Apple M2 Pro 16-Core GPU vs Intel Arc A730M vs Intel Arc A750

Apple M2 Pro 16-Core GPU

The Apple M2 Pro 16-Core-GPU is an integrated graphics card by Apple offering all 16 of the 19 cores in the M2 Pro 10-Core Chip.

The graphics card has no dedicated graphics memory but can use the fast LPDDR5-6400 unified memory with a 256 bit bus (up to 200 GBit/s).

According to Apple, the performance of the 19-core-GPU should be 30% higher than the old 16-core-GPU in the M1 Pro. Therefore, the cut down 16-core version should still beat the old full-featured 16-core M1 Pro slightly and the old 14-core more clearly.

The GPU is intended to use Apple Metal 2 API and could still be based on the older PowerVR architectures (last used in the Apple A10). A new feature in the MacBook Pro 14 of 2023 is the support for HDMI 2.1 and 8k output.

The Apple M2 Pro is manufactured in the second generation 5nm process at TSMC.

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).

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".