Review Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition Review: Bringing Back Midrange GPUs

[rluker5]

You attributte bad performance and crashes to the lack of support of ReBAR. That is incorrect, factually at least, to the crashes. Bad performance, well, you have a A380, so it didn't have much performance to begin width, so hard to gauge the deltas in such old hardware.

Regards.

There is a huge chasm in useable performance between having rebar enabled and having it unavailable.
Games don't start, get unplayable bottlenecks, 0 fps for the occasional second, etc. Not in every game, but the problems plauging Arc with rebar off are numerous and real.
If a potential buyer sees a video of an arc GPU playing a game with rebar enabled, it does not represent what they will get if they do not have rebar.
And the A380 plays nearly all games at a minimum of 1080p60 low so long as you have an Alder CPU.
Rebar off you get a mess.

 

[lightofhonor]

I'd like to see benchmarks cappped at 60fps. Not everyone uses high refresh rate monitor and today, when electricity is expensive and most likely will be even more in the near future, I'd like to see how much power a GPU draws when not trying to run the game as fast as possible.

TechPowerUp has that in their summary table. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-arc-a770/38.html

 

[-Fran-]

There is a huge chasm in useable performance between having rebar enabled and having it unavailable.
Games don't start, get unplayable bottlenecks, 0 fps for the occasional second, etc. Not in every game, but the problems plauging Arc with rebar off are numerous and real.
If a potential buyer sees a video of an arc GPU playing a game with rebar enabled, it does not represent what they will get if they do not have rebar.
And the A380 plays nearly all games at a minimum of 1080p60 low so long as you have an Alder CPU.
Rebar off you get a mess.

Uhm... I hope they fix the problems with ReBAR then, otherwise I'll have a very annoying experience with it

TechPowerUp has that in their summary table. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-arc-a770/38.html

I was just reading that, as it's the only place where they show my Vega64 and I have to say... The A770 being not that far away at 1440 (my target resolution) is kind of a bummer, but at the same time, thinking about my experience with Vega64, I'm actually hopeful about the drivers improving. I mean, Vega64 is only 30% slower than it at 1440p. That's impressive. I got my Vega64 for £280 a few years back.

Regards.

 

[InvalidError]

You attributte bad performance and crashes to the lack of support of ReBAR. That is incorrect, factually at least, to the crashes. Bad performance, well, you have a A380, so it didn't have much performance to begin with*, so hard to gauge the deltas in such old hardware.

The A380 may not have "much performance to begin with" but benchmarks do show that Intel's GPUs often lose 30+% performance from having ReBAR off, which makes ReBAR mandatory for performance.

 

[Eximo]

I would recommend upgrading your processor to something that officially supports SAM first. My A380 1. games like trash on my h97 and h81 motherboards and 2. won't install Arc Control on either of those. If you tried the A770 on your 2700 you would likely get crashes and poor performance like you are expecting. The lack of rebar issues for Arc are much more severe than lacking SAM capability or rebar with Nvidia.

Running an A380 on a Z87 board with a i7-4770k, works well enough. Fired up Unreal Tournament from the Epic store, worked pretty well. Started downloading Borderlands 3, but didn't get around to it. I imagine that will be about the same since it is also Unreal Engine.

My biggest issue has been getting sound out through HDMI, currently have to go into device manager and disable it every once in a while to get it working again. The occasional quick black screen.

Stutters in old DX9 games though.

 

[chalabam]

If there is something I always find disappointing in a review, is no effort made to review how practical is to open the card for maintenance.

This card seems to be trash on that aspect. No screws, everything glued. You have to break it to do any service.

If you ever get lucky enough to find a replacement fan, there is no data on how it will be powered.

 

[RodroX]

For been the first real (and current) discrete gaming GPU, the performance is very decent compared to the current-old gen GPUs from Nvidia and AMD, too bad drivers are still in a somehow erratic state.

But I think intel will have to adjust the prices down even further if they really want to move inventory thought whats left of the year. Perhaps bringing bundles.... or maybe they already have deals with the "usual" HP/LENOVO/DELL, etc. to include intel discrete solutions GPU on thier systems.

I feel nvidia and amd prices still have some room to go down, considering the current global recession and the lack of the old mining market.

