Intel Arc 8-Core iGPU vs Intel Arc A730M

Intel Arc 8-Core iGPU

The Intel Arc iGPU with 8 cores (ID 7D55) is an integrated graphics adapter in Meteor Lake SoCs based on the Xe LPG architecture (similar to the dedicated Arc GPUs, but with a focus on efficiency). It offers all 8 Xe cores (128 Xe vector engines), 8 ray tracing units, 8 samplers and 4 pixel backends.

The Arc name may only be used if at least 16 GB RAM is used in dual channel mode. Otherwise, the only iGPU is called "Intel Graphics" and is also significantly slower.

According to Intel, performance has been doubled compared to the previous generation (probably still in Alder Lake).

The iGPU supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (probably DX 12_2 like the desktop Arc GPUs). The graphics unit also supports XeSS AI Super Sampling.

The media engine of Meteor Lake is in the SOC tile and supports up to 8k60 10-bit HDR encode and decode of MPEG2, AVC, VP9, HEVC and AV1. The display engine is also in the SoC tile and supports HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 2.1 20G with up to 8K60 HDR.

The GPU Tile of the Meteor Lake chip is manufactured at TSMC on 5nm (5N process).

Intel Arc A730M

The Intel Arc A730M (device ID 5691) is a dedicated mobile lower- mid-range graphics card for laptops based on Xe HPG microarchitecture. It uses the ACM-G10 chip and offers 24 of the 32 Xe-cores (384 ALUs), 24 ray tracing units and a 192-bit memory bus for 12 GB GDDR6 graphics memory. The cores can clock from 300 MHz (low frequency mode) to 1100 MHz (high frequency) or in short bursts 2050 MHz (Turbo). The chip integrates 21.7 billion transistors, uses a BGA2660 package (soldered), and the die measures 406 mm2.

The performance of the Arc A730M is not yet known. The power consumption is similar to a RTX 3060 and therefore we see the performance slightly below a RTX 3060 mobile.

The chip also integrates two media engines for VP9, AVC, HEVC, and AV1 8k en- and decoding. The 4 display pipes support up to 4x 4k120 HDR via DMI 2.0B or DisplayPort 2.0 10G. 

The A730M is produced in 6nm at TSMC (N6 process) and supports dynamic power share (using Deep Link) with 12th gen Intel CPUs (Alder Lake).