Intel is now officially in the graphics card race. It's been long overdue and finally Intel has introduced cards that gamers should take note of. Specifically, there are two cards – Arc A770 and Arc A750. They're not the best cards and of course they can't compare to the new GPUs from NVIDIA or AMD, but they're good enough for many gamers.
Many compare the A770, the higher of the two models, to NVIDIA's RTX 3060, one of the company's most popular mid-range offerings.
How do the two GPUs compare and is it worth buying one of them?
Intel Arc A770 vs NVIDIA RTX 3060: Technical parameters
Let's start with the newbie. Introduced in 770, the Intel Arc A2022 is based on TSMC's 6nm process and features 4096 shading cores and 32 RT (ray tracing) cores. The GPU operates at a frequency of 2100 MHz and has 512 blocks, 256 TMUs and 128 ROPs. Overall, it has 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM, and if you're willing to pay a bit more money, you can get the 16GB version. In terms of power consumption, this GPU consumes 225W.
Now let's look at the well-known RTX 3060. This card is much older, it was announced in January 2021, it is based on TSMC's 8nm technological process and has a more modest 3584 shader cores (CUDA cores) and 28 RT cores (ray tracing). It also has 112 tensor cores that allow the use of features such as DLSS, as well as 112 TMUs and 48 ROPs. As for VRAM, 12 GB of GDDR6 is installed here.
Looking at these characteristics, you might wonder why the Intel card is being compared to the RTX 3060. After all, the Intel card is newer and at least at first glance seems significantly more powerful. It has more RT cores, more blocks, more VRAM and so on.
We'll see if that's really the case, but we can say that Intel is a newcomer to the GPU market and therefore still has a lot to improve before it can compare with NVIDIA. And this also applies to mid-range cards.
NVIDIA cards are better optimized and therefore work better, because the "greens" are veterans. Of course, in the future Intel will become better, but for now NVIDIA has the advantage.
Intel Arc A770 vs NVIDIA RTX 3060: benchmarks and tests Now let's see how these cards behave in real conditions. For this, we will use a video from the popular YouTube channel Testing Games, in which the launch of several games on the RTX 3060 and the Intel Arc A770 are compared. And the result may surprise you.
In many games, the Arc A770 ranks at the same level or even better than the RTX 3060. In projects like Forza Horizon 5 or Red Dead Redemption 2, we see an average of 20 fps more on the Intel card compared to the NVIDIA card. That's an amazing prospect, especially when both cards cost about the same, but the Intel card is a bit more expensive. There is no clear winner in Microsoft Flight Simulator and Cyberpunk 2077, as both cards work about the same.
In a few other games, such as The Witcher 3 and CS:GO, the RTX 3060 actually has an edge, but this is a rather rare case. The tendency usually favors Intel cards, and these two particular games are more CPU-intensive than GPU-intensive.
This also confirms what we discussed earlier. NVIDIA cards are more mature, so their drivers are better optimized for many games, including these. And while the hardware part of Intel is promising, the software part needs more time and game developers need to start working with Intel cards in mind.
Basically, the card is as good as the RTX 3060 in many games, while in others you may see an irritating FPS increase when using an Intel card instead of NVIDIA. However, in some games the situation can be reversed, so you have to choose what is best for you.
Which graphics card to choose?
The answer is complicated, but I would say that NVIDIA GPUs are more reliable and have a better price/performance ratio for gamers in the Czech Republic.
If we only look at the performance, it's clear that Intel planned to use this card to compete with the RTX 3060 Ti or even the RTX 3070. It's really good. But it's probably fairer to compare it to the RTX 3060, at least for now. Even so, it has an edge in many games and is roughly on par in others. Of course, there are rare cases where the RTX 3060 is better (and no one canceled DLSS), but the Arc A770 still shows amazing results.
You can buy the Intel card only in the 16 GB version (8 GB is not available), at a price of 9700-10500 CZK, while most RTX 3060 models are sold at a price from 8000 CZK to 11790 CZK. In addition, the Arc A770 is quite difficult to find at local retailers - you will have to order the card from abroad. However, don't forget that Intel's drivers are still getting better and games should run better and better. For users abroad, the Arc A770 is a really good choice and we look forward to seeing what Intel can do in the future as they establish themselves as a graphics card manufacturer.
One small note: at the time of writing Intel Arc does not support DirectX 9, so keep that in mind if you like old games.
RTX 3060 - the best choice? Arc A770 iNTEL?
It's hard to do better than NVIDIA, but Intel seems to have the potential to become a serious competitor. And soon too. Arc A770 is a great graphics card for the middle segment, the software part of which should be slightly improved.
