Intel's best value graphics card, the Arc A750, is available for £250 plus shipping at Overclockers UK
£80 below RRP + driver improvements = spicy deal.
Intel's Arc graphics cards debuted to surprisingly warm reviews late last year, including over at Digital Foundry where I endorsed them as a "pleasant surprise" that were "already cards worth buying" thanks to better-than-expected performance in modern titles. Six months of patches and performance improvements later, and these GPUs look even better - especially as neither AMD or Nvidia has launched mainstream desktop graphics cards from their most recent generation.
Today, the cheaper of the two cards, the Arc A750, is available for £250 plus shipping at Overclockers UK, a steep £80 reduction from their £330 launch price.
Both Arc GPUs are strong 1080p and 1440p contenders, although they perform at their best in DirectX 12 and Vulkan titles, with older DirectX versions running through a compatibility layer that diminishes performance. RT performance is generally great, on par with Nvidia for a card of this caliber, in comparison to AMD which still seems a generation behind when it comes to RT acceleration. Similarly, XeSS seems to perform on a similar level to DLSS in most titles, although it is supported by far fewer games than AMD's FSR 2 or Nvidia's DLSS.
The Arc A750 is by far the better value of the two cards, with the A770 being only three to ten percent faster depending on the game. Given that the A770 costs around £400, or 60% more, that makes the A750 the obvious choice! Remember that you'll need Resizeable BAR support to make full use of these cards though, a motherboard-level feature that has been standard for a while - but may put older PCs out of contention.
I mentioned recent patches above, and as of the beginning of 2023 the Arc cards have gotten significantly faster in titles that use the DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 rendering APIs. According to Intel's own metrics, this accounts to a 43% boost in average frame-rates for DX9 games, alongside smaller but still significant improvements to DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 games - Total War: Warhammer 3, Warframe and Riders Republic all apparently see big gains on the latest drivers.
So, A750 is well worth considering, especially at this reduced price point. Would you ever buy an Intel card, or is AMD or Nvidia the way to go? For my money, it makes sense at this entry to mid-range price point, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts in the comments!