Intel Arc A310 vs Intel HD Graphics 620

Intel Arc A310

The Intel Arc A310 is a dedicated entry-level graphics card from Intel for desktops. It is based on the ACM-G11 chip and offers 6 of the 8 Xe cores (96 ALUs), 6 of the 8 ray tracing units, 1.152 MB L1 cache and 4MB L2 cache. The memory interface is 64 bits wide and supports 4GB GDDR6 graphics memory with 15.5 Gbps. The TGP is between 40 and 75 watts depending on the model.

The A310 is similar to the mobile Arc A350Mexcept for the higher clock rates of the cores and memory.

The ACM-G11 chip is manufactured at TSMC in 6nm (N6 process) and offers 7.2 billion transistors and is 157 mm2 in size. It integrates two media engines for VP9, AVC, HEVC, AV1 8k60 12-bit HDR decoding and 8k 10-bit HDR encoding. The integrated 4 display pipes support 4x 4k120 HDR, HDMI 2.0B, DP 2.0 10G and Adaptive Sync.

Intel HD Graphics 620

The Intel HD Graphics 620 (GT2) is an integrated graphics unit, which can be found in various ULV (Ultra Low Voltage) processors of the Kaby Lake generation. This "GT2" version of the Kaby Lake GPU is clocked at up to 1050 MHz (depending on the CPU model). Due to its lack of dedicated graphics memory or eDRAM cache, the HD 620 has to access the main memory (2x 64bit DDR3/DDR4).

Performance

The exact performance of the HD Graphics 620 depends on various factors like L3 cache size, memory configuration (DDR3/DDR4) and maximum clock rate of the specific model but is very similar to the old HD Graphics 520 GPU. That means only some less demanding recent games like Farming Simulator 17 run fluently in low detail settings (see below for gaming benchmarks). Compared to dedicated graphics cards, the HD620 should be positioned between a GeForce 910M and 920M from Nvidia. For games, the drivers however are not that fast updated and tested as with GeForce graphics cards.

Features

The revised video engine now supports H.265/HEVC Main10 profile in hardware with 10 bit colors. Furthermore, Googles VP9 codec can also be hardware decoded. The first models do not support HDCP 2.2 and therefore Netflix 4K. This was added with the new models in 2017 and beginning of May 2017 also the older CPU models like the i3-7100U are now shipped with a new S-Spec Code that supports HDCP 2.2. HDMI 2.0 however is still only supported with an external converter chip (LSPCon).

Power Consumption

The HD Graphics 620 can be found in mobile processors specified at 15 W TDP and is therefore suited for compact laptops and ultrabooks.