How does it feel to have the new Intel Arc A700 series graphics card? Is this the kind of stunning blow to Nvidia that stingy PC gamers dreamed of? Is it an absolute mess of unoptimized hardware and software? Does he play video games?
The last question is easy to answer: yes, and quite well. Intel now has a series of GPUs entering the PC gaming market, just in time for several major industry trends to play out: some loosening in the supply chain, some disruptions in the cryptocurrency markets, and an increase in the number of GPUs being sold at prices close to their original advertised suggested retail prices. If these factors continue to move in a consumer-friendly direction, it will mean that people will actually be able to buy and enjoy the best features of the new Intel A700 series graphics cards. (Unfortunately, limited stock is still a concern in modern GPU reviews. Without clear answers from Intel about how many units it makes,
While this is a fantastic first-generation strike against an established market, it is still a first-generation strike. The good news is that Intel is taking the GPU market seriously with the architecture of its Arc A770 (starting at $329) and Arc A750 (starting at $289) cards. The best results are obtained on current and future rendering APIs, and in these game scenarios, their power and performance exceeds their price.
However, our time with both Arc-branded GPUs was like flipping over a box of unbranded chocolates. While none of our testing results were necessarily disgusting, a significant percentage tasted amusing enough to make a general recommendation rather difficult.
Warning: Intel customers will want (if not need) a ReBAR compatible PC.
There’s a lot to be done with Intel’s latest major entry into the GPU market, and it’s important to start by removing a significant barrier to entry for potential customers.
Intel strongly recommends that customers of the new line of Arc graphics cards triple check to see if their computer supports a couple of relatively new features: Resizable BAR (“ReBAR”) and/or Smart Access Memory. We say “and/or”because they are proprietary versions of the same technology. The shortest explanation is that a ReBAR compatible motherboard can regularly send much larger chunks of data to and from the graphics card, and Intel would really like you to enable this feature if possible.
Will the Arc A750 and Arc A770 graphics cards work without the Resizable BAR enabled? Yes, but we do not recommend. The Intel Arc architecture relies heavily on the wide-open ReBAR pipeline for your GPU’s framebuffer – so much so that it has no redundancy when a game’s workload involves constant streaming of resources like textures. The best example I’ve found is driving down the sprawling highways of Cyberpunk 2077 at high speeds. With ReBAR enabled on my AMD Ryzen 7 5800X system, I could expect reasonably smooth motion at 1440p with “high”settings enabled and ray tracing disabled. (The frame rate score on this test is “1 percent low”, indicating the worst consistent dips, measured above 30fps, which is pretty good.)
I then rebooted, disabled ReBAR at the BIOS level, and played the same Cyberpunk segment again. The result was almost unplayable due to constant multi-second pauses and chugging. To give this scenario a fair shake, I immediately reloaded the save file in question and tried again in case it was due to a one-time stuttering shader compilation. Bad numbers persisted between tests.
If your favorite games spin in tight corridors or slower runs in latest generation 3D environments, the difference between Arc GPU between ReBAR enabled and disabled can range from a minor error to a 10-15 percent drop. But even if you can get past these issues, you may encounter significant quirks outside of the games. In my case, Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge were crashing regularly with ReBAR disabled when playing videos in any tab. The entire browser window would turn into gibberish while the rest of the OS environment remained untouched. It looked like this:
The only fix for this bug was to enable ReBAR. Unless you have a relatively new processor/motherboard combo that supports ReBAR or Smart Access Memory – mostly Intel 10-series and up or AMD Ryzen 3000-series and up – the rest of this review can be moot. You.
It’s an unfortunate brick wall for the PC gaming market, which is dominated by low-end CPUs and GPUs.