The Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition has been on the market for over 4 months now.
Since then Intel has provided some pretty impressive driver updates that have had a
significant impact on performance.
So I think now is a good time to revisit this card and see how it stands up against its
current competition, the RTX 3060 and RX 6600 XT.
So without further ado, let’s get to it.
Since my last check-in at the end of January Intel has dropped some pretty big news.
The biggest of which being a price drop on the Arc A750 down to $249, which makes it
a pretty compelling case at that price range.
My favorite news though was the new standalone Arc Control Center, something many of us have
asked for.
If you’ve been following my monthly driver update series then the news of massive performance
uplifts is pretty unsurprising.
But it sounds like going forward we should expect a focus from Intel on stability and
normal day 1 drivers as opposed to major swings in raw performance.
Big increases in performance are likely to come from game-specific optimizations rather
than general architecture fixes.
And that’s what led me to this video today.
I’ve been tracking the performance of the Arc A770 Limited Edition month-to-month since
it was released and performance has pretty much plateaued at this point, but that’s
not a bad thing.
Because of that, I felt now was a good time to see how it stacks up against its expected
competition rather than just looking at similar numbers to last month.
Before we get into the performance results I wanted to quickly cover the test system
used and what cards are being put up for comparison.
All tests were performed on my X570 test bench with a Ryzen 9 5900X at the helm and Resizable
BAR engaged.
32GB of DDR4 3600MHz DRAM rounds out the core of the system, and all the games are played
from a PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD.
The graphics cards I’m looking at today include the aforementioned Intel Arc A770
Limited Edition on the Arc driver 4091, the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB XC Black Gaming
Edition on GeForce 528.49, and the ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX 6600 XT with Radeon 22.11.2.
Now onto the games.
Cyberpunk 2077 continues to do well on the Steam charts thanks to tons of bug fixes and
updates.
But unfortunately the 1080p Ultra settings numbers for this title are not in the A770's
favor, with it having the weakest performance here.
It catches up at 1440p though, and while the performance is not earth-shattering it does
show that the wider memory bus is able to breathe a bit more at the higher resolution.
The A770 does show off pretty weak 1% lows though, so it’s not the smoothest option.
Watchdogs Legion presents interesting results since the A770 saw a drop in performance after
its launch driver.
But at 1080p it is still able to best the RTX 3060, and the 1% lows are better than
with the RX 6600 XT.
However at 1440p the A770 has a commanding lead, as that 8GB of VRAM on the RX 6600 XT
holds that cardback at these Ultra settings.
Horizon Zero Dawn is running fast enough on all of these cards, but at 1080p Ultimate
Quality the A770 is significantly behind the other two in performance.
When things are kicked up to 1440p everything is pretty tight across the board.
Once again we see a shift for the A770 when moving to that higher resolution.
Borderlands 3 at Badass settings in DX12 mode is another good showing for the A770 at 1080p,
with it ahead of the RTX 3060 by a fair clip, but still falling behind the RX 6600 XT.
At 1440p we see a lead change, with the A770 squeaking ever so slightly ahead of the RX
6600 XT.
Unfortunately the RTX 3060 really isn’t competing in this game, with low average frame
rates as well as 1% lows.
Troy: Total War may not be a game that requires high frame rates, but it certainly doesn’t
hurt to have them.
At 1080p Ultra the A770 is sitting comfortably ahead of the RTX 3060 but quite a bit behind
the RX 6600 XT.
At 1440p that lead is gone, with the A770 and 6600 XT essentially neck and neck.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider at the highest settings sans ray tracing is not the best look for
the A770.
While it keeps up with the other cards at 1080p average frame rates, the 1% lows are
quite a bit behind the other two.
1440p once again yields a better experience for the A770 here, but those 1% lows are still
lagging behind.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is a game that I was very happy to finally see uplifts in
last month, but it wasn’t quite enough to take the RX 6600 XT down.
But compared to the other cards the A770 does deliver a much better experience thanks to
a more consistent 1% lows relative to its average FPS.
It was very surprising to see how high the 6600XT can hit, but those lows sure don't
feel great.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla at Very High settings shows the A770 lagging at 1080p, being a good
bit behind the RX 6600 XT but right on the heels of the RTX 3060.
