Intel Arc Alchemist SKUs and Architecture
Let’s first talk a little about the Intel Arc graphics architecture, the SKUs that are offered, and what makes them different from each other. For starters, Intel divides its GPU segments into Intel Arc 7 graphics series at the top, and Intel Arc 3 graphics series on the bottom, currently, with room for an Intel Arc 5 graphics series as well if needed.
The flagship Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition sits at the top and is the fastest SKU Intel offers. The Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition is made by Intel and has 16GB of VRAM at an MSRP of $349.99. Other add-in-board partners will also produce 16GB Arc A770 video cards, but if it says Limited Edition that means it is manufactured by Intel and has this unique design from Intel. There will also be 8GB versions of the Arc A770 graphics cards, with slightly less memory bandwidth for an MSRP of $329.99.
Just under the Intel Arc A770 sits the Intel Arc A750, and it has 8GB of VRAM for an MSRP of $249.99. Finally, there is also an Intel Arc A380 at the very low end for $139.99. In summary, that is two versions of the Intel Arc A770 (16GB and 8GB), then the Arc A750 which makes up the Intel Arc A7 series, and then the Intel Arc A380 which makes up the Intel Arc A3 series. If it says Limited Edition that means it is a unique Intel manufactured by Intel design.
| Arc A380 | Arc A750 | Arc A770 (8GB) | Arc A770 (16GB) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xe-Cores | 8 | 28 | 32 | 32 |
| Ray Tracing Units | 8 | 28 | 32 | 32 |
| FP32 Cores | 1024 | 3584 | 4096 | 4096 |
| Matrix Cores | 128 | 448 | 512 | 512 |
| Xe Vector Engines | 128 | 448 | 512 | 512 |
| TMUs | 64 | 224 | 256 | 256 |
| ROPs | 16 | 96 | 128 | 128 |
| Graphics Clock | 2000MHz | 2050MHz | 2100MHz | 2100MHz |
| Memory | 6GB | 8GB | 8GB | 16GB |
| Memory Clock | 15.5GHz | 16GHz | 16GHz | 17.5GHz |
| Bus Width | 96-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 186GB/s | 512GB/s | 512GB/s | 560GB/s |
| TDP | 75W | 225W | 225W | 225W |
| MSRP | $139 | $249 | $329 | $349 |
Intel Arc Alchemist Architecture
The Intel Arc Graphics architecture is called Intel Arc A-Series Xe-HPG, or Alchemist. We are not going to go into an extremely deep dive into the architecture here, but we will post all the architecture information presentation material for your reading pleasure if you wish to familiarize yourself with how Arc Alchemist works.
To summarize some of the configurations, the Xe-HPG architecture is made up of multiple Xe-Cores called a Render Slice. Inside each core are multiple Xe Vector Engines and Matrix Engines. An Xe-Core has 16 256-bit vector engines, 16 1,024-bit Matrix Engines, and 192KB of shared cache. The floating point, integer, and register files are closely next to the matrix engines in the vector engine block. It can do 16 FP32 ops/clock, 32 FP16 ops/clock, and 64 INT8 ops/clock. The matrix engine is a dedicated matrix array at 128 FP16/BF16 ops/clock, 256 INT8 ops/clock, and 512 INT4/INT2 ops/clock. There are dedicated Ray Tracing Units for each Xe-Core. The total L2 cache size for the A7 series is 16MB.
We must also specifically mention the Xe Media Engine and Xe Display Engine because the Intel Arc A-Series of graphics cards support some of the latest technologies. Notably, the Xe Media Engine makes it possible to support AV1 hardware encoding and decoding, along with HEVC, AVC, and VP9. It can decode at 8k60 12-bit HDR and encode at 8k 10-bit HDR. Further, the Xe Display Engine is capable of outputting HDMI 2.0b and DisplayPort 1.4a and 2.010G Ready, this allows up to 2x 8k60 HDR, 4x 4k120 HDR, and up to 1080p360 and 1440p360.
Ray Tracing
Intel Alchemist Architecture fully supports Ray Tracing, and the method by which this is achieved is detailed below.
Intel XeSS
Intel Arc Graphics also supports Intel XeSS upscaling technology. This is a competitor to DLSS and FSR. Two modes are supported, a native machine learning algorithm using the Xe matrix engines called Intel XMX. It also supports a more generalized DP4a method that can be used on other vendors’ graphics cards, like FSR. With the Intel Arc video cards, XeSS will be accelerated via the matrix engines and should provide machine learning quality upscaling, similar to DLSS. It will improve performance, but also look the best it can.
Intel Arc Limited Edition
The Intel Arc Limited Edition video cards are custom-made by Intel, and their construction is detailed below.
Intel Arc Control
In the latest drivers, Intel has made its Arc Control a separate application, and no longer an overlay, thank goodness.
This new interface is a huge improvement over the previous overlay UI and is very welcomed. It is easy to navigate and has a lot of functionality including separate options per game, hardware monitoring, and broadcast and recording features for gamers and streamers.
