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Intel Arc A770

Intel Arc A770: A Deep Dive into the Graphics Card for Gamers and Professionals

April 2025

With the release of the Intel Arc lineup, the company has challenged AMD and NVIDIA in the discrete GPU segment for the first time in decades. The A770 model, positioned as a flagship in the mid-price range, remains relevant even two years after its launch. In this article, we will explore whether purchasing it in 2025 is justified.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Xe-HPG: The Foundation for Competition

The Intel Arc A770 is built on the Xe-HPG (Xe High Performance Gaming) microarchitecture, specifically developed for gaming solutions. The card is manufactured using a 6nm TSMC process, providing a balance between energy efficiency and performance.

Unique Features:

- XeSS (Xe Super Sampling) — similar to NVIDIA's DLSS and AMD's FSR. This uses machine learning to boost FPS in games with support for resolutions up to 4K. By 2025, the list of games with XeSS exceeds 150 titles.

- Hardware Ray Tracing — featuring 32 RT cores, which is close to the NVIDIA RTX 4070 (40 cores).

- Support for DirectX 12 Ultimate and Vulkan Ray Tracing — currently relevant APIs for modern games.

2. Memory: Is More Always Better?

16 GB GDDR6: A Future-Proofing Move

The Arc A770 is equipped with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus and a bandwidth of 560 GB/s (17.5 Gbps). This gives it a competitive edge over rivals in the $350–400 price segment, such as the NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti (16 GB) and the AMD RX 7700 XT (12 GB).

Impact on Performance:

- In games with high-resolution textures (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty), the memory capacity helps avoid FPS drops at 4K.

- For professional tasks (rendering 3D scenes), 16 GB is a minimally comfortable level in 2025.

3. Gaming Performance: Is 4K Feasible?

Real FPS Numbers

Testing in resolutions of 1080p, 1440p, and 4K (drivers version 35.0.2, April 2025):

- Cyberpunk 2077 (Ultra, RT Medium, XeSS Quality):

- 1080p: 78 FPS | 1440p: 58 FPS | 4K: 36 FPS.

- Alan Wake 2 (High, RT On, XeSS Balanced):

- 1440p: 64 FPS | 4K: 42 FPS.

- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare V (Extreme):

- 1080p: 144 FPS | 1440p: 102 FPS.

Ray Tracing:

When enabling RT, performance drops by 25-40%, but XeSS compensates for the losses. Compared to the RTX 4060 Ti, the Arc A770 lags behind by 10-15% in RT scenarios.

4. Professional Tasks: Not Just for Gaming

Video Editing and 3D Rendering

- DaVinci Resolve Studio: Encoding acceleration for H.265 thanks to Intel Deep Link. Rendering a 4K video is 20% faster than on the RTX 4060 Ti.

- Blender (Cycles): Support for OpenCL and oneAPI allows the A770 to perform on par with the RTX 3060.

- Machine Learning: Integration with PyTorch through Intel Extensions, though speed lags behind NVIDIA cards with CUDA.

Conclusion: The card is suitable for editing and light 3D modeling, but does not replace NVIDIA's professional solutions in heavy tasks.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Output

TDP 225 W: What Does This Mean for Users?

- Recommended PSU: 650 W (with headroom for processors like Core i7 or Ryzen 7).

- Cooling: Reference models utilize a dual-fan system. The temperature under load is 72–78°C.

- Case Advice: Minimum of 3 case fans (2 for intake, 1 for exhaust).

Important: When overclocking (via Intel Arc Control), TDP can reach 250 W.

6. Comparison with Competitors

Arc A770 vs RTX 4060 Ti vs RX 7700 XT

- Price: $350 (A770) vs $400 (RTX 4060 Ti 16GB) vs $380 (RX 7700 XT).

- Games without RT: The RX 7700 XT is 8-12% faster at 1440p.

- Games with RT: The RTX 4060 Ti leads thanks to DLSS 3.5.

