Can the Arc A380 beat a 10 year old flagship (no)

[almoststew1990]

I'm asking the question on all our minds: Is the 2022/3 Intel Arc A380 an upgrade than the 2013 4GB AMD Radeon R9 290X?
I got the Arc for about £150 a couple of months ago. I got the 290X for £65 second hand. This was going to go in my project PC, currently a 4c/8t 3.6GHz Sandybridge Xeon with 16GB RAM.
However the testing was done on my 5800X3D PC with Resizable BAR turned on (for both GPUs)

I tried out a couple of DX9, DX10, DX11, DX12 games, at 1440P I used FSR whenever it was available, usually in balanced mode, no RT.

I'm surprised that the 290X holds up so well to be honest, in fact the average average framerate is 25% higher and it's not as if I loaded up on the DX9 games. The A380 is a lot smaller but is just as quiet and still has/needs an 8-pin power connector so it probably isn't much more power efficient. Definitely cooler though bloody hell

I think I'll stick with the 290 in the project PC (which doesn't even have the sam bar thing)

 

[Mercurial]

Hopefully Intel will become more competitve in the future (we can but hope). The R9 290X (I had the plain old R9 290) aged very well, in fact if you got one with a decent cooler it wasn't even too hard to live with

The R9 290 has the record of being in my primary PC for the longest time for any card in 30ish years, I used it for just shy of 4 years (and then only replaced because I got a mis-price on a newer card which was honoured).

I watched this a while ago; interesting findings (warning the presenter is massively OTT but the content is worth the view, and he does calm down as the video goes on);

R9 290 | Still Melting through Games in 2022!

Testing the AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB graphics card from 2013, 9 years later in 14 popular games! I used the NimeZ custom drivers in this video.⏱ Timestamps ⏱Int...

youtu.be

Edit - it aged a darn sight more gracefully than the competition as well...
Further edit - The newer card I replaced it with (an RX580) didn't feel like much of an upgrade (though it was more efficient), it wasn't until I got a Vega 56 that I felt it had been substantially surpassed.

 

[Tetras]

The A380 is a lot smaller but is just as quiet and still has/needs an 8-pin power connector so it probably isn't much more power efficient. Definitely cooler though bloody hell

Uhm, I'm pretty sure the A380 should be way more power efficient, at least it should in games the drivers actually work properly, I suspect that's why it gets smashed in some DirectX9 games.

 

[slackrob]

Still have the 290x in mine , my PC gaming days have ebbed away with the price increases and getting an Xbox. Last game I played was Modern Warfare .

Starfield may tempt me back(new gfx will definitely be needed!)

 

[almoststew1990]

Uhm, I'm pretty sure the A380 should be way more power efficient, at least it should in games the drivers actually work properly, I suspect that's why it gets smashed in some DirectX9 games.

You're right, it has a TBP of 75W. My card has an 8 pin power connector allowing for 225W power draw. The R290X has a TDP of 290W but only has 8 + 6 pin connectors! So I had assumed the A380 was only 75W down on the 290X but for 25% less frame rate.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The A380 has AV1 support too.