Intel is aiming to get into the dedicated graphics hardware side of the PC hardware business, taking on industry leaders Nvidia and AMD in the process. As their first real foray into dedicated GPUs, Intel is aiming for the entry-level side of the market, targeting gamers who are looking for an affordable, performant GPU at 1080p, and some 1440p applications. At $250, the Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition aims to disrupt the entry-level GPU market in a way that gives gamers yet another choice when deciding what to buy for their next upgrade.
Specifications:
- Xe-Cores: 28
- Ray Tracing Units: 28
- FP32 Cores: 3584
- Matrix Cores: 448
- Xe Vector Engines: 448
- Lithography: TSMC N6
- GPU Clock: 2050 MHz
- Memory Size: 8GB GDDR6
- Graphics Memory Interface: 256-bit
- Memory Bandwidth: 521 GB/s
- Memory Speed: 16 Gbps
- I/O: 3 x DisplayPort 2.0; 1 x HDMI 2.1
- Power Connectors: 1 x 8-pin + 1x 6-pin connectors
- Total Board Power: 225 W
- Price: $249.99 on Newegg
First Thoughts
The Intel Arc A750 is a sleek GPU. From its slim 2-slot profile with a full die-cast aluminum frame, to the simple, yet stylish, axial blade fans on the bottom of the card, the Arc doesn’t look like any of its competitors. And that’s a good thing as it helps to set a unique design language that is all its own. Its chrome accents shine through against its matte finish, the Intel Arc logo on the backplate clearly visible against the darker backdrop.
It’s a shame that it doesn’t have any of the RGB features of its more expensive brother, the Intel Arc A770. While the A770 has a diffused RGB strip around the GPU as well as RGB on the fans, the A750’s only illumination comes from the side Intel logo which is visible when slotted normally into a GPU. I do greatly appreciate the black I/O bracket, though, as it fits perfectly into the aesthetic of my case.
Intel’s first crack at dedicated GPUs has brought a bevy of technologies to bear, which is particularly ambitious for an entry offering. The Intel Arc A750 supports AI-driven upscaling with its Xe Super Sampling (XeSS), which aims to offer similar benefits to both visuals and performance of Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling and AMD’s Fidelity FX Super Resolution. The Intel GPU also supports ray tracing, with the A750 sporting 28 RT Units on board. This is first-generation ray tracing, mind you, so don’t expect the level of performance you might see out of an Nvidia RTX 4090 here, but it’s great to see that technology is already supported on the first offerings.
Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition Benchmarks
The Intel Arc A750 isn’t targeting the highest resolutions or framerates PC games can offer, so if you’re someone with a 4K monitor, you’re likely better served looking at the recent AMD and Nvidia offerings, such as the AMD Rx 7900 XTX or an Nvidia RTX 4080. However, for many players, 1080p and some 1440p gaming is a sweet spot. The Intel Arc A750 aims to provide the best performance in its class in modern titles at those resolutions.
I use the term modern here very specifically. One of the biggest advantages of PC gaming is the sheer amount of older titles you can play versus a console which requires the game to work via backwards compatibility. However, that is largely possible because of the sheer amount of driver history the two major GPU makers have over the years. Intel, however, does not have that same history, meaning their driver support is still somewhat lacking. This means that while modern DX12 and especially Vulkan titles might run really well, if you’re playing something DX9, you might notice some problems.
Intel’s latest driver update aims to solve some of this, specifically targeting boosting DX9 performance. But it is something to keep in mind here that buying the Intel Arc series of GPUs might mean some of your favorite older titles just do not run as well as they could. Our official benchmark suite, though, focused on modern titles, including MMOs, to put the Intel Arc A750 through its paces.
- CPU: Intel i9-13900K
- Motherboard: MSI MPG Carbon Wifi Z790
- RAM: XPG DDR5 32GB RAM @ 5200Mhz
- Cooling: Corsair H150i Elite LCD 360mm Liquid Cooler
- Storage: Intel 760p 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD; Samsung 970 EVO 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD
- PSU: Gigabyte P1200 80+ 1200W Platinum
- Case: ASUS ROG Strix Helios
For our testing, we put the Intel Arc A750 through its paces using a mix of Gaming and Synthetic benchmarks, using the highest settings unless otherwise noted. For ray-tracing games, we used a mix of medium and high settings with either FSR or XeSS enabled, as noted on the graphs.
