Intel Arc A770 and A750 review: welcome player three

Gears 5, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Doom Eternal.

Review by Will Judd Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry

Published on Oct. 5, 2022

In this section, we'll look at performance in three titles, each on a different engine: newcomer Gears 5 (Unreal Engine 4), Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Foundation Engine) and Doom Eternal (id Tech). The first two games here are DirectX 12 titles, while Doom Eternal uses the similarly advanced Vulkan, so we're expecting good results from our Intel Arc GPUs here.

While the list of games we're testing has changed, our overall approach has not. We've identified GPU-limited scenarios for a range of titles, recorded real-world runs of how each GPU performed at 1080p, 1440p and 4K, and analysed the results.

On mobile, you'll get a basic overview of our findings, with metadata from the video capture of each GPU being translated into simple bar charts with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements for easy comparisons.

On a desktop-class browser, you'll get the full-fat DF experience with embedded YouTube videos of each test scene and live performance metrics. Play the video, and you'll see exactly how each card handled the scene as it progresses. Below the real-time metrics is a bar chart, which you can mouse over to see different measurements and click to switch between actual frame-rates and percentage differences. All the data here is derived from video captured directly from each GPU, ensuring an accurate replay of real performance.

Gears 5

Gears 5: DX12, Ultra

Gears 5 comes with a rapid integrated benchmark without the shader compilation stutters that have beset so many other Unreal Engine 4 titles recently, making it an easy addition to our test suite. In our first game out of the gate, Arc is good but not great - the 86fps average here is more than enough for a playable result, but the RTX 3060 is nine percent faster with a 93fps average at 1080p. In more promising news, the gap between the A750 and A770 is quite small, at just three percent.

Things improve at 1440p, potentially as we're less CPU-limited and therefore driver overhead becomes less of a concern. Here both Arc cards eclipse a 60fps average, and the gap to the RTX 3060 has dropped to a scant two percent. That also means we're in range of the $300 RX 6600 XT, which is 12 percent faster at this resolution.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider: DX12, Highest, TAA

Shadow of the Tomb Raider comes next, with its oft-featured three-part integrated benchmark and the highest settings selected, though RT and DLSS are disabled. Here we have parity between the RTX 3060 and A770 at a ~127fps average, putting the RX 6600 XT just eight percent ahead of the pair. The 1440p relative improvement trend continues too, with A770 being eight percent faster than the 3060 at this higher resolution - and even five percent faster than the RX 6600 XT. At 4K we see a similar progression, although average frame-rates have now dropped below the 60fps low-water mark.

Doom Eternal

Doom Eternal: Vulkan, Ultra Nightmare, Medium Textures

We're testing out a new part of Doom Eternal, trading a cutscene section from one of the first levels of the game for the opening train ride in Doom Hunter Base. This is the shortest benchmark in our suite, at just 1500 frames, but it's still illustrative of performance - and we see the A770 acquits itself well here, with its first outright lead over the 3060 at 1080p by a sizeable 22 percent margin. The A770 is also just barely faster than the RX 6600 XT, which is good as the two cards ought to cost around the same price. A770 remains good value at 1440p and 4K, turning in a 92fps average at the latter - good for about a 20 percent advantage over both Nvidia and AMD competition.

It's a relatively promising start, but how do the A750 and A770 measure up in games like Cyberpunk, Metro Exodus, RDR2 and Forza Horizon 5 - and what about XeSS? To find out, you'll have to read on.