Intel Arc Graphics A750/A770 Quick Linux Competition With The Radeon RX 7600

For those wondering how the performance of Intel Arc Graphics is relative to the newly-launched AMD Radeon RX 7600 and other recent graphics cards, here are a couple of benchmarks for the Arc Graphics using the new Linux 6.3 stable kernel paired with Mesa 23.2-dev for the latest open-source OpenGL and Vulkan drivers.

The Intel Arc Graphics A750/A770 weren't used as comparison points in the launch-day Radeon RX 7600 series review due to the Intel DG2/Alchemist graphics on Linux not running many of the games tested. In particular, the main bottleneck for Linux gaming with Arc Graphics for modern titles is over the lack of Vulkan sparse support, which now looks like won't be coming with the necessary kernel-side bits to the i915 DRM driver but rather needing to wait for the Xe kernel mode driver to be mainlined. The status of the sparse residency functionality for the Intel driver can be tracked via this Mesa ticket. Stay tuned to Phoronix as well for news when such functionality lands and the Xe kernel driver is ready to be mainlined at least in experimental form.

So due to current limitations of the Intel open-source driver, the subset of games and graphics benchmarks used was limited.

In any event, here are some latest Intel Linux 6.3 + Mesa 23.2-dev numbers compared to the Radeon hardware on the same software stack and NVIDIA GPUs using their latest R530 driver.

With Counter-Strike: Global Offensive the Arc Graphics A770 isn't too far behind the Radeon RX 7600.



With the Unigine Heaven demanding OpenGL benchmark, the Arc Graphics A750/A770 manage to come out ahead of the Radeon RX 7600 and compete rather strongly with the NVIDIA/AMD competition.



The Intel Arc Graphics A750/A770 support has matured rather nicely for OpenGL with the Iris Gallium3D driver while it's for the Vulkan driver with more modern games where there remains problems.

The Unvanquished open-source game runs with ease on these modern GPUs.

The GravityMark benchmark from Tellusim struggled with the Intel ANV driver when using its modern Vulkan renderer.

At least the open-source driver stack continues moving forward and should be quite interesting to see how things work out once the Xe kernel driver is ready to be mainlined. The Vulkan driver and the necessary kernel driver requirements have room for improvement still with Arc Graphics while for OpenGL workloads and Intel's very capable open-source GPU compute stack are already in very good shape and competitive.