For games that had one, we used the in-game benchmark to provide the most consistent results. For titles such as Spider-man: Miles Morales and New World, we looped a predefined circuit to replicate the same gameplay as best as possible. We used Nvidia Frameview to capture framerate data as it has a negligible impact on performance.
We tested the Intel Arc A750 GPU up against its closest competitors from AMD and Nvidia:
AMD:
Nvidia:
Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition Synthetic Benchmarks
At the outset, we put the Intel Arc A750 through its paces in 3DMark’s suite of synthetic gaming benchmarks, aimed at pushing GPUs through DX11, DX12 and ray tracing applications.
Firetrike sees the Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti take the crown, but it’s a bit closer for the Intel Arc A750 than I would have guessed initially. The Intel GPU takes down the rest of the cards in the suite, narrowly beating AMD’s RX 6600 XT and downright demolishing the likes of the RTX 3050.
TimeSpy bears the same way, though the RX 6600 Xt takes a backseat to Intel’s Arc offering, with the Arc card even performing better than the top Nvidia card in our testing. Again, the RTX 3050 brings up the rear, with the Rx 6600 lagging behind the RTX 3060 as well.
Port Royal shows a similar pattern, with the first generation RT offering by Intel beating out AMD’s first generation of RT cards in this test as well. The 3060 Ti sits comfortably atop the pack here, but I was quite surprised to see Intel’s card do as well as it did in this test considering it’s not just their first RT card, but their first GPU platform on offer as well. It’s a solid start.
Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition Gaming Benchmarks
Gaming benchmarks really showed us how competitive the Intel Arc A750 could be at 1080p and even some 1440p titles. We tested a few of the hardest-hitting games on the market right now as well as some modern MMOs people are playing to get a real sense of the Arc GPU in real play.
Final Fantasy XIV kicked things off, showing the Arc A750 really trades blows with the AMD RX 6600 XT, Though the RTX 3060 Ti did outstrip the rest at 1080p. At 1440p it was closer for the Arc GPU, coming in at 114 FPS, beating out all the AMD offerings, though trailing behind the RTX 3060 Ti’s 131 FPS.
Amazon’s New World also showed that the Intel Arc was up to snuff here, the $250 GPU providing respectable numbers at 1080p with the graphics maxed on the MMO. While it still trailed the RX 6600 XT and the RTX 3060 Ti, 79 FPS average in the lush jungle of First Light, is nothing to scoff at. The 1440p number does show some signs of concern, sitting under a 60-fps average, but adjusting a setting could see those averages tick up to a playable number.
We also tested IO Interactive’s Hitman III, and it’s here the Intel Arc shows some signs it has a way to go, coming up short in our bench. While the 89 FPS at max settings at 1080p is still great for many players, it does sit at the bottom of the benchmark suite. 1440p shows similar results, though it’s more neck and neck with the RTX 3050. The RTX 3060 Ti and the RX 6600 XT continue to show some great results here as well.
Cyberpunk 2077 is the most demanding game on the market right now, and even at 1080p this panned out for all the cards involved. At the Highest preset, the Intel Arc A750 sat even with the EVGA RTX 3050 Black XC card at 51 fps, while the RTX 3060 Ti took the lead above all at 86 fps, a 68% lead over the Intel card at 1080p. 1440p shows similar results, with the RTX 3060 Ti leading the pack at 56 fps average, while the Intel Arc A750 sits at 40 fps, a 40% difference between the two. The RX 6600 XT still leads the Intel Arc card, though not by as much, with only a 20% increase in performance at 1440p.
Finally, we tested Spider-man: Miles Morales, where performance was closer for the Arc A750 card to the higher-end of the competition in this price bracket. At 1080p we see a 79 fps average compared to the RTX 3050’s 54 fps, a 44% lead for the Arc GPU. 1440p sees this continue, with the Arc card leading the RTX 3050 with a 59% increase in performance, while it’s also a deadlock with the RX 6600 XT and within the margin of error for the RTX 3060 Ti. It’s a great showing for the Arc GPU, especially since this is a title that supports Intel’s own XeSS to help boost performance further.
Speaking of XeSS, let’s talk ray tracing numbers.
Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition Ray Tracing Benchmarks
Intel’s Arc A750 GPU does offer ray tracing support, and we put it to the test in Hitman, Cyberpunk 2077 and Miles Morales to see whether it’s viable to expect playable framerates when running the technology.
Hitman III, unfortunately, was a high swing and a miss for Intel here, even with its proprietary XeSS enabled. Running ray tracing during the Dartmoor benchmark, we see the Intel card come to a slideshow-esque crawl, giving an average of 19fps, which is especially concerning when you consider the RTX 3060 Ti, also using XeSS, gives us a result of 59 fps. It’s the difference between first-generation ray tracing cores and Nvidia, who are now on their third generation of RT-capable cards (though the 30-series still uses the 2nd generation offering).
Cyberpunk 2077 fares much better, and while the lighting quality for ray tracing was set to medium, using FSR 2.1’s Quality preset, we see the Intel Arc turn in a respectable 33fps average at 1080p. This could easily be boosted by swapping the FSR mode to Performance or even tweaking some of the general settings, but if you don’t mind locking the framerate to 30fps, you’ll likely get some enjoyment out a fully ray-traced Night City. Compared to the RTX 3060 Ti, we see an almost doubling of performance by the Nvidia card, though the more closely priced RTX 3050 is a near identical result with the A750. AMD actually comes up short here, with the RX 6600 and 6600 XT both turning in sub-30 fps results with FSR 2.1 enabled.
Finally Spider-Man: Miles Morales gives some promising results, though the Intel card takes up the rear here at 41fps with XeSS enabled. Surprisingly, the RTX 3060 leads the pack here, though it’s very likely the extra video memory on that card is helping it take the spot. Interestingly enough, I could not get XeSS to work on the AMD card in this title, even though it is supposed to work, so our results showed FSR 2.1 for AMD’s offering, with AMD beating out the Intel card, but coming up short compared to Nvidia’s 30-series GPUs.
Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition Thermals And Noise
The Intel Arc A750 is an outrageously quiet GPU. Maybe I’m just used to the RTX 40-series cards, which while quiet compared to some of the 30-series GPUs, can still get loud enough to hear when going full bore. At no point during my week and a half using the Arc GPU in my main system did I ever get annoyed at the sound.
This could be because the card stayed relatively cool during our testing, with the A750 hitting only a peak temperature of 71 degrees Celsius when benching FFXIV at 1440p, Otherwise, while it stuck near the upper end of the 60s, it didn’t really break a sweat overall.
Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition Review - Final Thoughts And Conclusion
For the first offering in the Arc series to offer ray tracing, Intel should be commended. To not only launch with RT cores, but also a machine-learning, AI-driven upscaler on day one, I’m incredibly excited for what this means moving forward as the technology, and Intel’s GPU stack, matures.
Seeing the differences as well in visual quality between FSR 2.1 and Intel’s XeSS was also eye opening, as the Intel offering, in motion, just looked better. There wasn’t the telltale ghosting around Miles Morales in Spider-man that follows nearly every animation when using FSR 2.1, and games like Hitman looked legitimately pixel perfect on my Asus 27” 1080p monitor where I did our testing. For a first release, to get that right and know that because it’s driven by AI, it’s only going to get better in theory, I’m pretty impressed.
However, while many games do support XeSS, it does lag behind DLSS and FSR just for the sheer fact that they've been out much longer. DLSS, especially with frame generation, is a compelling reason to look at Nvidia, and while I have my issues with FSR 2.1's visual quality in motion, it's in a lot of games I already play. Intel will need to continue to get developers to adopt their technology as an option to make it a compelling value-add to the Arc platform, but what's on offer right not is a great start on that journey.
While we only included the above titles in our benchmarks as well, I drove the Intel Arc A750 for more than a week as my daily GPU, trying to get a sense of what it would be like to actually own one. And while I did find myself missing the 4K, near constant 120 fps goodness of the RTX 4090 I typically drive, I can’t say I was finding myself all that disappointed in the experience. That said, it wasn’t all good.
One of the things Intel has going against it is driver support, specifically where it pertains to legacy titles on PC. One of the platform’s greatest strength is being able to just play old games when you want. I have a library stretching back to the early 1990s with Commander Keen, Quake and so much more that I jump into every once and a while, so I was curious how Intel’s card would hold up here.
