Intel Arc A370M Alchemist GPU Gets First Gaming Benchmarks, Shows Competitive Performance Versus The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050
The Intel Arc A370M is positioned within the entry-level discrete GPU segment and based on the ACM-G11 SKU, the smallest of the two Arc Alchemist SKUs. It utilizes the full ACM-G11 GPU config with 8 Xe Cores (1024 ALUs), 8 ray tracing units, 1550 MHz graphics clock, 4 GB of 64-bit GDDR6 memory, and a TDP range of 35-50W. This chip would be tackling the GeForce RTX 3050 series & Radeon RX 6500 series. PCWorld’s Matt Smith managed to get hold of a reference laptop that was based on MSI’s Summit E16 Flip Evo design and managed to run some benchmarks. The laptop was only available for test at Intel’s Jones Farm campus-based in Portland, Oregon. This once again confirms the limited Arc availability within the regions aside from Asia. Intel’s Arc A350M laptops are shipping to customers but only in select Korean and Asian markets and only in Samsung / Lenovo designs. The rest of the laptop makers are yet to introduce their Arc-powered portfolio. Some have cited drivers to be the main cause of delay while others have cited low GPU quantities. So coming to the benchmarks, Intel only allowed four benchmarks to be run in their controller test environment which includes a single synthetic and three AAA titles. First up, we have the Time Spy result from 3DMark where the Intel Arc A370M GPU scored 4405 points in the graphics tests. The comparative GeForce RTX 3050 scores 4396 points which means that the A370M does indeed offer faster performance (in synthetic workloads). This is already a major performance uplift over the initial results which showed a score of just 3196 points in the same test. Those tests were done with DTT enabled which causes major performance losses as demonstrated by Korean PC testers. Intel Arc A370M Discrete GPU Test Suit (Courtesy: PCWorld):
3DMark Time Spy: Time Spy standard demo at default settings. Shadow of the Tomb Raider: DX12 1080p Highest settings, Ray Tracing off, TAA on. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker: 1080p at Highest (Desktop) settings. Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition: 1080p at High benchmark settings. Topaz Video Enhance AI: An eight-second 1080p .MOV file was upscaled to 4K using the Artemis Medium Quality AI model.
Moving over to games, we first have the Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker benchmark where the Intel Arc A370M is slightly slower than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 at 1080p High. The performance flips to Intel’s side in the Shadow of The Tomb Raider benchmark at 1080p Highest with the blue team leading with 9 FPS over the NVIDIA RTX 3050. Finally, in Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, the blue team loses by 3 FPS at 1080p High but neither of the two GPUs is able to produce a playable framerate over 30 FPS. One thing to note is that neither of these benchmarks utilizes any DLSS or XeSS capabilities that the new GPUs have to offer and not even hardware raytracing was utilized since the ‘Normal’ raytracing preset only enables hybrid reflections and doesn’t utilizes fully ray-traced reflections. Intel Arc A370M Gaming Benchmarks (Image Credits: PCWorld): So overall, you are looking at 2% better performance for the NVIDIA RTX 3050 over the Intel Arc A370M GPU. This is definitely decent performance considering this is exactly the level of graphics performance that Intel is targetting with this entry-level discrete GPU. The Arc A350M GPU has been positioned against the RTX 2050 which is also based on the Ampere GPU while the A370M is positioned against the RTX 3050. Content creation is also one strong suit for Intel where the GPU scored 38% better performance thanks to its DeepLink capabilities which allows the discrete GPU to utilize the integrated Iris GPU on the CPU for faster performance.
Intel Arc A370M GPU Performance (PCWorld)
Now given these performance numbers, we can definitely expect similar to NVIDIA RTX 3050 performance but these are just three games. However, one thing is for sure the 3050 is a faster GPU than the AMD RX 6500M, one which the red team claimed has much better gaming performance than the ARC A370M. It looks like AMD called it a win by comparing a premature Intel discrete GPU and the final performance may end up being better for the blue team if they tune their drivers right. The problem right now is that most vendors will be shipping Arc-powered laptops, even with the Alchemist A350M and A370M GPUs, in Q3 2022 which confirms recent reports of a major delay.
Intel Arc A-Series Mobility GPU Lineup:
