News Intel Arc GPUs Get 1.8X Higher DirectX 9 Performance From New GPU Driver

[Admin]

Intel Arc driver 31.0.101.3959 offers significant performance uplifts for A-series graphics cards in DirectX 9 games.

Intel Arc GPUs Get 1.8X Higher DirectX 9 Performance From New GPU Driver : Read more

 

[Stesmi]

Nitpick: 177 to 318 is an 80% increase, not 180%.

So it's 1.8x as much, not 1.8x more. Just like 80% more is 0.8x more, or 1.8x as much.

 

[Amdlova]

100% plus 80%

 

[TerryLaze]

Hmmmm, they did say that they are basing prices on the weakest performance which was dx9 until now....I hope that doesn't mean that they are going to increase prices now...
I mean, it would be suicide for them to do this since they are trying to break through but on the other hand it's intel.

 

[MBOO7]

While it's good seeing progress, dont forget, when you re coming from the very very low bottom, it can only go up and this increase only shows how bad the drivers really were before.

 

[LolaGT]

The improvements in drivers shows there is a lot of horsepower in the silicon, a significant amount of it is still left on the table. But they seem very intent on following up on their promise to keep at the drivers.
This gpu can do as well as intel was initially planning for in that it shows it can match or pull away from a 3060ti/3070 without getting warm.
They did their homework on the hardware side.
Too bad they underestimated how much work and time it takes to extract that performance.

This card is going to end up being a winner and at a bargain price point because they are obviously lining up their vast resources to not let it fail due to the software side of things.
The next gen Intel gpus probably won't be at any bargain price point because they will likely have caught up most of the way to the competition.

 

[-Fran-]

Good to see improvements in their, by far, weakest link.

Also, the words "up to" are a must in the Article title. It reads completely different to what the graphs show.

Regards.

 

[DavidC1]

The improvements in drivers shows there is a lot of horsepower in the silicon, a significant amount of it is still left on the table. But they seem very intent on following up on their promise to keep at the drivers.

No, DX9 gains are an outlier. They switched to hybrid DXVK implementation, where it uses the DX9On12 for some scenarios probably due to compatibility issues.

Rest you can't expect more than 15-20% in average and this is going to take months if not years. So if you look at results you can see it's behind competitors quite a lot in 1080p, but catches up at 1440p and more at 4K. Because driver issues limit the CPU, it matters less at higher GPU bound resolutions. But the best case scenario is RX6700XT or maybe on a lucky day RTX 3060 Ti.

Which is way better than what they have mind you, but 90% of the people are hyped by the unrealistic expectation of the misleading claims of press like MLID.

ARC IS behind AMD/Nvidia GPU hardware-wise. Otherwise you won't need a 400mm2 chip to compete with a 270mm2 one. They are probably behind RDNA1, nevermind RDNA3 and Ada. You can see how their integrated Xe GPU is behind AMD and this is despite the massive improvements in perf/watt and perf/mm2 that Xe has made over predecessors(2x performance in same area and power).

I am not saying drivers gaining 15-20% in average is bad, it's fantastic! But to expect it'll be RTX 3070 Ti or something is ludicrous. It'll take Battlemage to look somewhat competitive and likely Celestial to get most of it. And they'll need to continually compete on pricing.

 

[SSGBryan]

If I can get 3060Ti performance (with double the memory) for less than the price of a 3060Ti, I am sold on it.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Especially next gen, if they come up with an arc a880 or something that is comparable to a 4060ti/4070 for significantly less they might have a winner. I'd consider purchasing one.

 

[evdjj3j]

Stellaris is an odd one, it's extremely CPU bound.

 

[PiranhaTech]

This isn't too bad if they can figure it out. If it works well enough, they can just concentrate on DX12 and Vulkan, and the software will get decent-enough DX9 performance. It's definitely a long-term investment

 

[SSGBryan]

I use Blender, so an Arc 770 16gb at $349 USD is a much better investment than a RTX 3060 8gb at $459 USD.

Games are a bonus.

 

[bit_user]

Hmmmm, they did say that they are basing prices on the weakest performance which was dx9 until now....I hope that doesn't mean that they are going to increase prices now...
I mean, it would be suicide for them to do this since they are trying to break through but on the other hand it's intel.

A few points to consider:

1. GPU prices have already started to rebound, since a couple months ago.
2. Availability of A770 has been a bit spotty, suggesting demand is (currently) strong.
3. Intel only has control over pricing of their Intel-branded product, but partners have more flexibility to adapt to market conditions.

All of this tells me that pricing may indeed float above MSRP. Then again, as Nvidia and AMD continue rolling out their new generations, supply will hopefully stabilize, which should sustain pricing pressure at the low-end & mid-range (where Intel currently plays).