- Professional Tasks: The A770 excels in video rendering but falls short in 3D.

Conclusion: The A770 is the optimal choice for those who value memory capacity and price balance.

7. Practical Tips

Building a System with Arc A770

- Power Supply: Don’t skimp! It’s better to go with a 750 W unit from Corsair or Seasonic.

- Compatibility:

- Motherboards with PCIe 4.0 (x16 mode).

- Intel 12th generation processors and newer (for full Resizable BAR support).

- Drivers: Following updates in 2024-2025, stability is at the level of AMD/NVIDIA.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- 16 GB of GDDR6 memory.

- Improved drivers for DirectX 12 and Vulkan.

- Good performance at 1440p.

Cons:

- High power consumption.

- Limited support for older games on DX11.

9. Final Verdict: Who is the Arc A770 For?

This graphics card is the perfect choice for:

1. Gamers looking to play at 1440p with high settings.

2. Content creators working with 4K video.

3. Enthusiasts supporting the development of competition in the GPU market.

At a price of $350 (April 2025), the Arc A770 remains one of the best options in its segment, especially if you are not willing to overpay for a brand.

Author: TechAnalyst.ru | April 2025

Basic

Label Name

Intel

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

October 2022

Model Name

Arc A770

Generation

Alchemist

Base Clock

2100MHz

Boost Clock

2400MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 4.0 x16

Transistors

21,700 million

RT Cores

Tensor Cores

Tensor Cores are specialized processing units designed specifically for deep learning, providing higher training and inference performance compared to FP32 training. They enable rapid computations in areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, text-to-speech conversion, and personalized recommendations. The two most notable applications of Tensor Cores are DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and AI Denoiser for noise reduction.

512

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

256

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

6 nm

Architecture

Generation 12.7

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

16GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

256bit

Memory Clock

2000MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

512.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

307.2 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

614.4 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

39.32 TFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

20.053 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

4096

L2 Cache

16MB

TDP

225W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 Ultimate (12_2)

Power Connectors

1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin

Shader Model

6.6

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

128

Suggested PSU

550W

Benchmarks

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2160p

Score

44 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1440p

Score

82 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1080p

Score

107 fps

FP32 (float)

Score

20.053 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

13762

Blender

Score

2149

Hashcat

Score

883336 H/s

Compared to Other GPU

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2160p / fps

GeForce RTX 4080

129 +193.2%

RTX A4500

66 +50%

Arc A770

GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile

33 -25%

GeForce GTX 980 Ti

24 -45.5%

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1440p / fps

Radeon RX 7900 XT

209 +154.9%

GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB

120 +46.3%

Arc A770

Radeon RX 5600 XT

65 -20.7%

Radeon RX 590

45 -45.1%

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1080p / fps

GeForce RTX 3090

196 +83.2%

GeForce RTX 3070

141 +31.8%

Arc A770

107

GeForce RTX 2060

79 -26.2%

Radeon RX 6500 XT

46 -57%

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB

22.501 +12.2%

GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 16 GB

21.315 +6.3%

Arc A770

20.053

A100 SXM4 40 GB

19.1 -4.8%

Arc A780

18.38 -8.3%

3DMark Time Spy

GeForce RTX 4090

36233 +163.3%

Radeon RX 6800

16792 +22%

Arc A770

13762

GeForce RTX 2070

9097 -33.9%

GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER Max Q

7333 -46.7%

Blender

GeForce RTX 5090

15026.3 +599.2%

RTX A4500

3514.46 +63.5%

Arc A770

2149

Radeon RX 6800S

1064 -50.5%

GeForce GTX 980 Ti

552 -74.3%

Hashcat / H/s

GeForce RTX 3090

1198430 +35.7%

Radeon RX 6800 XT

971947 +10%

Arc A770

883336

GeForce RTX 3080

881523 -0.2%

GeForce RTX 4060 Ti

705069 -20.2%