Intel Arc A770 and A750 review: welcome player three

Cyberpunk 2077, Cyberpunk 2077 RT, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition.

Review by Will Judd Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry

Published on Oct. 5, 2022

The Arc benchmarking marathon continues with two recent atmospheric first-person shooters with RPG elements: Cyberpunk 2077 and Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition. We're testing Cyberpunk with both RT disabled and enabled, while Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition always has RT enabled.

As we mentioned on the first page, we're using our late 2022 test rig for these benchmarks. The heart of the system is a Core i9 12900K, with the performance cores locked to an all-core turbo frequency of 5.2GHz on an Asus Maximus Z690 Hero motherboard. This is cooled with a Noctua D15 tower cooler and backed with 32GB of dual-channel G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB DDR5-6000 CL32 RAM. For storing our newly enhanced test suite, we're relying on three drives: a 4TB Kingston KC3000 SSD, a 1TB PNY XLR8 CS3140 and a 1TB Crucial P5 Plus. All this is powered by a 1000W Corsair RM1000x PSU.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077: DX12, Ultra

When we first added Cyberpunk to a DF test suite, on the release of Intel's 12th-gen CPUs, it didn't come with an integrated benchmark - so we rolled our own with a quick motorcycle ride through the streets of Night City. Now, thanks to the assistance of a talented Cyberpunk modder, we've got a more involved and automated benchmark which takes us on a high-speed tour with collision detection more or less disabled. That lets us really stress the GPU, especially with RT enabled, but let's look at the non-RT results first.

Here, the A770 manages 50fps, in comparison to the RTX 3060 which does a bit better at 53fps. The gap between the two Arc GPUs is small, at just five percent - so the A750 is definitely the better value choice on that basis. Interestingly, we see the Arc cards improve relative to their Nvidia and AMD competition at 1440p, perhaps the result of more driver overhead on the Intel side. That pushes the A770 out to an 18 percent lead over the 3060 at 1440p, or a 12 percent advantage over the RX 6600 XT.

Cyberpunk 2077 RT

Cyberpunk 2077: DX12, Ray Tracing Ultra, DLSS off

Now, let's throw RT into the mix with the 'ray tracing ultra' preset. Frame-rates plummet - after all, we're not using DLSS here to render the game at a lower internal resolution and scale up - but Arc remains competitive, with a ~30fps result that more or less ties the RTX 3060 and RX 6600 XT, and outdoes the 6600 XT by 62 percent.

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition

Metro Exodus EE: DX12, Ultra, Ray Tracing Ultra, DLSS off

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition is a fully RT version of the vanilla game, giving developers 4A Games a chance to remove manually-placed lights in favour of more realistic alternatives, amongst other changes. This is also a more realistic indicator of in-game performance, as take a look at how each card performs during the opening of the Taiga level as Artyom and Alyosha reconnoitre a new area - before things quickly go south.

A770 is every bit the equal of RTX 3060 Ti here, an impressive result given the gap in pricing between the two cards. Even the A750 is 20 percent to the good over the RTX 3060, staking out Arc's claim to excellent RT performance. The game remains playable at ultra settings at 1440p, with a ~60fps readout on both Arc cards. Meanwhile, AMD is nowhere - the A770 is 32 percent faster than the RX 6700 XT at this resolution and still 26 percent faster at 1080p.

These are interesting results so far, but let's kick it up a gear with two new games to the GPU test suite and a returning favourite - on the next page.