Gameplay Performance at 1080p
We are going to focus on 1080p gameplay performance with the Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition video card on this page. Ray Tracing will be tested on the next page. We will include XeSS, FSR, and DLSS performance on the same graph in the games that are supported. For video card comparisons we are using an EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC BLACK GAMING, MSI Radeon RX 6600 XT GAMING X, and SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 6600 GAMING.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO)
We are going to include CS:GO in this review, because it is an older game, based on DX9, and quite popular. CS:GO was released on September 23, 2014, and uses the Source engine. This game runs in DX9, and will be a good test for an older API on Intel Arc A770, plus, this game recently got a driver update from Intel improving performance. We will utilize the workshop FPS benchmark from uLLeticaL.
At 1080p, CS:GO is playable of course, but you guys are after the absolute fastest here. Just like the 1440p results, Intel Arc A770 lags behind even the Radeon RX 6600, whereas in all the other games it is competitive with the Radeon RX 6600 XT. This shows Intel has made improvements in older DX9 titles but does still lag behind overall. The Intel Arc A770 is 22% slower than the Radeon RX 6600 XT and 21% slower than the GeForce RTX 3060. The Radeon RX 6600 XT is going to be the fastest card in this lineup for CS:GO.
Forspoken
Forspoken was released on January 24th, 2023, on the PC and uses the Luminous Engine. The game supports all upscaling methods, including NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS, and Ray Tracing. We are going to customize the settings and enable the highest graphics settings, including Ultra High Texture Memory. We use the built-in benchmark.
Forspoken at 1080p and the highest graphics settings is a playable gameplay experience on the Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition! In fact, it isn’t just playable but averages 60FPS as well, so it’s smooth and enjoyable. The Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition is actually faster than the GeForce RTX 3060 by 15% and faster than the Radeon RX 6600 XT by 58%. This is pretty amazing, considering it’s a new game, graphically intense, the Intel Arc A770 is more than keeping up, it’s outpacing the competition. When we turn on Intel XeSS upscaling performance jumps 15% up to nearly 70FPS at 1080p with the highest settings. It’s 5% faster than the RTX 3060 with DLSS.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare II
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.0 was released on October 27, 2022, on the PC and uses the IW 9.0 gaming engine. The game supports all upscaling methods, including NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA Image Scaling, AMD FSR 1.0, AMD Fidelity FX CAS, and Intel XeSS. We use the highest quality option of each. We customize every graphics setting to the maximum value for the best image quality and enable everything. We use the built-in benchmark.
In Call of Duty Modern Warfare II the Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition is very playable at 1080p at 83FPS. In this game, it’s faster than the GeForce RTX 3060, but the Radeon RX 6600 XT is the fastest overall. Compared to the Radeon RX 6600 XT the Intel Arc A770 is just 12% slower, but compared to the GeForce RTX 3060 the Arc A770 is 11% faster. When we use Intel XeSS we get a small bump in performance, but DLSS and FSR does a lot more for performance. Thankfully, we can also enable FSR on the Intel Arc A770 so it can get the same boost as the Radeon RX 6600 XT as well, we have the option to use FSR or Intel XeSS on it.
F1 2022
F1 2022 was released on June 28th, 2022 on the PC and uses Codemasters Ego engine. The game supports Ray Tracing, DLSS, AMD FidelityFX, and FSR. We are going to run the game with the highest quality settings of “Ultra High” and TAA+FidelityFX. We will enable DLSS and FSR as needed at the Quality setting for both. We will utilize the built-in benchmark in the Imola track, in dry conditions with a far chasing cam.
In F1 2022 this game is very playable on the Intel Arc A770 at 1080p providing over 100FPS with no problem. Though the Arc A770 is at the bottom of the graph, which seems to be underperforming in this game, the game is still more than playable at this framerate and super smooth. The Arc A770 is 29% slower than the Radeon RX 6600 XT and 22% slower than the GeForce RTX 3060. With FSR enabled the Intel Arc A770 gains performance up to 123FPS.
Dying Light 2
Dying Light 2 was released in February 2022 on the PC and uses Techland’s C-Engine. The game supports Ray Tracing, DLSS, and FSR2. We have updated the game to the latest 1.90 patch. We use the built-in preset to set “HIGH QUALITY” which sets the highest game graphics, without Ray Tracing. We manually enable DX12 and ASYNC Compute. We use the built-in benchmark.
In Dying Light 2 the Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition is more than playable at nearly 100FPS with the highest in-game settings sans Ray Tracing. What’s even more is that the Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition is 16% faster than the Radeon RX 6600 XT and GeForce RTX 3060 at 1080p in this very demanding game. With Intel XeSS enabled the Intel Arc A770 gains 17% more performance and exceeds all other cards with upscaling.
Far Cry 6
Far Cry 6 was released in October of 2021 and uses the Dunia Engine. We utilize the built-in benchmark for testing. We have the HD Texture pack installed and turned on. We utilize the “Ultra” graphics preset which sets all options to the highest game settings. This game supports FSR upscaling.
In Far Cry 6 at 1080p, every card is more than playable here, and the Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition is on par with the Radeon RX 6600 XT at over 100FPS. Even with FSR, it’s competitive and right up there near the top.
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 was released in December of 2020 and uses the REDengine 4. We have the game patched to version 1.61 and utilize the built-in benchmark. We test using the Graphics Preset option to set graphics settings, mainly “Ultra”. This game supports DLSS and FSR2.
In Cyberpunk 2077 the Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition is playable at near 60FPS at “Ultra” settings. Oddly, it lost performance compared to the higher 1440p performance, as it now sits at the bottom of the graph, even under the Radeon RX 6600 which is not typical for it. Therefore here the Arc A770 is 23% slower than the Radeon RX 6600 XT and 17% slower than the GeForce RTX 3060. Turning on FSR2 doesn’t give us much of a boost, but does bring it to over 60FPS.
Watch Dogs Legion
Watch Dogs Legion was released on the PC in October of 2020 and uses the Disrupt game engine. We utilize the built-in benchmark for testing. We have the HD Texture pack installed and enabled for testing. We use the built-in graphics preset of “Ultra” for testing. This game supports DLSS upscaling.
In Watch Dogs Legion the Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition is very playable at the highest settings at 77FPS. In this game, it is the fastest video card and is 4% faster than the Radeon RX 6600 XT and 17% faster than the GeForce RTX 3060.
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.