Intel Arc GPUs just got a huge creative performance boost – but will gamers care?

Intel’s Arc graphics cards are still struggling along – and after a very rocky start, the Arc A770 and A750 are finally settling into a decent niche after multiple driver updates. The latest update has seen a serious step up in content creation workloads, with as much as 40% better performance against the 2022 launch drivers.

In our Intel Arc A750 review, we noted that a lot of the GPU’s early issues might be resolved by Intel’s continued driver support, and that seems to be the case here. A selection of in-depth tests from Puget Systems has shown that driver update 4644 offers solid boosts across a variety of creative software, most notably DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere Pro.

While the performance increases aren’t as significant in every program tested, it’s a clear step forward for Intel – and most impressively, puts the Arc A750 ahead of Nvidia’s RTX 4060 Ti in Premiere Pro. The A750 outperforms the 4060 Ti by about 16% – and it’s almost half the price of Nvidia’s card after Intel ran through several GPU price cuts.

Is it time to start taking Arc seriously?

Now, I don’t think I’m going to be calling the A750 or A770 the best graphics card out there anytime soon (my personal favorite is still the Radeon RX 7900 XTX), but this is a clear step forward for Intel against the competition.

Hopes are high that the second generation of Arc GPUs will deliver a major generational performance jump, and while there may have been a lot of teething issues with Intel’s first-gen cards, those will hopefully have been mostly ironed out by the time Team Blue releases its upcoming ‘Battlemage’ GPUs.

Still, one can’t expect to sell mainstream consumer graphics cards based on Premiere Pro performance alone, and there are still concerns that Arc isn’t a viable investment for other purposes, like AI development and gaming. A quick peek at the Steam Hardware Survey shows that PC gamers certainly haven’t budged from Nvidia’s warm embrace, and it’s not hard to see why.

Arc GPUs still have some issues running much older games (a problem that simply isn’t present in Nvidia and AMD cards), and more recently failed to run Starfield altogether. Intel also has some formidable opposition in the midrange gaming market, especially with AMD potentially abandoning its high-end GPUs for its next generation.

I’d still argue that the A770 and A750 are, after their price cuts, among the best cheap graphics cards money can buy right now. They’re a decent choice for straightforward 1080p gaming, and have now proven to give a ton of bang for your buck in the creative department. I’m eagerly awaiting a B770 – I just hope Intel doesn’t fumble the launch this time around.

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