As a new entrant to PC independent graphics, Intel has launched a series of ARC graphics cards that are not only superior in workmanship, but also have an advantage over competing products in terms of configuration.
However, if you want to gain a certain position in the red and green field, it is far from enough to just pile up materials. After all, NVIDIA and AMD have been deeply involved in graphics card ecology and drivers for many years, and Intel, as a new player, at the beginning of its release, the driver and experience There is still room for improvement.
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Fortunately, with Intel’s unremitting efforts, today’s I-card drivers have also been significantly improved, and the gaming experience is basically relatively stable. Coupled with the price advantage of the I-card, Intel’s ARC independent graphics are also quite cost-effective.
In order to see how the current driver is, we moved out the Intel ARC A750 graphics card and paired it with the new and old drivers to see if Intel’s optimization can bring about a leap in experience for old games!
Hardware introduction
Before we start, as usual, let me introduce it to those who are not familiar with Intel Ruixuan ARC. ARC graphics cards are a product line launched by Intel when it re-entered the independent graphics market. According to different positioning, they are also divided into different numbers: 3, 5, and 7. The ARC A750 tested this time is positioned at the high end of the A series.
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It is equipped with the ACM-G10 core, which is the same core as the top ARC A770, but slightly emasculated.Based on TSMC 6nm manufacturing process, built-in 28 Xe-Core engines, 28 ray tracing units, and 448 XMX enginesand 448 XVE vector engines, etc., with a core base frequency of 2.05GHz.
In other respects, this ARC A750 is built based on the Intel Xe HPG microarchitecture, with built-in Intel XMX AI acceleration engine, a graphics pipeline optimized for DirectX 12 Ultimate, and a new Xe designed to accelerate the workload required for current and future content creation. Media engine, Xe display engine that supports UHBR10 defined by DisplayPort 2.0, and supports Intel Deep Link technology.
And as a mainstream product, ARC A750 is equipped with 8GB GDDR6 video memory, with a memory bit width of 256 Bit and a memory bandwidth of 512 GB/s. The addition of large video memory is obviously prepared for content creators and gamers, and it is precisely because The large video memory and large bit width bring new possibilities to the AI capabilities of this graphics card.
It is worth mentioning that the workmanship of this graphics card is different from other graphics cards. Its appearance design is not eye-catching, but the simple black shape is more like a professional-grade graphics card. The front is made of skin-like material. It is unique among the graphics cards with plastic casings, and the texture comes naturally.
Finally, let’s look at its power supply and interfaces. The traditional 8+6Pin interface can be upgraded painlessly without updating the hardware. In terms of IO, it is a common combination of 3 DP 2.0 interfaces plus an HDMI2.1. And the ARC A750 is quite exquisite and compact, and its size advantage is very obvious compared to the RTX 40 series graphics cards.
Test platform description
In the actual test session, as usual, we will first talk about the platform and method of this experience test. Following the 13th generation Core mainstream platform that we have previously experienced the AIGC capabilities of Intel ARC graphics cards, the general configuration information is as follows.
The driver version compared is the old driver when Intel ARC A750 was first released: 31.0.101.3433; the new driver is 31.0.101.4973 which has just been updated recently (when you read this article, Intel will probably have updated the new driver. After all, Intel I am really interested in ARC independent graphics, and basically there will be a new version of Beta test driver to meet with everyone every week).
Performance Testing
Before testing the game, first check whether the driver update has improved the theoretical performance. Since it is a theoretical test, the 3DMark graphics rendering test is essential. We selected test items representing major graphics APIs such as DirectX 12 and DirectX 11 for comparison. The results are as follows:
Judging from the actual measurement results, the results of the ARC A750 are indeed amazing. In the Time Spy series of tests represented by DirectX 12, the new driver gain is relatively small. After all, the DX12 performance of the ARC A750 was good when it was released. However, compared with competing products, the ARC A750 is still far ahead. For example, in the TimeSpy project, the RTX 3060’s score in this project is less than 10,000.
The biggest benefits brought by driver updates are games with old APIs such as DirectX 11 and DirectX 9. It can be seen from the 3DMark Fire Strike test that with the first driver, the ARC A750 scored 30616. After updating multiple versions of the driver, With the same hardware, ARC A750 can improve by more than 2,000 points, reaching 32254. The theoretical performance has increased by more than 5%. However, with the hardware configuration of ARC A750, there is still room for improvement~
Game actual measurement comparison
Having said all that, a game test will tell you how much optimization Intel has done at the driver level. The first test here is “League of Legends” including DX 9 and DX 11. From the actual measurement results, we can see that Intel’s optimization of DX 9 and DX 11 has been greatly improved. After upgrading the 4973 driver, the average frame of DX 9 can be improved. Nearly 30%, DX 11’s average frame performance is also nearly 15% ahead.
Let’s look at the pure DX 11 e-sports online game “Fearless Contract”. With the support of ARC A750 4973 driver, the game frame rate has also achieved a leap. Compared with the old driver, the game frame rate under the new driver can reach 544 frames, which is ultra-powerful. Competitive-level performance, the frame rate has increased by more than 100 frames, and even 1% Low frames have been greatly improved, with an increase of up to 25%!
We also tested two other popular online games, “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” and “Everlasting”. Both games include DX 11 and DX 12 APIs. Although the improvement is not as large as that of old DX 9 games such as “League of Legends”, the improvement is considerable. For example, in “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds”, which is also DX 12, the frame number gap between the old and new drivers is more than 20 frames, 1% Low is even more outrageous, with a difference of 40 frames. The results of DX 11 are similar, with the frame rate difference being between 20-30 frames.