Then again a vey decent first gen of intel discrete GPUs. Hope they can really work out the driver side asap.

 

[rluker5]

Running an A380 on a Z87 board with a i7-4770k, works well enough. Fired up Unreal Tournament from the Epic store, worked pretty well. Started downloading Borderlands 3, but didn't get around to it. I imagine that will be about the same since it is also Unreal Engine.

My biggest issue has been getting sound out through HDMI, currently have to go into device manager and disable it every once in a while to get it working again. The occasional quick black screen.

Stutters in old DX9 games though.

My daughter has my old z87 deluxe and 4770k and she would be mad if I switched my a380 for her fury nitro . I did notice that nier automata ran nearly the same rebar off vs on, but the Witcher was scrambled like the old broadcast adult sites, tales of berseria ran about half speed and cp2077 had about a dozen second long hitches in a single benchmark run with it off, and those are all of the games I tried with rebar off. The performance loss depends on the game. Hopefully you are lucky and pick a bunch of winners.

 

[-Fran-]

If there is something I always find disappointing in a review, is no effort made to review how practical is to open the card for maintenance.

This card seems to be trash on that aspect. No screws, everything glued. You have to break it to do any service.

If you ever get lucky enough to find a replacement fan, there is no data on how it will be powered.

Well, Steve has you covered.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N371iMe_nfA


And holy cow xD

Regards.

 

[mrv_co]

ARC GPUs make for a far more interesting and practical read than Nvidia's nearly-wider-than-it-is-long 4090 monstrosity.

 

[InvalidError]

ARC GPUs make for a far more interesting and practical read than Nvidia's nearly-wider-than-it-is-long 4090 monstrosity.

The FE version isn't so bad next to the Aorus which is almost thicker than it is wide. Those gigantic 6-24 fans GPU photoshops memes don't look quite as ridiculous as they used to anymore.

 

[shady28]

There is a huge chasm in useable performance between having rebar enabled and having it unavailable.
Games don't start, get unplayable bottlenecks, 0 fps for the occasional second, etc. Not in every game, but the problems plauging Arc with rebar off are numerous and real.
If a potential buyer sees a video of an arc GPU playing a game with rebar enabled, it does not represent what they will get if they do not have rebar.
And the A380 plays nearly all games at a minimum of 1080p60 low so long as you have an Alder CPU.
Rebar off you get a mess.

This is why it says Intel Gen 10 or later, or AMD 3000 series Zen 2 or later compatibility. Those systems have Rebar/SAM capability.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

This is why it says Intel Gen 10 or later, or AMD 3000 series Zen 2 or later compatibility. Those systems have Rebar/SAM capability.

Technically Intel Gen 8/9 also can support ReBAR. Quite a few Z390 motherboards have a BIOS update for it, and it's a BIOS feature, not a CPU feature. I have a Z390 board with ReBAR support, though Arc GPUs may still have quirks on older pre-10th Gen systems. Basically, I think LGA1200 and 400-series chipset boards (and later) all got ReBAR, whereas only some LGA1151 (Coffee Lake CPUs) and 300-series chipset boards got it — actually, I wouldn't be surprised if only some / most Z390 boards got it, while Z370, H370, etc. got left out.

 

[shady28]

Technically Intel Gen 8/9 also can support ReBAR. Quite a few Z390 motherboards have a BIOS update for it, and it's a BIOS feature, not a CPU feature. I have a Z390 board with ReBAR support, though Arc GPUs may still have quirks on older pre-10th Gen systems. Basically, I think LGA1200 and 400-series chipset boards (and later) all got ReBAR, whereas only some LGA1151 (Coffee Lake CPUs) and 300-series chipset boards got it — actually, I wouldn't be surprised if only some / most Z390 boards got it, while Z370, H370, etc. got left out.

Yeah, but if you are selling to the general public 99% aren't going to know what ReBAR is. It would make sense to limit official support to those platforms that definitely have it. Even with that it is still a problem for Intel, a typical user with say a 10400 OEM rig might think they are good to go but have no clue that they may need to go into BIOS and enable it (or even, know how to go into BIOS).

OFC this is also part of an even bigger problem on higher end cards. Most OEM rigs don't have the PCI power connectors for anything over 150W.

