Intel Arc GPUs just can’t compete with NVIDIA GeForce for content creation
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Intel Arc – the companies “doomed” and controversially new graphics cards – took a beating in Puget System’s latest benchmark tests (opens in new tab).
When trying out the new Intel Arc A750 8GB and Arc A770 16GB graphics cards, which were released on October 12, the custom PC builder found that the performance was less than spectacular compared to NVIDIA’s popular GeForce RTX 3060.
While Intel’s GPUs are primarily focused on gaming, meaning content creation is sometimes a secondary concern, the company admitted, “we ran into some cases where we were missing software support, or where a planned feature didn’t work quite right. .”
Create content (slowly)
Conducting a series of tests in DaVinci Resolve – our top pick for best free video editing software – the results showed that both Arc graphics cards struggled when pitted against GeForce RTX 3060 12GB. Overall, NVIDIA’s offering turned out to be 20-30% faster than both.
Digging deeper, the company turned its attention to GPU effects and RAW debraying. Again, GeForce outperformed the competition, with effects processing 10-20% faster and removing about 50% faster.
When it came to H.264 encoding and decoding, it was hardly a competition. The GeForce RTX 3060 outperformed Intel’s duo, with nearly identical results when decoding on the Nvidia GPU and Intel’s iGPU.
To make matters worse, Puget Systems found that “when using the Intel Arc card plus the iGPU (with Resolve set to use “Intel Quick Sync” for decoding), we saw slightly lower performance than with the iGPU or NVDEC with the RTX 3060.”
“Performance was even lower if we just used the Arc card (with the iGPU turned off),” it added.
However, there was better news in the field of encryption. When pairing the Arc A770 with the iGPU, the company found that it was 43% faster than the native encoder with the Core i9 12900K and 32% faster than with the Intel iGPU alone.
The Intel Arc A750, on the other hand, was slower — but the results show some potential, the company claimed.
Benchmarks were also run in Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe after effectsUnreal Engine, and top 3D modeling and animation software blender.
The results here were more encouraging. The A770 easily competes (but couldn’t quite beat) the GeForce card in both Adobe’s premium video editor and its VFX software. The A750 underperformed, but held up, especially in Premiere Pro. But, as Puget Systems pointed out, CPU is much more important in After Effects.
In Unreal Engine – indicating Intel’s intention to attract not only gamers but also game developers – it was found that “when we look at the performance in Unreal Engine, the Arc A770 is about 8.5% faster than the NVIDIA RTX 3060 , while the A750 is 7% slower.”
For graphic designers, both Intel Arc GPUs delivered staggeringly poor performance, making NVIDIA the only game in town when it comes to professional rendering.
Despite concerns that the high-end Arc GPUs provided a subpar experience for content creators, Puget Systems felt that at least video editing took advantage of Intel’s Deep Link technology, which allows Arc dGPU and Intel’s iGPU to work together.