The Intel Arc owners thread

oweneades · 7 Dec 2022 at 08:39

Need to give these a download tonight. Not been on my desktop much so will be interesting to see what if any improvements are seen outside of just pure DX9.

mrk · 7 Dec 2022 at 20:11

Credit where due, the new drivers offer significant DX9 gains, if the trend continues to later APIs then this is very good stuff.

Quartz · 7 Dec 2022 at 22:15

And a whole 1 point gain in Port Royal.

Grim5 · 8 Dec 2022 at 10:13

Quartz said:
And a whole 1 point gain in Port Royal.

Port Royal is DirectX12, not 9, so what are you trying to even say

Quartz · 8 Dec 2022 at 10:18

Grim5 said:
Port Royal is DirectX12, not 9, so what are you trying to even say

Yes, but drivers often improve performance in more than one area.

mrk · 8 Dec 2022 at 10:21

Maybe you are forgetting that the whole point of this new driver was to target DX9 only.

Quartz · 8 Dec 2022 at 10:38

The DX9 improvements were loudly touted but there were other fixes too.

Orcvader · 8 Dec 2022 at 16:48

From what I've seen it's only certain games that will use the new native DX9 driver, but any other still relies on D2D9on12? Granted however they seemed to have at least covered every popular DX9 game so it's still a good start. Now here's hoping OpenGL will be soon as well.

Quartz · 29 Dec 2022 at 14:19

This video is from the American PCWorld, reporting massive gains in DX9 and much improved stability.

throwaway4372 · 29 Dec 2022 at 14:46

Sick of videos comparing arc to previous arc. What matters is how it now compares vs the competition.

philip2009 · 22 Jan 2023 at 10:38

throwaway4372 said:
Sick of videos comparing arc to previous arc. What matters is how it now compares vs the competition.

So how do arc cards compare to nvidia now intel have had a while to improve drivers?

throwaway4372 · 22 Jan 2023 at 10:56

philip2009 said:
So how do arc cards compare to nvidia now intel have had a while to improve drivers?

Still haven't seen anyone test that yet. GamersNexus mentioned they would, just hasn't happened yet.

philip2009 · 22 Jan 2023 at 11:47

This guy overclocks the ASRock A750 OC to 2600MHz(without issues apparently) -

philip2009 · 23 Jan 2023 at 15:04

So I'm currently using a ASRock A750 Challenger D 8GB OC which I got today, going to give it a 14 day test to see how stable it is and whether I keep it or return it. First impressions are that the fans don't spin unless I stress test it so it's silent under normal productivity use(I never play games so won't be able to report anything on that score). My setup is a 43" 4K HDMI TV/monitor.

Quartz · 23 Jan 2023 at 17:19

I'm very interested in how you get on. Indeed, I'm sure we all are.

oweneades · 26 Jan 2023 at 22:13

Interesting rumour in PCgameshardware.de follow up on ARC performance:

Intel Arc im Nachtest: Was leistet der Treiber 2023? Kompatibilitätstest mit 66 Spielen [Update]

Ein halbes Jahr später: Was läuft mit einer Intel-Arc-Grafikkarte rund, wo klemmt es noch? Die Ergebnisse könnten Sie überraschen.

www.pcgameshardware.de

(note - translate into English)

Article said:
The latter is only of secondary importance in this article, because as we have heard from well-informed circles, Intel is currently preparing a major driver update that is intended to increase performance across the board - apparently one of the undoubtedly existing brakes has been identified and eliminated.

I wonder if it could be driver overhead related. This is certainly something I have seen in Hitman 3:

Me said:
Currently a 12700K @ 5.3/5.2/4.0 (efficiency) so it should be making a difference in CPU bound areas.

Per the other thread I think there is definitely a driver overhead issue coming into play. Its relative performance in more CPU heavy scenarios such as the Hitman 3 Dartmoor benchmark or the Destiny 2 tower (notorious on older Ryzen systems for being bad) is a noticeable step-down vs when it can stretch its legs.

Going from 48% behind to 17% behind vs a 3060Ti in Hitman 3 does point to this. I am not really CPU bound on the 3060Ti (@1440p) so the ARC card shouldn't suffer such a performance hit in the same benchmark on the same CPU when it is relatively strong in the other benchmark.

On a more general front I have switched monitors back with my wife so my Arc 750 is now gaming at 3440x1440 (she also gains more screen real-estate for her writing). Honestly it performs better than I was expecting. The performance drop from 2560x1440 seems to be less than the 3060Ti experiences in the same scenario. This again is leading to a possible driver overhead issue which is mitigated (to a certain degree) when pushing more of the load onto the GPU.

I have also decided to move my desktop over to a full time ARC test bench with my laptop acting as a relative performance benchmark (Full power RTX 3080m so ~3070 Desktop tier). I am on the fence on whether to sell the 3060Ti as honestly I haven't found an scenario where it hasn't provided playable performance. Destiny 2 for example is faster on the 3060Ti but still runs at over 70FPS at max settings. Been mainly playing High on Life lately and it actually performed pretty much the same as the 3060Ti apart from weird drops in the house / hub area.

Quartz · 26 Jan 2023 at 22:38

There’s an article on Videocardz saying a major driver update is on the way.

Edit: https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-r...ajor-driver-update-with-increased-performance

Quartz · 27 Jan 2023 at 00:22

From the above article, Arc GPU games compatibility update:

Quartz · 29 Jan 2023 at 17:28

Quartz · 1 Feb 2023 at 15:43

This seems to be another DX9-oriented update. I'll be testing with DX12 games when I download the updated driver. But isn't it amazing how relevant DX9 still is?

BTW the performance gains reported are measured against the A7x0 launch driver, not the last driver.