GamingGPUs

Intel ARC A380 Preliminary Benchmarks: 6GB GDDR6, RT Cores, Tensor Cores; Competes w/ RTX 3050

Intel’s ARC Alchemist graphics cards are slated to land next month for mobile platforms and Q2 for desktop and DIY players. Ahead of the imminent release, SiSoft has complied the specifications (and some redundant benchmarks) of the A380, the entry-level SKU in the Alchemist lineup. It’s important to note that this particular SKU is one of the lower-end parts, and as such, shouldn’t be used to assume the capabilities of the full-fat 512 EU die:

Source

The A380 features 128 Vector Engines (previously execution units) which in turn consist of 8 ALUs. This results in an overall shader count of 1,024. Sixteen Vector Engines are organized into one Xe Core. You can read more about the Alchemist architecture here. Moving to the render backend, the A380 consists of 32 ROPs and 64 TMUs. This puts it on par with the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT in terms of sheer shading capabilities, but below the RTX 3050. The L1 and L3 cache are once again half as much as the RTX 3050, with the shared memory being on par with the RX 6500 XT (still less than the RTX 3050).

In terms of memory, the A380 pairs 6GB of GDDR6 memory with a puny 96-bit bus. In comparison, the RTX 3050 features 8GB of GDDR6 memory with a 128-bit bus. The Radeon RX 6500 XT (the abomination it is) has a 64-bit bus paired with just 4GB of memory. In terms of instruction-level features, the ARC 380 is rather decent, boasting support for both hardware-accelerated ray-tracing as well as matrix multiplication or any other kind of Tensor workloads (XMX).

The compute-oriented GPGPU benchmarks aren’t a good representation of gaming performance. Regardless, the Intel ARC A380 falls between the Radeon RX 6500 XT and the GeForce RTX 3050, with the latter having a solid lead on account of its higher shader count and bandwidth.

Overall, the ARC A380 looks like a decent entry into the entry-level market, as long as Intel can keep the prices low. Even if the graphics card is slower than both its competitors, enforcing the MSRP will go a long way in ensuring Intel is respected in the PC gaming space.

Areej Syed

Processors, PC gaming, and the past. I have been writing about computer hardware for over seven years with more than 5000 published articles. Started off during engineering college and haven't stopped since. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Divinity, Torment, Baldur's Gate and so much more... Contact: areejs12@hardwaretimes.com.
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