Intel’s Arc Alchemist desktop graphics cards have reportedly been delayed once again according to various sources. It isn’t all bad news though, since we’ve got some benchmarks of the Intel Arc A370M for laptop via PC World. What Intel has in store with this GPU isn’t anything too spectacular, but it’s decent for the company’s first step into the discrete graphics market.
There are a few things worth noting before we jump into the results. Intel’s A370M is on the low-end of the Arc lineup, so performance in these benchmarks shouldn’t blow anyone’s minds. Still, as far as low-end GPUs go, it isn’t too bad. This is only the beginning of Intel’s graphics card releases, so we can expect to see much better overall performance in later releases.
Intel’s A370M fights with the RTX 3050
PC World is one of the few outlets that has been able to get hands-on time with the A370M. Intel provided the outlet with a chance to try several systems housing the Arc A370M reference model for repeat tests with multiple titles. Each of these reference laptops was based on MSI’s Summit E16 Flip Evo.
These benchmarks are the best indicators we have for Intel’s A370M and its gaming performance. Broadly speaking, the A370M manages to perform at the same level as an RTX 3050 in gaming. It still falls far behind the RTX 3060 mobile variant though, at least with the titles that were tested.
A benchmark using 3DMark Time Spy kicked the tests off, where the synthetic performance wasn’t too shabby. Intel’s A370M scores 4,405 beat out the RTX 3050’s score of 3,772 (HP Spectre x360) and 4,396 (Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED). However, it didn’t manage to best the RTX 3050 Ti mobile or the RTX 3060 mobile which had scores of 5,938 and 8,201 respectively.
It’s looking good for 1080p gaming
For games, a range of titles were put to the test for Intel’s A370M benchmarks. In Final Fantasy XIV (1080p, High), a less demanding game than the others, the A370M didn’t quite manage to beat the RTX 3050. The difference between the two is noted to be so small that it doesn’t really matter though. It did manage to beat the RTX 3050 in Shadow of the Tomb Raider (1080p, Highest), a popular title for graphics benchmarks. Notably, Intel’s A370M was able to average 59 fps in this title.
Unsurprisingly, this low-end card struggled with ray tracing, just like the competition. For Metro Exodus (1080p, High, ray tracing set to ‘normal’) the A370M managed just 19 fps. This is only slightly worse than the RTX 3050, which ran the game at 22 fps. Still, the results show that Arc cards could be able to handle some ray tracing on the higher performance models.
The final test conducted by PC World was with Topaz Video Enhance AI. This tool upscales videos to 4K and the results here vary quite a bit. An eight second .MOV file was enhanced to 4K on the test models, and the A370M did a decent job of it. It was able to finish the process in 134 seconds, in comparison to the RTX 3050’s time of 187 seconds. These were both slower than the RTX 3060, which managed to finish the render in 105 seconds.
All in all, Intel’s Arc A370M doesn’t seem to be too special from these benchmarks. But again, this card is only the first to release from Intel. This level of performance isn’t really surprising for something that’s coming into the low-end market. We’re still waiting on the eventual release of Intel’s Arc Alchemist desktop graphics cards. It’s there that we’re expecting Intel to show something a bit more exciting. With the best graphics cards now in stock at prices close to MSRP, Arc will certainly need to put on a good show.
