Gamers get excited about Intel’s Arc GPU, the first discrete gaming graphics card launched by Intel. But the hype over Intel arc graphics is fading due to reports of subpar performance, broken drivers, and so on.
The Intel Arc GPU has in-built 28 Xe cores, 26 ray tracing units, a 2,050 MHz clock speed, and 8GB of GDDR6 RAM. This doubles memory and has power across the board, like 32 Xe cores and ray tracing units.
Besides such advanced in-built functionalities, Intel ARC is lagging. There are several reasons behind this subpar performance that we’ll explore in this blog:
Advance Support Of Ray Tracing
The prime functionality that everyone is excited about is the ray-tracing capability of the Intel Arc GPU. Arc Graphic Cards are specially designed from the bottom up around the DirectX 12 feature set and ray-tracing.
Intel Arc GPUs also support other important DirectX features like variable-rate shading, mesh shaders, and sampler feedback.
Xe Super Sampling
The AI upscaling feature of Intel is known as XeSS (Xe super sampling). XMX engines power this technology. Xe Super sampling works similarly to Nvidia DLSS, AMD FSR 2.0, and FSR 2.1.
This uses AI technology to upscale games rendered at lower-than-native resolution.
Do you know that XeSS uses information from spatial and temporal data, i.e., both image data and motion data? It leverages AI to improve image quality further.
Measuring Inconsistency Among The Game Performances
The lackluster performance of Intel Arc graphics is due to poor software optimizations for the Intel Arc A380 graphics card. The gaming results show Intel’s GPU lags behind AMD’s Radeon RX 6400 and Nvidia’s GTX 1650.
Let’s see how:
For example, in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, the Arc A380 produced an average frame rate of 99.4 frames per second. Meanwhile, the Radeon RX 6400 posted an FPS of 111, while the GTX 1650 achieved an FPS of 125.
If we see Grand Theft Auto 5, the Arc A380 could only achieve an FPS of 81, while the RX 6400 and GTX 1650 produced frame rates of over 100.
XeSS Works Only In A Handful Of Games
Intel XeSS, or Xe Supersampling, is an upscaling functionality of the Intel ARC graphics card. It works by rendering your game at lower resolutions. This technology upscales your gameplay through machine learning and dedicated AI hardware inside the GPU.
XeSS helps in improving the overall image quality of games. Intel XeSS has been added to Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
● Hitman III
● Super People
● The Settlers
● Dolmen
● Anvil
● Armageddon
● Ghostwire: Tokyo
● Grid Legends
● Vampire: Blood Hunt
● Chorus
● Death Stranding
● Chivalry II
● Enlisted
How Does Intel XeSS Work?
Intel XeSS works similarly with Nvidia’s Deep-Learning Supersampling and AMD’s dynamic tech duo of FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and Radeon Super Resolution (RSR).
This offers you high frame rates in your favorite games using AI-assisted training and algorithms to handle the task.
XeSS performs temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) to clean up jagged edges. This replaces traditional anti-aliasing technology.
Intel Arc Alchemist graphics cards consist of XMX cores, which run the AI model to perform the upscaling. They’re similar to Nvidia’s tensor cores.
Older Games Are Problematic
Intel Arc shines in modern games with DirectX12 and Vulkan support, such as ATOM RPG Trudograd, Baldur’s Gate 3, Ballistic Overkill, Battle Axe, and so on.
Intel Arc has a massive backlog of older games to get through, and those rely on equally older APIs, like DirectX 9.
Take, for example, Shadow of the Tomb Raider. When gamers use DX12, its recommended API, both the Arc A770 and A750 easily keep pace with the competition. On the other hand, the switch to DX11 and the A770’s performance plummet. With resizable BAR left on, it runs 49 percent slower.
The reason is that the older DirectX11 API relies on Microsoft and the Intel EVO platform and Arc GPU driver to manage the game’s memory. Intel needs time for optimization of their graphics cards with a range of older games, such as
● X COM: UFO Defense.
● Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee.
● Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.
● Baldur’s Gate II.
● Planescape: Torment.
● Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
● Half-Life.
● Deus Ex.
These games are designed to keep GPU hardware in mind for supporting Nvidia and AMD.
High Power Consumption
With rising energy costs worldwide, the focus on hardware electricity use is increasing. Unfortunately, Intel Arc consumes more power than its Nvidia and AMD counterparts, both under load and idle.
The use of idle power is startling. Arc machines use nearly double that of their counterparts. Even under load, you’re looking at about 50 percent more help than the RX 6600.
Lower Bandwidth Encodes
Intel is the only company that supports AV1 encoding. It is a form of encoding that improves image quality and also reduces bandwidth related to a video.
AV1 encoding is ideal for streaming and capturing uploads.
The AV1 chip uses hardware encoding to produce its results, and not as many chips support this level of video compression, so AV1 is not as widespread in use as others.
Bottom Line
Intel Arc GPU benchmarks need some advanced upcoming support for older games, adequate bandwidth encoding, and power efficiency to break the duopoly of Nvidia and AMD in the graphics world.
The XeSS technology works as an anti-aliasing solution similar to Nvidia and DLSS. This boosts the game resolution automatically, and the GPU removes sharp edges from pixels by using a smoothing technique.
In the same line of models such as DLSS, You can’t play video games directly on XeSS that require the developers to actively implement support for it.
Intel’s architecture is based on the DirectX 12 feature set, which emphasizes upscaling and deep AI imaging. It offers room for AI upscaling, ray-tracing, and classic rasterization performance.
