Intel has shared a new set of benchmarks for its Arc A7 series discrete mobile GPUs, testing seventeen different games at 1080p on the A770M and A730M cards and comparing them to Nvidia's Max-Q laptop variants of the RTX 3060 and RTX 3050 Ti, respectively. .
These results appear to show that Intel Arc GPUs moderately outperform RTX cards, with both Arc cards gaining around 12% performance on average over their Nvidia counterparts. The A770M beat the RTX 3060 in 14 of the 17 games tested, while the A730M beat the RTX 3050 Ti in 12. The biggest individual difference was in Control, where the A730M beat the 3050 Ti by nearly 50%.
However, benchmark figures provided by a manufacturer should always be viewed with a grain of salt, as Intel obviously wants to generate interest in these new GPUs. We have no way of verifying these results ourselves at this time, as Arc A7 GPUs are currently only available in a small number of laptops sold in mainland China. The Arc laptops tested by Intel are pre-production models, while the Nvidia laptops are existing units from MSI and Asus.
While Intel may seem to have a bit of a performance advantage here, it's worth noting that Nvidia's Max-Q cards are still the most power-efficient option. Intel didn't provide exact operating TGPs for Arc cards, but we know that Arc A730M runs at least 20W more than 3050 Ti Max-Q, and tested A770M could use up to 65W more than 3060 Max-q.
Review: Should we really be excited about the Arc A7?
In general, I'm a bit worried about these numbers, although Intel wants to present them as a clear victory for Arc. Once I took a closer look at the laptops Intel used for the testing process, I became even more concerned.
The pre-production laptops used for Arc testing were powered by Intel's latest 12th Gen Alder Lake processors and ultra-fast DDR5 RAM, while the RTX 3060 and 3050 Ti gaming laptops used 11th Gen chips. less powerful generation and DDR4 memory. .
That makes the comparison a bit unfair, frankly. The A770M laptop is a particularly notable choice compared to the MSI Pulse GL66 used by Intel, as it has a powerful Core i9-12900HK processor compared to the GL7's i11800-66H. The RTX 3060 and 3050 Ti GPUs tested are also not the most powerful models available for laptops.
Obviously the GPU will always be the main driver of gaming performance here, but those comparisons don't seem particularly fair. I'd really like to see a more precise match using matching processors and memory, as I suspect a 12% margin could actually be much lower.
With the Arc series already worried about delays due to driver issues and Covid crashes, and first impressions of the desktop Arc A3 discrete GPUs not looking too good, Intel might be worried right now. If the Arc A7 laptop cards barely come close to outperforming Nvidia's current top competitors, what hope does Intel have once the Lovelace laptop GPUs arrive?
While the desktop RTX 4060 isn't currently expected to arrive alongside the first wave of RTX 40-series GPUs, laptop OEMs probably won't have to wait too long for them. Price is obviously always the big question here; if Intel can significantly undercut Nvidia, they could still secure a top-choice position for affordable 1080p gaming. But for now, I'm afraid the outlook is bleak for Intel's long-awaited return to the GPU market.
From Tom's hardware store.