Enter Intel XeSS. When set to "Balanced", XeSS turns out to be a game changer for the A770, getting it an average framerate of 66 fps (with an average minimum of 46 fps) at 1080p, an average of 51 fps (with an average minimum of 38 fps) at 1440p, and an average 33 fps (average minimum 26 fps) at 4K with ray tracing maxed out.

Intel's Xe HPG architecture inside the Arc A770 introduces a whole other way to arrange the various co-processors that make up a GPU, adding a third, not very easily comparable set of specs to the already head-scratching differences between Nvidia and AMD architectures. Experience supercharged gaming and cutting-edge creation experiences across the Intel Arc A-series family. From high-performance AAA gaming on Intel Arc 7 graphics to enhanced mainstream gaming on Intel Arc 3 graphics, there’s an Arc graphics card for your gaming adventure.Despite that, it still manages to be a fantastic value on the market right now given its low MSRP and fairly solid performance, rivaling the RTX 4060 Ti on the numbers. In reality though, with this card selling for significantly less than its MSRP, it is inarguably the best value among midrange cards right now, and it's not even close. Those are the launch MSRPs from October 2022, of course, and the cards have come down considerably in price in the year since their release, and you can either card for about 20% to 25% less than that. This is important, since the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 and AMD Radeon RX 7600 are very close to the 16GB Arc A770 cards in terms of current prices, and offer distinct advantages that will make potential buyers want to go with the latter rather than the former. The power connector is an 8-pin and 6-pin combo, so you'll have a pair of cables dangling from the card which may or may not affect the aesthetic of your case, but at least you won't need to worry about a 12VHPWR or 12-pin adapter like you do with Nvidia's RTX 4000-series and 3000-series cards.

Among all the cards tested, the Intel Arc A770 was at nearly the bottom of the list with the RX 6700 XT, so the picture for this card might have been very different had it launched three years ago and it had to compete with the RTX 3000-series and RX-6000 series exclusively. In the end, this card performs like a last-gen card, because it is. As gamers ourselves, we’ve tried to ask we would buy this card for personal use. It's a perplexing question. There's the novelty factor of running a card that wasn’t powered by an AMD or Nvidia graphics chip. Part of us would worry that the performance issues and drivers wouldn’t improve, though, and we’d later regret the decision.In essence, the design is also similar to the graphics found inside of Intel’s most recent processors, with the obvious exception that the tech has been scaled up for standalone use. The biggest key change that we can see here being the addition of a dedicated memory controller for the graphics processor. Intel is also pushing its XeSS technology, which utilizes AI hardware inside of the GPU to boost performance. This technology is similar to AMD’s FSR and Nvidia’s DLSS, and it’s used in much the same way in games. There are options to use XeSS to prioritize performance to get the most frames per second, while maintaining the best possible image quality. We were able to test this in just one title, Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, and we opted for the Balanced option there. You can see the test results in the charts coming up below. Intel’s Arc A770 Limited Edition graphics card clearly has a few rough areas that need to be smoothed over. Based on our limited tests with legacy titles, its performance in older games is not competitive in its price range; its idle power draw is too high; and its overall performance can vary a great deal from one game to the next. But those decisions are not as cut and dry as you might think, and Intel's Arc A770 holds up very well against modern midrange offerings, despite really being a last-gen card. And, currently, the 16GB variant is the only 1440p card that you're going to find at this price, even among Nvidia and AMD's last-gen offerings like the RTX 3060 Ti and AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT. So for 1440p gamers on a very tight budget, this card fills a very vital niche, and it's really the only card that does so. We’ve not heard yet from any OEMs that will be producing Intel A770 graphics cards, but for the foreseeable future, Intel will be operating as a graphics card OEM, too. Its flagship is sold under the name “Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition,” but from what Intel tells us, this will not truly be a limited-run card; it will continue to be sold for some time. We hope so, as the card itself looks and feels quite well-made.

According to Gelsinger, Intel heard complaints from gamers about the high prices. “You should be frustrated because you are losing out as a gaming community. And today, we’re fixing that." That's something the RTX 4060 Ti can't manage thanks to its smaller frame buffer (8GB VRAM), and while the 16GB RTX 4060 Ti could theoretically perform better (I have not tested the 16GB so I cannot say for certain), it still has half the memory bus width of the A770, leading to a much lower bandwidth for larger texture files to pass through. Overall, the software is cleanly laid out and provides a good amount of information, including the card's active power draw and usage specs.I spent about two weeks with the Intel Arc A770 in total, with a little over half that time using it as my main GPU on my personal PC. I used it for gaming, content creation, and other general-purpose use with varying demands on the card. Xe HPG microarchitecture is engineered from the ground-up to deliver high performance, efficiency, and scalability for gamers and creators. Intel Xe Super Sampling technology (XeSS) takes your gaming experience to the next level with AI-enhanced upscaling enabling more performance with high image fidelity. XeSS is optimized for Intel® Arc™ graphics products with the ability to take advantage of XMX AI hardware acceleration. Gaming PCs Liquid Series® PCs Video Editing PCs Pro Audio Computers Professional Workstations Desktop PCs Intel breaks up its architecture into "render slices", which contain 4 Xe Cores, which each contain 128 shaders, a ray tracing processor, and 16 matrix processors (which are directly comparable to Nvidia's vaunted tensor cores at least), which handle graphics upsampling and machine learning workflows. Both 8GB and 16GB versions of the A770 contain eight render slices for a total of 4096 shaders, 32 ray processors, and 512 matrix processors. Its maximum observed power draw of 191.909W is pretty high for the kind of card the A770 is, but it's not the most egregious offender in that regard. All this power meant that keeping it cool was a struggle, with its maximum observed temperature hitting about 74 ºC.

While the 26 fps average minimum fps at 4K means it's really not playable at that resolution even with XeSS turned on, with settings tweaks, or more modest ray tracing, you could probably bring that up into the low to high 30s, making 4K games playable on this card with ray tracing turned on. I focused mostly on synthetic and gaming benchmarks since this card is overwhelmingly a gaming graphics card. Though it does have some video content creation potential, it's not enough to dethrone Nvidia's 4000-series GPUs, so it isn't a viable rival in that sense and wasn't tested as such. All told, then, the Intel Arc A770 turns out to be a surprisingly good graphics card for modern gaming titles that can sometimes even hold its own against the Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti. It can't hold a candle to the RX 7700 XT or RTX 4070, but it was never meant to, and given that those cards cost substantially more than the Arc A770, this is entirely expected.

But taking the current performance results, and assuming we'd game at 1440p or 4K, this author would be highly tempted to buy one of these for personal use. Its current performance is good enough in recent games, and that large pool of RAM is hard to walk away from. Driver improvements and better consistency are still definitely needed, but the Arc A770 is a very promising card and may well improve like fine aged wine. It’s also important to note that Intel’s Arc GPUs will be arriving late. The company originally planned on formally launching them in the US in Q3, following an earlier delay. However, the Oct. 12 launch date shows the Arc A770 will actually land in Q4. Unleash your imagination and captivate audiences with rich digital content creation using a hyper advanced media engine, augmented by AI and accelerated by Intel® Deep Link technology. Create compelling content, powered by the first graphics card with support for all current leading media formats, and keep yourself up to date with the most advanced AV1 video encode capabilities. Intel classifications are for general, educational and planning purposes only and consist of Export Control Classification Numbers (ECCN) and Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) numbers. Any use made of Intel classifications are without recourse to Intel and shall not be construed as a representation or warranty regarding the proper ECCN or HTS. Your company as an importer and/or exporter is responsible for determining the correct classification of your transaction.