Discussion (16 replies)
Join Discussion →Nice review. I had no idea Intel would be able to put out something that is actually competitive, AND at a lower price point than Nvidia. And I have been reading how the drivers are improving. Let's hope they keep cracking the whip on the driver team.... there is more to life than just CS:GO and F1 numbers.
I doubt this is going to supplant my 1080ti, but for someone on a budget or building new, this is interesting. We really do NEED competition in the GPU field to get the prices down. I know it won't compare to a $800+ 4070ti, but it seems to be holding up well to the $400+ 3060.
Oh almost forgot.... does this one provide any benefit to video compression work, since it supports all the common high end codecs?
I have not personally tested video encoding, but it does famously support AV1, and according to YT videos I've watched, it's competitively fast at it.
I'm really impressed with RT performance. It absolutely crushes AMD and is very competitive with nvidia.
Thanks, @Brent_Justice for the great review. I really am bummed with how the launch of this card went because I do believe that it is a good card and deserves better. Here's hoping the next launch goes better. I've been following the stories about the driver updates and how they've helped close the FPS gap with many games and have improved overall performance.
Wow the benches are all over the place -- not necessarily a bad thing, it's a new third-party entry. Just interesting to see it doesn't boil down to the usual camps of "plays well on Green" or "plays well on Red".
Hard to really compare anything with RT - the numbers are barely playable even at best, and we are looking at only last-gen stuff from AMD/nVidia (rightfully so, neither has released anything in the lower price tiers on current-gen architectures, but those current gen things have much different RT performance). That, and... I don't really care a whole lot about RT performance in the first place.
Nice review. This entry by Intel is definitely interesting. Truth be told it's a lot more impressive than anything I expected out of them considering how new they are in this space. The gains from drivers is also impressive. When it was first released a lot of people commented that it seemed the hardware was quite good overall but the drivers were holding it back and that definitely seems to be the case in plenty of instances. While the card is far from perfect it does show that Intel has promise in the GPU space.
I'd like to get my hands on one just to mess around with it and see what it does for my uses.
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Wow, I was impressed the A770 pretty much keeps pace with 1080ti. Yeah I know that's old hat by now, but still an awesome card. And for under $400 is impressive.
Lol.
Is there any combination of title, resolution and settings in which this thing is fast enough to be playable, where it will actually use 16GB of VRAM?
I have to wonder why they decided to release this product instead of just the 8GB version.
That said, $349 is by far the cheapest 16GB video card I can think of, so if you have the need for a large amount of VRAM (and not much else) maybe this is your best choice?
Well, if you think about when this card was being designed - Etherium mining could use all the VRAM you could throw at it, and that was really the market Intel was planning on chasing. So... yeah, that's why.
I thought Ethereum liked more memory bandwidth than memory size.
I never mined it myself but yeah, what you say probably makes more sense - but I know there's certainly a floor for it where you have to have a minimum amount of VRAM to play.
I tinkered with mining during its peak since I had so many old cards laying around and was in the process of updating a few as well. It does like more ram but favors speed even more once you're at/over the 8GB mark. I have an EVGA RTX 2080 Super with (GDDR6) that did pretty well because of the faster ram. My older cards, the 1080s (from my last SLI setup) and 1080 Ti did ok but that Super was about 20% better than the 1080 Ti even though it had more VRAM. The cards that did the best were the 2080 Ti and a 3090 but that's not including power usage although undervolting/underclocking could do a lot to balance that.
In the end, before I stopped altogether, the optimal setup on my old X79 motherboard was using the 2080 Super, 2080 Ti, and a 3090. I have to say that the Super was an interesting beast in that while on some levels it was only just more powerful in terms of rasterization of the 1080 Ti, the tensor cores+DLSS allowed it to take a step further and that combined with the faster VRAM gave it just a bit more to boot. The other neat thing is that it only needed 2x 8-pin connectors while the 1080 Ti used 3. I originally bought that Super to use with my original 3700X build with the LG C9 since it was the only thing I could afford to be able to use the C9's 120Hz HDR g-sync, albeit at 1440p. It was also a nice BF deal in that it cost less than the 1080 Ti did at launch.
I had a GTX1070 and later a GTX1070Ti that paid themselves in just a few months with ethereum. Both mined pretty much the same, I figured it was because they had the same bandwidth.
Nicely done!
It is good to see Intel doing very well in the low/mid range gpu space. Perhaps less profit per unit, a whole lot more units sold per year though.
Once Intel is comfortable with its silicone and drivers I am hoping for them to come out swinging with a high end GPU. Looks like they will be able to compete against the raster performance of AMD and the Ray Trace/AI of NV - or so I hope.
Not this generation - I am thinking this was their test run and unofficial Beta testing. In 6-18 months I expect to see second generation Intel GPU's.
Now that Raja Koduri is gone, I don't know if even a next gen is in the works.