Intel Arc A770 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q

Intel Arc A770

The Intel Arc A770 is a mid-range desktop GPU and is manufactured using the 6 nm process at TSMC. The graphics processor has 4,096 shader units and 8 or 16 GB GDDR6 VRAM with a 256-bit interface (16 Gbps, 512 GB/s).

Features

As the top model based on the Alchemist architecture, Intel offers the Arc A770, the top model in the series. As a completely new development, Intel wants to put pressure on AMD and Nvidia with these graphics cards. Features such as ray tracing are supported and the Intel Arc A770 comes with 32 RT cores. Intel is also implementing 512 Tensor Cores, which we can 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-side encoding and decoding with the new codec.

Performance

The performance of the Intel Arc A770 is comparable with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 or an AMD Radeon RX 7600 comparable. The Intel model copes much better with newer games. With ray tracing enabled, the Intel Arc A770 can even outperform its two competitors. Based on the performance shown, the Intel Arc A770 is ideally suited for 1080p gaming in 2023.

Power consumption

The manufacturer specifies the power consumption of the Intel Arc A770 at 225 watts (TGP). This is slightly more than a Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 or the AMD Radeon RX 7600.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with the Max-Q design is a mobile high-end GPU from the Pascal series. It is designed for thin and light laptops and about 10-15% slower than a regular GTX 1060 for laptops based on the cooling capabilities. The base frequency (1063-1265 MHz) is also much lower than on the regular GTX 1060 (1506 MHz, at least -16%) and the Boost (1341-1480 MHz) is also much lower compared to 1708 MHz (at least -13%) for the regular GTX 1060. The memory clock, however, is identical.

The clock is not the only difference compared to the regular GTX 1060 though. The drivers for the Max-Q version were optimized for efficiency (and not performance; only for Max-Q models), there are optimized voltage converters for 1V operation, high-end cooling methods, and a 40 dB limit for the fan noise (with clock adjustments to ensure this at all times).

Features

The GP106 chip is produced in 16nm FinFET at TSMC and offers a range of new features, like DisplayPort 1.4 (ready), HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) and improved H.265 video de- and encoding (PlayReady 3.0). A list of improvements and features can be found in our article on the Pascal architecture.

The power consumption of the Max-Q design is notably lower than the normal GTX 1060 for laptops and ranges between 60 and 70 Watt (TGP) according to Nvidia.