It’s Time to Start Taking Intel GPUs Seriously

It’s been a couple of years since Intel released its first generation of dedicated “Arc” GPUs in March 2022. After a rocky launch, driver updates have fixed numerous issues, and these GPUs are now at an all-time low in terms of price. So, are Intel Arc GPUs finally worth picking over the juggernauts that are NVIDIA and AMD?

Intel GPUs Are Often Value Kings

Traditionally, AMD GPUs were focused on the low- and mid-market segments, while NVIDIA dominated the high-end with cards like the original GTX Titan and, most recently, the RTX 4090. You can still get cheaper NVIDIA cards if you want slightly better FPS, DLSS, and ray-tracing, but you generally get worse value in terms of FPS per dollar.

Intel never intended to compete with NVIDIA with Arc GPUs; I think its goal was to out-price AMD while providing a similar gaming experience. As an example, the top-of-the-line Intel Arc A770 16GB GPU is roughly on par with the NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti and AMD 7600 XT, so it’s not even close to the high-end segment. The weakest Intel Arc GPU, the A310, is so weak that it can barely run triple-A titles at medium settings, so it’s a few generations behind cheap AMD and NVIDIA cards.

What Intel Arc excels at is value. At the time of writing, the Intel Arc A750 is $189.99 on Newegg and $199.99 on Amazon. The AMD RX 7600 is $254.99 on Newegg and $227.91 on Amazon, and the RTX 4060 is $293.00 on Newegg and $289.49 on Amazon. These three cards trade blows in gaming benchmarks, as shown in Gamers Nexus’ video, but the A750 is by far the cheapest of the bunch. All three cards have 8GB of VRAM, so you’re not paying extra to get more space for high-resolution textures and assets.

If we go even cheaper with the Intel Arc A580, which is $159.99 on both Newegg and Amazon, we can see that it’s the only card that makes sense to buy. The closest competitors are the AMD RX 6600, which is $199.99 on Newegg and Amazon, and the RTX 2070 Super, which is $359.99 on Newegg and $274.99 on Amazon for an old, refurbished card. So, you’re getting a better deal and a significantly newer card with the A580.

So, Intel Arc GPUs tend to be a smarter choice across the board if you want the best performance for your dollar. It’s worth noting that prices for used GPUs could be significantly different, so if you don’t mind a used GPU, check GPU prices on your favorite online marketplaces as well.

Intel’s Upscaling Is Actually Good

While Intel was late to the GPU game, it wasn’t late to advanced upscaling algorithms. Intel Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) is just as good as AMD FSR and NVIDIA DLSS. While DLSS is the king of upscaling, XeSS is surprisingly much better than AMD FSR in terms of image quality, especially after XeSS 1.3 added AI enhancements.

It’s also worth noting that XeSS gives a more significant performance uplift on Intel Arc GPUs than on NVIDIA and AMD. If you’ve tried XeSS on a non-Intel GPU and liked it, you’ll like it even more on an Intel Arc. The silver lining is that upscaling works best at 1440p and sharper resolutions, but Intel doesn’t have high-end cards that can reliably run triple-A games at 60+ FPS at resolutions above 1080p.

Intel Arc Can Even Do Ray Tracing

Ray tracing isn’t a gimmick; enabling ray tracing in games that support it improves the image quality like almost no other setting. It delivers realistic lighting, shadows, and reflections. If you like fancy eye candy and wouldn’t mind sacrificing half your FPS, you should pay attention to ray tracing benchmarks.

Just like DLSS, NVIDIA is the king of ray tracing if price isn’t a factor. AMD can also do ray tracing, but it doesn’t feature hardware-level ray tracing cores like NVIDIA and Intel. These so-called “RT cores” are different from the standard GPU cores, as they’re better optimized to handle ray tracing.

With that in mind, let’s look at the Intel Arc A770, which is the highest-end Intel GPU. Thanks to its larger VRAM capacity of 16GB and dedicated RT cores, it can trade blows with the RX 6700XT and RTX 3060, as shown in Ancient Gameplays’ benchmark. Note that the video is over a year old, so driver updates have likely improved performance even further.

RandomGaminginHD tested the cheaper Arc A750 against the similarly priced AMD RX 7600. While the A750 is slightly worse in Cyberpunk 2077 with the low RT preset, it smashes the AMD card in Minecraft with RTX, likely because it was better optimized for hardware-level ray tracing.

There Are Still Some Issues With Gaming on Intel GPUs

I’ve hinted at driver issues several times in the article already, so you can probably guess where I’m going with this. Intel Arc had numerous issues and bugs when it launched. We’ve only had two major GPU manufacturers (AMD and NVIDIA) for decades, so these two brands have had time to fine-tune their drivers.

Many driver updates later, Intel Arc GPUs are finally able to run games at a decent frame rate, as you were able to see in the benchmarks I referenced earlier. Arc struggles with older DirectX 9 and 11 games (such as Grand Theft Auto V), but Intel is actively working on fixing this. Also, Intel Arc GPUs still experience frequent crashes or serious FPS issues in certain games. An October 2023 update increased FPS by 149% in Starfield, but you could still get drops below 30 FPS in parts of New Atlantis.

Another notable issue is high power consumption when idle, which seems to be exacerbated if you have multiple displays connected to the GPU. Thankfully, Reddit users found a workaround to mitigate the issue.

When Brands Compete, Users Win

Linus Tech Tips once argued that gamers should buy Intel Arc GPUs, not because they offer good performance for the dollar, but because we should support the “third” GPU manufacturer. This is both to mitigate shortages at a time when GPU supplies are limited and to encourage competition.

We’ve already seen what competition can do in the tech world. When AMD Ryzen CPUs were introduced at a time when Intel had a monopoly, Intel was forced to innovate in future CPU generations to compete on price and performance. If we collectively support Intel to release new dedicated GPUs, we’ll see even lower prices and better performance across the board.

The good news is that Intel Arc GPUs are now a compelling option, especially for budget-conscious gamers. You can either get a significant performance uplift by jumping to a higher-tier Intel GPU or save $50–100 by opting for the Intel alternative.