Intel's Arc GPUs are still pretty much a no-show despite being "unveiled" in their laptop versions back in March. But now, there is one desktop variant of the GPUs that was just tested against a competitor from NVIDIA.
intel arc
According to PCGamer, the aforementioned Intel Arc GPU, the Arc A770, was recently spotted in a GeekBench test running OpenCL. The results showed that it was about as fast as an NVIDIA RTX 2070 in the same benchmark, which is a little underwhelming for several reasons-considering the A770 is regarded as Intel's flagship desktop graphics card.
The GPU in the GeekBench test scored 85585 points. It was paired with a six-core i5-9600K and 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and was shown as having 512 Compute Units (CUs) and a maximum clock of 2400 MHz. As for the memory, the configuration is a little weird at 12.7GB, though this could be very much a 12GB card.
'Underwhelming' Run?
The leaked benchmark was underwhelming because the RTX 2070, while still a pretty capable card, is already almost three years old. If the Intel Arc A770 is indeed the top dog in its class, then it is seriously underpowered if it's going to try to compete against NVIDIA and AMD.
Aside from that, this GeekBench run is also far below the performance indicated in a leak that surfaced back in January. Tech Times reported then that another Intel Arc GPU outperformed an RTX 3070 Ti in a leaked SiSoftware Sandra database, as per Twitter user and graphics card industry insider TUM_APISAK:
Link
3070 Tihttps://t.co/fuBsKVId10
XE 512 @ 2.1 GHzhttps://t.co/xaJVkPDH8n https://t.co/yaLSHkogpn— APISAK (@TUM_APISAK) January 21, 2022
Numbers-wise, the Arc A770 (which could be an engineering sample, for all we know) is far below that of even mid-range offerings from NVIDIA and AMD in OpenCL. For one, it barely beats the RX 6600 XT (which scored 82559), and is way below that of the RTX 3060 (96416) and the RX 6700 XT (102988).
Read Also: Intel Hires Former Lead AMD Discrete Graphics Architect To Boost Its GPU Department
But while this might seem very underwhelming, take note that OpenCL is not indicative of the Arc A770's real-world gaming performance, as per the original PCGamer report. So the actual frame rates in today's latest games could be way better than what this GeekBench run indicates.
What This Could Mean For Intel's Arc GPUs For Desktop
If you think this is bad news for Team Blue, you'd be forgiven for doing so. But maybe you should hold your horses for a bit in terms of the cards' real-world performance, particularly in gaming.
Intel Arc is bringing a gaming graphics brand for Intel, and the company promises its release by the first quarter of 2022.
First off, there's still barely any news about them-not to mention no confirmed actual benchmarks being shared. This is a leaked benchmark, so it would do you good if you took it with a pinch of salt. The cards are still coming out this year, and that's the only time you can really gauge how fast they are.
Second and last, Intel's not coming in with their own proprietary tech. NVIDIA and AMD have their DLSS and FSR, and Team Blue's coming in with XeSS. As their own version of frame rate-boosting tech in games, XeSS could ensure that the games you run on Arc GPUs would be far smoother than they initially seem.
The waiting game persists.
Related Article: Intel's Arc GPUs For Desktops Could Have Sky-High Power Draw Based On This Tease
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by RJ Pierce
