Intel ARC and the Latest Drivers: Does this bode Well for ARC's future?

[Author_25]

Is Intel Arc finally showing signs of promise with the latest drivers, with there improved DirectX 9 support, and overall performance improvements, and future updates looking to get rid of or allow the overlay to be disabled?

Intel ARC did not have a promising start but with constant driver releases with there improvements, have well, not made the ARC A770 the card to buy over similarly priced cards, 3060 Ti or the 6700XT, but for a first try, in modern Desktop GPUs, it was not a bad start from Intel.
Ray Tracing performance, though far from Nvidia beating, was better than AMD's first attempt, and performance is not terrible, when the card works as intended, and for most gamers if the card had performed well from the start would have been a contender for the cash of your average gamer.

With ARC BattleMage, coming next year and the continuous improvement in Intel ARC drivers could the this be the card that makes gamers think I would buy that, especially if the price is right, and does ARC have a future?

 

[Author_25]

Intel have lost so much money. I honestly fear they will throw in the towel. People keep saying, myself included, that Nvidia/AMD are taking the ****. However, A770 is not selling is it? It seems people would just pay up or just keep sitting it out.

True, people are not buying but in part that was due to the poor drivers making the experience of ARC very poor, as well as the wait and see attitude many took, and were justified after the initial reviews but several months down the line the A770 has improved greatly due the updates and should get better.

If, and a big if, ARC Battlemage can stand up to a 4070 (not Ti), with some leaks indicating it can hold its own against a 4080, and at a better price then Intel may yet recover, but that also depends on the hardware and driver, and signs are that Battlemage may be the card that gives Intel its breakthrough into the discrete GPU market.

A leaked Intel Roadmap shows that Battlemage is due early to mid 2024, so Intel may not throw the towel in just yet, and may give the full ARC lineup a try before making a decision.

 

[Author_25]

A price cut would make the A770/A750 more appealing, combined with the driver improvements and getting rid of the overlay, but it would have to be a large cut to make people choose it over the 3060 or 6650XT/6700XT.

 

[Author_25]

An A770 at £250 to £280 would be competitive, with the 6650XT at £320, and a 3060 at, £320 to £350, but it all depends on the driver updates.

 

[Author_25]

Ah, just in time to compete with Nvidia’s 5000 series and AMD’s 8000 series GPU rumours a few months before their launches.

Shame they can’t release Battlemage this year instead.

They are a step behind, but at present the RTX 5000 series is just a rumour and until Nvidia has cleared not just its, 3000 but 4000 stock, I doubt the 5000 series will be launched until 2025, if not later.

 

[Author_25]

I'd bite at £250 for sure for a 16gb a770

Remeber the days when £250 to £350 would by you the top tier card.

 

[Author_25]

Remember the days when Freddos were 10p.

And a packet of Space invaders was 15p.

 

[Author_25]

Possibly but Nvidia/AMD are pretty rigid with their two year cycles.

All depends on how much RTX 4000 and RX 7000 series stock is left, especially for Nvidia.

If prices do not drop they are going to have a lot of unused stock left doing nothing and no crypto miners to save them.

 

[Author_25]

I don't think Intel will throw in the towel because I think Intel are mainly interested in Arc as a specific type of processor rather than as a consumer graphics card product. And I mean Arc, not specifically Alchemist. I think Intel's in it for the long haul and is after the bigger markets for that sort of processor architecture, not really for the consumer graphics card market. That market is in rapid decline and the one and a bit companies running it as a not-quite-monopoly are running it into the ground while extracting maximum profit margins from minimum customers. That's an approach for a dying market and it will hurry its demise. Intel would be daft to consider that as the key market for the future because that market doesn't have much of a future.

Alchemist doesn't cut it but it is very valuable experience and the fiasco with drivers has shown that Intel sorely needs that experience. If Intel can work Alchemist up to an adequate budget product (even if they overprice it and don't sell many - the key thing here is perceived functionality) then that and the experience gained would put Intel in a better position for the next gen, Battlemage. Which might be a genuine contender.

THe A750 and A770 do feel more like a beta test than an actual launch, except getting people to pay to join it, as there has been no real marketing of the card, or push for sales, and the only area where there is any activity is on the driver side, and appears to be the main avenue for Intel, on Arc.

Its almost like the hardware is there to enable improvements to the software.

 

[Author_25]

Latest Driver release has removed the overlay only application and you can know have the Desktop standalone application only.

Also great number of improvements as the graph above shows for the A750.

Also the A750 has had a price drop, $250, now.

 

[Author_25]

The new drivers do not appear to be on Intel's website right now.

Drivers are live now, 101.4091, ready for download.

 

[Author_25]

Would be interested to hear from anyone who has one of these cards first hand if the drivers are improving noticeably performance in games?

Gamers Nexus are planning a review of the cards again with the latest drivers so should be interesting as they do not pull there punches.

 

[Author_25]

Is ARC Battlemage the card to wait for?

Intel's Next-Gen Arc Battlemage GPUs Are "Substantially Better" Than Where Alchemist Was In Its Current Stage

The bulk of Intel AXG is already working on the next-gen Arc Battlemage GPUs which are said to be substantially better than Alchemist.

wccftech.com

 

[Author_25]

Hard to say with Raja at the helm. Battlemage is supposed to target the high end but Raja hasn't produced a top end GPU since the 9700XT and history isn't exactly on his side from his time at AMD.

On the other hand Intel are the card choice for people looking to experience entry level enthusiast PC gaming. Intel could make this level their bread and butter combined with move to using their own manufacturing it would give them a price advantage to boot (assuming Intel's foundries were as capable as TSMC's) and stay competitive.

If it lives up to the, very early leaks, and has close to 4080 or just the 4070, with a better memory bus and more memory, at a lower price then Intel could make a dent in the mid range.

If Intel can under cut Nvidia and AMD, which is not impossible, once there new foundries come online, taking out a middle man, that there competiros cannot do at present, and continue with its current level of Driver improvement then Nvidia and AMD have something to worry about, after all it takes just one mistake to loose market share, something intel are familiar with, and seem to be learning from.

 

[Author_25]

Intel ARC A770 16GB can be found for £369.99,

 

[Author_25]

The Arc A770 16GB seems to be better than the 4070 Ti, with RT and High settings, when it comes to games that require lots of VRAM, such as Hogwarts Legacy, and a decent Memory Bus, and yes the 4070 Ti has greater FPS, but the A770 16GB VRAM/256 Bit Bus, eliminates, a great deal of stuttering, that the limited Memory Bus on the 4070 Ti causes, making it more playable, similar when tested with a 3090.

 

[Author_25]

I have always built with Intel CPUs but the one thing I cannot is the short life of the CPU socket and I will commend AMD for the long life of there Socket types making upgrades and replacement cheaper and more accessible.

 

[Author_25]

Motherboard prices are getting ridiculous, almost as bad as GPUs, and with less features.

I got lucky when building my new PC last year, got the MSI Z690 Tomahawk DDR4, at £194, so saved a bit.