At 1440p we see a more even playing field though, with the A770 just managing to overtake
the RTX 3060.
Counter Strike Global Offensive is one of those titles where Intel fixed a major flaw
recently and massively improved performance, but was it enough to come in first?
Not quite.
At 1080p the A770 trails by bit in average FPS, but is close when it comes to the 1%
lows.
At 1440p, once again, we see it pick up the pace and match the RTX 3060.
Surprisingly the RX 6600 XT is still far and away ahead of both!
Forspoken, love it or hate it, is the newest title in my testing, and if there’s ever
been an argument for updated drivers I think this is likely to be a poster child for it.
The A770 and the RTX 3060 are both pretty well matched at 1080p and 1440p at high settings,
but the RX 6600 XT is not even showing up to play here.
Wow.
Either way this one is tougher to run, and all of them struggle to keep consistent 1%
lows for smooth gameplay.
Okay, I lied.
Returnal is the absolute newest game on this list and is quickly turning into my favorite
title this year.
It also features a killer benchmark and heavy visuals features.
Looking at the results using Epic settings sans ray tracing, we see the A770 and 6600
XT neck and neck performance wise at 1080p.
But just as we’ve come to see in other titles, the tables flip at 1440p and the A770 breaks
away from the other two.
Luckily this title does feature a robust list of scaling technologies to help get these
cards well over that 60 FPS hump.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least take a brief look at ray tracing performance, so
let’s do that before we wrap up.
This time we’re only looking at 1080p numbers without ANY resolution modifiers, so raw RT
performance.
Of course the modifiers would help improve performance, so keep that in mind.
Back to Cyberpunk 2077, this time with the Ray Tracing Medium preset and it’s not bad
at all in my opinion.
The A770 is right on the heels of the RTX 3060, basically margin of error.
If you’re wanting to use RT in Cyberpunk above that smooooth 30 though you’re definitely
going to need to call in DLSS or FSR support.
Hitman 3 is a great game with good use of ray traced effects, and I went for 1080p Ultra
details with RT enabled.
This was a surprising result, with the Arc A770 able to deliver a solid gameplay experience,
and the only one to hit over 60 fps here.
Adding in the use of XeSS would provide a little boost, but otherwise native 1080p is
perfectly playable.
Last but not least is Chernobylite, and 1080p Ultra with Ray Tracing at High gives us another
very impressive result for the A770.
It’s far and away the fastest graphics card in this game at these settings.
This game does support FSR to help get over that 60 fps barrier though, so that would
be a good option for stability I am truly surprised by these ray tracing results though.
At this price level most people don’t even bother with it, but might think twice with
the A770.
Well, there we have it.
With all of the game numbers wrapped we can see where the A770 sits right now, and in
my opinion it’s right in line with where it’s priced.
As much as most of you out there would like for me to sit here and state a definitive
winner, I really can’t.
Most all these cards can now be found for about the same price, but the Nvidia and AMD
cards do seem to fluctuate more, so it comes down to personal priorities.
While the RX 6600 XT overwhelmingly takes the lead at 1080p, at 1440p and in ray tracing
it struggles to keep up.
The RTX 3060 is very much the middle of the road and reasonably consistent one here, and
also has access to the superior DLSS upscaling tech.
But the A770 puts up a fight.
It manages to hold its own at1080p, but comfortably drives1440p thanks to its wide memory bus
and large memory pool.
With modern games like Fospoken and Hogwarts Legacy chewing into VRAM there’s certainly
the argument for more of it in your GPU of choice.
There’s very little the A770 leaves off the table right now performance wise, and
as opposed to even a couple months ago, I can confidently recommend it as an option.
Is that to say it should be your only option?
Nope, you’re going to need to decide based on the games you play as well as other factors
surrounding how you use your PC.
But it’s kinda fun not having a clear winner on the table.
The final hurdle for Intel to jump over seems to be around stability and reliability at
this point.
While I haven’t run into a ton of problems recently, others continue to and it’s going
to be really hard to shake off that stigma even if they get there.
But that's it for me today, I would love to hear your feedback on these cards and if you
had $350 and had to spend it on either of these three cards, which would you get and
why?
Sound off in the comment section and make sure you’re subscribed here at PCWorld for
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