The first discrete Intel GPU has arrived on the scene, but early tests suggest it falls flat against Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1650. The YouTube channel Benchmark Lab recently tested the Intel Arc Alchemist A370M chip across ten games, and it failed to keep up with the green team’s 2019 mobile offering.
According to Benchmark Lab’s data, the new Intel GPU pumps out significantly less frames than the GTX 1650. Comparatively, there’s a performance gap of around 15-20% in games like The Witcher 3, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Red Dead Redemption 2 . Of course, failing to boost fps is only part of the problem, as release notes for the mobile chip warn of glitching and crashing when running Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Forza Horizon 5, and various other big releases.
The first Arc Alchemist Intel GPU makes its debut nestled within the new Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro, which adds insult to injury. In theory, an Intel Core i7-12700H Alder Lake should give it an advantage against a GTX 1650 paired with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600H. Yet, it seems like even one of the best gaming CPUs can’t carry the A370M to Nvidia’s level.
It’s worth noting that in terms of spec, the Intel Arc A370M doesn’t quite match up with the Nvidia GTX 1650, as the latter has a larger memory bus and faster clock speeds. It’s also early days for the blue team’s newcomer, as game-changing features like Intel XeSS AI upscaling won’t arrive until the summer.
Blue GPU: Here’s everything we know about Intel Arc Alchemist.
It’s easy to get disheartened about the new Intel GPUs performance quirks, but the company is likely hard at work addressing the early issues. We’ve still got a few months before the “limited edition” Arc Alchemist graphics card for gaming PCs arrives on the scene, leaving some room for driver optimisation. That said, the next-gen Nvidia RTX 4000 series is on the horizon, so if it wants to rank among the best graphics cards, it’ll have to up its game in more ways than one.