Intel Arc 8-Core iGPU vs Intel Arc A750 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 A750

The Intel Arc A750 is a mid-range desktop GPU and is manufactured using the 6 nm process at TSMC. The graphics processor has 3,854 shader units and 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM with a 256-bit interface (16 Gbps, 512 GB/s). This makes the Intel Arc A750 the second fastest graphics card model from Intel.

Features

Based on the Alchemist architecture, Intel's Arc A750 is the second fastest model in the series. Intel wants to put pressure on AMD and Nvidia with its graphics cards in the price range up to 250 euros. Features such as ray tracing are also supported and upscaling features such as XeSS can compete with DLSS and FSR. The Intel Arc A750 offers 448 tensor cores, which we already find in the current graphics cards from Nvidia. With support for AV1, the graphics card is particularly interesting for content creators. Only the Ada Lovelace models from Nvidia and the RDNA3 GPUs from AMD are currently capable of hardware-based encoding and decoding with the new codec.

Performance

The performance of the Intel Arc A750 is comparable with an AMD Radeon RX 7600 comparable. The Intel model copes much better with newer games. With ray tracing enabled, the Intel Arc A750 can even outperform the AMD Radeon RX 7600. Based on the performance shown, the Intel Arc A750 is well suited for 1080p gaming in 2023. 

Power consumption

The manufacturer puts the power consumption of the Intel Arc A750 at 225 watts (TGP). This is slightly more than a Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 or the AMD Radeon RX 7600. In terms of efficiency, however, the Intel Arc A750 is not convincing. Intel needs to make some improvements here in order not to lose touch with the successor aka "Battlemage".

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).