Intel Arc A770 Drops to $269: Cheaper than the NVIDIA RTX 3060 and Much Faster

[Hertzian56]

https://www.hardwaretimes.com/intel-arc-a770-drops-to-269-cheaper-than-the-nvidia-rtx-3060-and-much-faster/

[saturnotaku]

Should note that this is for the specific 8 GB ASRock Phantom Gaming model available from Newegg, not the reference 16 GB Intel-branded card.

 

ASRock Phantom Gaming Arc A770 Video Card A770 PGD 8GO - Newegg.com

[Hertzian56]

always a catch w everything, eh for the 40-50 savings probably not worth the essentially beta level of those cards right now.

[saturnotaku]

17 hours ago, Hertzian56 said:

always a catch w everything, eh for the 40-50 savings probably not worth the essentially beta level of those cards right now.

 

I haven't let it stop me from picking one up, though I did go for the reference design. Intel has been making big improvements in driver performance and compatibility. I'm likely going to be selling my desktop this fall so I want to play with Arc before I do so.

[Hertzian56]

1 minute ago, saturnotaku said:

 

I haven't let it stop me from picking one up, though I did go for the reference design. Intel has been making big improvements in driver performance and compatibility. I'm likely going to be selling my desktop this fall so I want to play with Arc before I do so.

Huh well be sure to give us the rundown on how well it works, nothing like firsthand reports.

[saturnotaku]

I got it installed last night but only tried a couple games. It's the most aesthetically pleasing GPU I've personally ever seen - such a clean design and even the lighting looks cool straight out of the box. The only thing that ruins its elegance is that in order to control the RGB, you need to connect a separate cable from the card to a USB 2.0 header on your motherboard and install a software utility that's separate from the drivers. I haven't connected said cable yet, but it's going to wreck any semblance of management as the only open headers on my board are at the bottom.

 

The driver package is also huge at over 1 GB, but it installed with no problems. I don't really play new games that much on my desktop, which wouldn't be a point in the A770's favor, but the initial results are promising. In my very brief testing, all at 1440p, Doom 2016 ran perfectly with the Vulkan API at max settings. Portal 2 was the same - no issues whatsoever. The original Deus Ex was interesting. I typically use the third-party DirectX 10 renderer, but it was a stuttering mess. However, OpenGL, which has never worked right with modern AMD or NVIDIA GPUs I've tried, is absolutely flawless with the Arc provided the frame rate is limited to 144 or less. I can even change the brightness in game, which has been broken with Team Red and Green for as long as I can remember. The graphics aren't quite as good as they are with DX10, but as long as the game plays at all, I'm content.

 

If there's anything specific you'd like me to test, let me know and I'll try to accommodate.

[Aaron44126]

Does Intel have any way to set up game-specific profiles, sort of like what you can do in NVIDIA Control Panel?  (I.e. To override a specific game's rendering behavior, set a framerate limit, or do some other things that the game might not have built-in options for.)  I've never seen anything like this with Intel iGPU drivers.

[Hertzian56]

2 hours ago, saturnotaku said:

I got it installed last night but only tried a couple games. It's the most aesthetically pleasing GPU I've personally ever seen - such a clean design and even the lighting looks cool straight out of the box. The only thing that ruins its elegance is that in order to control the RGB, you need to connect a separate cable from the card to a USB 2.0 header on your motherboard and install a software utility that's separate from the drivers. I haven't connected said cable yet, but it's going to wreck any semblance of management as the only open headers on my board are at the bottom.

 

The driver package is also huge at over 1 GB, but it installed with no problems. I don't really play new games that much on my desktop, which wouldn't be a point in the A770's favor, but the initial results are promising. In my very brief testing, all at 1440p, Doom 2016 ran perfectly with the Vulkan API at max settings. Portal 2 was the same - no issues whatsoever. The original Deus Ex was interesting. I typically use the third-party DirectX 10 renderer, but it was a stuttering mess. However, OpenGL, which has never worked right with modern AMD or NVIDIA GPUs I've tried, is absolutely flawless with the Arc provided the frame rate is limited to 144 or less. I can even change the brightness in game, which has been broken with Team Red and Green for as long as I can remember. The graphics aren't quite as good as they are with DX10, but as long as the game plays at all, I'm content.

 

If there's anything specific you'd like me to test, let me know and I'll try to accommodate.

A real picture of the card would be cool since you mentioned aesthetics. I had the asus directCU 970 mini w the heat chamber and thought it was a sharp looking card no nonsense. Nvidia drivers are 813mb dl for me v528 but I use nvcleaninstall so it cuts a lot out, looks like maybe the arc drivers could use the same treatment. 

 

Yeah I guess just the differences you notice w any major games most of us have played but sounds like you're not into most of those lol

[Bullit]

Much faster for what?

[saturnotaku]

Haven't had a chance to take a picture of the card itself, but I did run some tests with a couple more modern games. Crysis Remastered runs surprisingly well - 1440p high settings is around 80-90 fps, more often toward the higher figure. Cyberpunk is a different story - 1440p high settings even with FSR 2.1 on quality mode can't consistently hit 60 fps. I'm hoping CDPR finds a way to add support for Intel XeSS.

[kojack]

I am close to buying a 770 too for when I go 13th gen and I can take advantage of the extra speed for creative work