 

[InvalidError]

Yeah, but if you are selling to the general public 99% aren't going to know what ReBAR is.

Most people who don't know what ReBAR is are buying pre-built PCs and don't need to know about it, it should have all been taken care of by the system builder where applicable and the system's innards probably won't see the light of day again until the PC gets dumped at the e-cycler.

 

[Jagwired]

Still no info on where these cards will be available? Newegg was the only place selling the A380. I'm wondering if these will be more widely available, and if the Limited Edition cards will only be available from Intel, similar to Nvidia selling the Founder cards.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Still no info on where these cards will be available? Newegg was the only place selling the A380. I'm wondering if these will be more widely available, and if the Limited Edition cards will only be available from Intel, similar to Nvidia selling the Founder cards.

October 12 is the official launch date, same as the RTX 4090. Newegg should have them we're told, probably other retail sites as well. Intel wants to eventually have cards for sale direct from its site, but that won't happen in time for the launch.

 

[-Fran-]

This long stream is actuall very telling on the state of the drivers and their optimizations for games.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nETQGtt024k


It's a good watch and it'll prepare you for what to expect, kind of, when/if you buy one.

Regards.

 

[tek-check]

Can't really call it anything lower than mid-range when you look at what the compettition's sub-$200 options are. The A750 and A770 are waaaaay faster than the RX6500 and GTX1650.

A770 is slotted between 6600XT and 6650XT, so let's say it's entry midrange.

For midrange, you have 3060Ti, 6700XT, 6750XT and 3070.

Upper-midrange 3070Ti and 6800.

High-end is everything above.

 

[InvalidError]

A770 is slotted between 6600XT and 6650XT, so let's say it's entry midrange.

For midrange, you have 3060Ti, 6700XT, 6750XT and 3070.

Upper-midrange 3070Ti and 6800.

High-end is everything above.

I cannot see anything above $500 as less than high-end. Far too expensive to be called mid-range in my book regardless of who AMD or Nvidia pitches them at. I'm quite disappointed that they have been so successful at grooming so many of their customers into accepting exorbitantly inflated prices versus what the prices should have been if GPUs had healthy competition instead of a duopoly.

 

[Oli Baba]

I'm actually quite optimistic with how this rolls... The 770 shows an absolutely terrific performance in synthetic benchmarks, which means the capability is there. It's "just" the drivers holding it back for now. And with all of this being a first generation and the next generations already in the make, Intel is surely bound to deliver better drivers rapidly.

Performance issues with older DirectX9 and 11 titles will hopefully improve on the way as well. But then again, those titles are old, meaning a lot can be achieved with raw power. Nobody needs those games to run at 300fps.

Not an Intel fanboy, by the way. I'm happily using Ryzen CPUs and switching between AMD and Nvidia GPUs.

 

[InvalidError]

Performance issues with older DirectX9 and 11 titles will hopefully improve on the way as well. But then again, those titles are old, meaning a lot can be achieved with raw power. Nobody needs those games to run at 300fps.

Many competitive games like CSGO which is the most played game on all of Steam are DX9-11 and those do need to run at 200+fps at the most competitive levels. Unless there is a miracle in the 9/11-to-12 translation layer to drastically reduce the overheads of converting back and forth between two significantly different APIs, performance on pre-12 may not be improving much. The best hope there is for Intel to be using 9/11to12 only as a temporary measure until they can spare the manpower to implement native API support.

 

[thisisaname]

I'm just wondering at what point did the xx60 cards become mid range ratter than entry level.

 

[InvalidError]

I'm just wondering at what point did the xx60 cards become mid range ratter than entry level.

For me, that would be when the 60-tier passed the $300 launch MSRP milestone.

 

[Eximo]

Yep, around the GTX 1060 mark. The FE launched at $300, partner boards were $250, but those only came with the cheapest of coolers. But since it nearly equaled the GTX980 which was twice the cost that kind of did it (960 was only $200 (half a GTX980 for 1/3 the price). After that you could run any game with a 60 card with confidence it would be a good experience. 1050 and 1050Ti became the entry level gaming cards at that point. And a little later the 1060 3GB at $200.

They kind of split the field with the GTX 1660 and RTX 2060. 1660 was still pretty affordable and was good enough. RTX 2060 squeaked into premium territory at $350 launch price.