This is especially crucial with our audience as well, since so many MMOs players look back on fondly are older DirectX titles that may not run that well on Intel’s more modern-focused drivers. That said, the most recent driver released aims at improving DX9 performance across the board, and I’m pretty happy with the results.
Games like Guild Wars 2 ran at a constant 120 fps at 3440x1440p one my BenQ Mobiuz monitor, the ArenaNet MMO not skipping a beat here. Warframe also performed quite well, though its performance was more varied, with dips into the 50 fps range while I mucked it up in my Warframe on Earth. This was using the classic preset, and while the game felt pretty great, it was hard to not notice those massive drops when they did happen.
However, some older MMOs, like The Lord of the Rings Online, wouldn’t even launch properly. LotRO kept getting to the character select screen and then suffering a DirectX error, crashing to the desktop each time. It was a little upsetting for me, as I’m not sure I could personally daily drive a card that can’t properly run my favorite MMO, but it’s something that will improve with time.
Additionally, there was an annoying audio bug that got introduced when the Intel driver was installed, adding static and a crackling sound to my audio every so often. It seemed to happen when audio would start to increase in a rousing passage or dialogue that rose in volume naturally, though it would also really become apparent when trying to multi-task during a work day. Running two monitors, and listening to music because impossible while working in other windows, as simply loading a new window or even moving the window around the screen would cause the audio to crack, almost as if the audio were waiting to catch up.
This is a problem Intel is aware of, and when we brought it to their attention they mentioned they are working on it. Hopefully, a fix is coming soon, and it doesn’t affect all users as well.
That said, I’m also a bit disappointed by Intel’s driver software. Both AMD and Nvidia have full suites of software giving full control over the GPU, from Nvidia’s Control Panel allowing you to tweak everything from Anisotropic Filtering to Power Management of the GPU to AMD’s bevy of options, Intel’s Arc Control Panel is pretty barebones. It’s also rather sluggish, to the point where I would question whether I needed to run it or not to get the benefit. This is likely due to Intel’s driver immaturity, and it’s likely that more options will be coming down the pipeline with more and more driver updates.
Compared to the competition, the Intel Arc A750 is compelling. While the price of the RX 6600 can be found at $249 as of the time of this writing, the AMD card affords a 5% difference in performance in our testing. That’s nothing to balk at, especially with the more mature platform overall. Compared to the RTX 3050, on average at 1080p, the A750 led with a 13% performance increase over the Nvidia card, though it found itself at around the same percentage behind the RTX 3060. However, the Nvidia offering is still well over $350 on Amazon, which could put it out of the price range of anyone looking at the sub-$300 GPU range.
The RX 6600 XT gives an average 20% performance increase over the Intel Arc A750 at only 19% more money (they can currently be found on Amazon for $299), so it might be a compelling argument for those who might not want to deal with the growing pains of the Intel platform, though. AMD has its fair share of driver problems, but it’s a lot more of a mature platform than Intel here. However, what would make me confident in recommending the Arc over the AMD offering here is machine learning. With the Intel Arc A750 supporting AI-driven upscaling with XeSS, there is more upside in my opinion versus FSR, which is really hit or miss depending on a game's native anti-aliasing.
In addition, first-generation ray tracing cores give similar performance to AMD’s 6000-series GPUs in the range, while XeSS offers a much cleaner image overall in the games we’ve tested versus FSR 2.1. And given that XeSS is AI-driven, those experiences should, in theory, continue to look better and better as more data is fed to the algorithm.
As a result, I can’t help but be impressed by the Intel Arc A750 GPU. For $250, it’s a solid offering that should be given a serious look. Its value to performance at the designed resolutions is pretty great, and while the driver support still has a ways to go to really be on par with AMD and Nvidia, it’s a solid offer at its price. It packs a punch for its weight class, giving great performance at 1080p and even some 1440p offerings should you decide to dip into that resolution range.
While it’s not as mature a platform as AMD and Nvidia, it’s exciting to have a third entry into the market, and have it feel competitive from day one at its targeted price range. I’m definitely looking forward to revisiting the Arc GPUs as driver support improves over the year. For its price, I think the Intel Arc A750 GPU offers good value, and should definitely be considered if you’re looking for a good entry-level GPU.
Full Disclosure: The Product discussed was provided by the manufacturer for the purposes of this review.
