with the a770 in my balanced PC rig first of all for the games I play Triple A with Cutting Edge rendering features The Arc cars Really Work Well Intel mostly talks about art for 1080p as well as 1440p gaming my experience at 1440p and even 4K has been pretty positive I'd say but I'd imagine these cards would absolutely scream at full HD and yeah there are two Arc cards available we looked at the a770 here obviously it's about five to fifteen percent faster than the a750 depending on the title so everything you've seen here it's not as if the a750 experience is going to be that much different so I'd say that there's actually genuine value across both of these cards I also think the emphasis on RT performance and machine learning built into the Intel design here it's a pro proven formula that's worked for NVIDIA and it's going to work for Intel 2 and Intel has delivered impressive stuff on both RT and machine learning bearing in mind this is literally a first gen product but let's be clear as you've seen from my gameplay demonstrations these cards are capable they are very well priced and in the case of the a770 in particular a 16 gigabyte GPU for 349 U.S really impressive so that's it that's the video and I hope you enjoyed it like subscribe share if you did and if you'd like to see more experience based testing of new pc Hardware do let me know that's all from me for now thanks for watching

Channel: Digital Foundry

Views: 160,346

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Id: rR13hzCOYHE

Length: 24min 38sec (1478 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 10 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/parklawnz]

Anyone here have an ARC? I’m concerned that despite all the hubbub about value, this card is basically dead in the water because of the risk associated with early adoption of what looks to be a pretty volatile product.

I’m wondering if anyone at all had purchased it besides tech reviewers, and maybe some hobbyists who enjoy fiddling with this kind of tech.

[u/reasonsofbecause]

Curious to hear what other people think, is this a good option for 1440p? It's quite tempting, given the good price.

[u/bicameral_mind]

I'm really excited for Intel GPUs. Obviously have some growing pains right now but not a bad first attempt. Especially for the prices. nVidia will be king in the coming years but I'm excited to see how Intel grows in this space.

[u/Ycx48raQk59F]

Just in case you miss it from the title of the youtube video (or when he starts what great intel components to use in an ultimate gamign pc), this is a paid advertisement.

[u/PalmTreeIsBestTree]

Hope Intel can get their gpus to work better on older games, then I would consider building an all intel PC.

[u/skilz99]

question: Does this card provide good FPS at 1440p high settings in most games?