 

[cyrusfox]

This is fantastic news, the only game I plan on playing with it SC2 sees a huge uplift

SC2	old driver	new driver	% improvement
1080p	164​	243​	48%​
1440p	149​	193​	30%​

Stock for A770 is a bit hard, ebay completed listing price still around $425. When I went to Micro center over thanksgiving(none local) they had lots of a750 and a380 cards, no a770 stock. Looks like newegg and microcenter have stock again, but price has gone up from $329 to $349.

 

[bit_user]

Looks like newegg and microcenter have stock again, but price has gone up from $329 to $349.

Be careful to distinguish the 8 GB and 16 GB versions. When I visited a couple hours ago, Newegg had the 16 GB version (Intel-branded) for $349, which is what it always cost.

 

[cyrusfox]

Be careful to distinguish the 8 GB and 16 GB versions.

I know Intel announced an 8gb limited edition A770, but I have yet to see one at any retailer or ebay. Asrock A770 flavor is 8GB, but haven't seen an Intel branded one yet in the wild.

Definitely would want the 16gb model or I might as well go get a A750... maybe that is what I should do anyways and save the cash. Would be interesting to understand the different AV1 performance between the 2, guessing its identical as it is fixed function accelerator.

 

[TerryLaze]

A few points to consider:

1. GPU prices have already started to rebound, since a couple months ago.
2. Availability of A770 has been a bit spotty, suggesting demand is (currently) strong.
3. Intel only has control over pricing of their Intel-branded product, but partners have more flexibility to adapt to market conditions.

All of this tells me that pricing may indeed float above MSRP. Then again, as Nvidia and AMD continue rolling out their new generations, supply will hopefully stabilize, which should sustain pricing pressure at the low-end & mid-range (where Intel currently plays).

Availability isn't a sign of any kind because intel only bought a small amount of wafers, we don't know how many GPUs they made so availability could be spotty because there aren't that many of them out there.

If the case of evga and nvida is anything to go by then partners have an extremely slim margin they can operate in, maybe intel is better than nvidia especially now where they are starting out but I doubt there is a huge margin for anybody to make big moves.

 

[bit_user]

Availability isn't a sign of any kind because intel only bought a small amount of wafers, we don't know how many GPUs they made so availability could be spotty because there aren't that many of them out there.

Um, if you're saying Intel anticipated a tepid reception, way back when they were purchasing wafers, which must've been at least a year ago... that surprises me. Back then, they wouldn't have even known very much about what performance would be like.

 

[TerryLaze]

Um, if you're saying Intel anticipated a tepid reception, way back when they were purchasing wafers, which must've been at least a year ago... that surprises me. Back then, they wouldn't have even known very much about what performance would be like.

Intel only got whatever capacity TSMC had left over, TSMC did not screw over any of their customers to give intel more than they had.
I have no idea how much capacity that was, I am just saying that they only bought a small percentage of what a normal CPU run for them would be, again just guessing here.

 

[teodoreh]

Since Intel Arc has no native DX9 support, I guess it's more of a badly written software fix than a boost. I guess, it's main rivals will still be faster on any DX9 game like SC2 so...

 

[DavidC1]

Especially next gen, if they come up with an arc a880 or something that is comparable to a 4060ti/4070 for significantly less they might have a winner. I'd consider purchasing one.

Battlemage is a huge spec boost.

ARC A770 - 512 EUs or 32 Xe cores

Battlemage leaked configs.
-40 Xe cores 1 tile - 640 EU
-40 x 2 Xe core 2 tiles - 1280 EU
-40 x 4 Xe core 4 tiles - 2560 EU

RTX 3060 Ti ~ 608 EU Intel equivalent

We'll see if rest of the specs increase in proportion but they said they are aiming for the higher end than with Alchemist. 2560EUs are more than either RTX 4090(2048EU equivalent) or RX 7900XTX(1536EU equivalent) so it's very possible.

 

[bit_user]

Battlemage is a huge spec boost.

ARC A770 - 512 EUs or 32 Xe cores

Battlemage leaked configs.
-40 Xe cores 1 tile - 640 EU
-40 x 2 Xe core 2 tiles - 1280 EU
-40 x 4 Xe core 4 tiles - 2560 EU

RTX 3060 Ti ~ 608 EU Intel equivalent

We'll see if rest of the specs increase in proportion but they said they are aiming for the higher end than with Alchemist. 2560EUs are more than either RTX 4090(2048EU equivalent) or RX 7900XTX(1536EU equivalent) so it's very possible.

Given that the A770 doesn't exactly sip power, I'd expect a 2560 EU Battlemage GPU to certainly compete with the RTX 4090 on power utilization!

 

[RodroX]

I hope reviewers will do an update, if not with this new driver, perhaps sometimes in Q1 next year with whatever driver is up next.