For “Eternal Calamity”, the gap is mainly on DX 11. Under the latest 4973 driver, ARC A750 can achieve nearly 100 frames of game performance, and 1% Low can also achieve about 53 frames. This result is still compared to the 82 frames of the old driver. There is quite a bit of improvement.
The same is true in another DX 11 game “Shadow of the Tomb Raider”. After using the 4973 driver, the average frame and 1% Low frame of the ARC A750 have been improved to varying degrees. And ARC A750 is more friendly to DX 12. Under the same settings, the number of frames running “Shadow of the Tomb Raider” under DX 12 is about 20-30 frames higher than that under DX 11.
A similar situation exists in “Borderlands 3”. This game supports both DX 11 and DX 12. According to actual tests, the overall fluency when using DX 12 is higher than when using DX 11, so everyone should use DX 12 as much as possible. It will be better.
We have also tested DX 12 games, among which “Gears of War 5” is the one with more obvious performance improvements. Under the old driver, the ARC A750’s performance was an average of 83 frames and a 1%Low frame of 32; after upgrading to the 4973 driver, the average frame could rise to 89 frames, and the 1%Low frame also increased by more than 10 frames, an increase of 25%.
But the most obvious improvement among the DX 12 games is “F1 22”. In this game, the performance of the ARC A750 can be compared to changing a graphics card. Under the old driver, the average frame rate of ARC A750 was only 47 frames. After switching to the 4973 driver, the game frame rate was directly stretched to full, 64 frames running smoothly, and the frame rate increased by a full 27%. Also outrageous is 1% Low, which went from the previous 25 frames to 36 frames, an increase of more than 30%.
However, because the ARC A750 was deeply optimized for DX 12 when it was first released, although most games have slightly improved with the support of the new driver, the improvement is far less obvious than that of DX 9 or DX 11.
For example, in the games we tested “Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition” and “Cyberpunk 2077”, the game test results show that the changes between the old and new versions of the driver are not big, only a small improvement. As far as this generation of Alchemist architecture is concerned, the current driver The performance level that can be achieved is already ideal, so the room for improvement is relatively limited.
Finally, we also tried the ARC A750’s support for new games. Its support for many new games is quite good, and many new games are even supported on day one. “Alan Alan Wake 2” is a recently launched DX 12 game. When using the old driver to run the game, the frame rate is less than 60 and the game is a little laggy. However, after upgrading to the 4973 driver, the game’s frame rate has been able to reach 62. Frame, increased by nearly 12%!
In addition, we also tested Intel’s XeSS supersampling technology. The implementation principle of XeSS is similar to DLSS or FSR. It uses the XMX engine in the graphics card to achieve matrix acceleration. It first reduces the resolution of the game screen for rendering and pre-processing, and then processes it with AI. Increasing the screen resolution ultimately achieves the effect of both improving the resolution of the screen and improving the gaming experience.
Under the commonly used 1080P gear, the ARC A750 only has 48 FPS when XeSS is turned off. After it is turned on, it directly increases by 20 FPS, and can run at 1080P 60 FPS stably. At 2K, if XeSS is turned on, the frame rate can reach 42 FPS. If the image quality is lowered, 2K games should be barely achievable.
We have also verified the performance of XeSS with actual games. In the stressful “Cyberpunk 2077”, without turning on XeSS and with 1080P super image quality, the ARC A750 has been able to achieve a score of 74 FPS, which is not bad. . After turning on XeSS, game performance has been improved to varying degrees. At the performance level, it can already meet the high refresh experience of 1080P 90Hz.
And the picture quality presentation has also reached a good level. We have intercepted the game pictures in different gears. From the naked eye, the picture quality is almost exactly the same. In scenes such as text and patterns, because XeSS renders low-resolution images into high-resolution images through AI, there is a bonus in terms of clarity, and sometimes it is even clearer than the native image quality.
Summarize
After actual testing, I have to say that Intel not only makes products carefully, but also carefully optimizes and improves the drivers. The latest 4973 driver not only improves old games like DX 9, but also DX 11 and even DX 12.
Among them, the most optimized ones are e-sports online games. For example, we tested “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds”, “Everlasting”, “League of Legends” and the popular “Fearless Contract”. With the support of the new driver, the game frame rate can even be increased to the highest Hundreds of frames, greatly improving game smoothness.
In addition, the XeSS and AIGC capabilities of Intel ARC graphics cards are also steadily improving. The former is similar to NVIDIA’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR, which can improve the game frame rate, and more and more games support XeSS. With the Thanks to Intel’s unremitting efforts and optimization improvements, more than 50 games currently support XeSS.
As for the AIGC capabilities of the latter, ARC A750 should not be underestimated. Based on the OpenVINO solution, Stable Diffusion can easily produce images, and the efficiency is also quite excellent. In general, with the update of the driver, the ARC A750 can be described as “reborn” compared to its initial performance, becoming an all-round graphics card.
I still remember that when the ARC A750 was released, its performance was often criticized by players. At that time, Intel also promised that it would continue to optimize drivers, improve graphics experience, and enhance game performance.
After many months of continuous optimization, Intel has done it. The current ARC A750 graphics card already has good performance on DX 12, DX 11 and DX 9.
With the current performance of this graphics card, it is really good to buy the ARC A750 at a price of less than 1,500 yuan. It has a lower price, continuously optimized performance, and even a large video memory and high bit width that competing products do not have. It is definitely cost-effective for mainstream players. choice.