The Intel Arc Alchemist architecture introduced a third competitor to the best graphics cards, and while it cannot outperform the GPU benchmarks in terms of performance, it does offer a compelling value proposition. However, Intel hopes to encourage further adoption by lowering the price of the Intel Arc A750 by $40, bringing it down to $250.
Intel has delivered three WHQL drivers and at least four beta drivers since launching the 3490 drivers in October 2022.
The most recent beta, version 4090, was released last week, and all of the driver updates have focused on improving performance and compatibility. DirectX 9 performance, an area that Intel had not paid much attention to prior to the Arc launch, has been one of the most significant beneficiaries of the newer drivers.
According to Intel, average framerates at 1080p have improved by 43% and 99th percentile fps have improved by 60% across a test suite of thirteen games. At 1440p, the average frame rate increased by 35%, while the 99th percentile frame rate increased by 52%.
Granted, the purpose of the DX9 test suite isn’t so much to make games that ran poorly suddenly run well. Stellaris, the suite’s worst performer, appears to have performed at around 75 fps with the launch drivers, but it’s now getting more like 130 fps. And Half-Life 2 went from just under 400 frames per second to around 600. Nonetheless, the overall experience has improved, with much better framerate consistency and frame times.
In addition, Intel is promoting its XeSS (Xe Super Sampling) AI upscaling algorithm as a viable alternative to Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR technologies. The adoption rate isn’t nearly as high, but considering how new Intel is to the dedicated GPU arena, 35 games supporting XeSS in the first six months or so is quite impressive.
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