Intel Arc Alchemist GPU compared to the RTX 3070 Ti in new benchmark

The launch of Intel’s Arc Alchemist series of GPUs is drawing closer. As development nears its end, sleuths are on the hunt for leaks. Hardware leaker TUM_APISAK came across an entry at the SiSoftware website. The result shows that the tested card is able to match or beat the Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti in certain tests. 

The entry reveals many specifications, and it indicates we’re looking at the top of the range DG2-512EU model. It contains the full chip's 512 execution units and 4,096 cores. The entry lists a rather odd 12.8GB of VRAM, but it's possible this is just a reporting or detection error as the high-end Arc GPU is expected to include 16GB of GDDR6 memory. A 2.1GHz clock is reported, but we don't know if this is a base or boost clock, and it may not be representative of the final product.

In the SiSoftware entry (via Videocardz), the Intel card delivers a score of 9017.52 Mpix/s. This compares to Nvidia’s RTX 3070 Ti which scores around 8369 Mpix/s. That’s just under an 8% lead for the Intel card. The sub test results are a bit more mixed. The Arc card trails in the half float and single-float tests while leading in the double-float and quad-float tests.

While these results make the Arc GPU look pretty good, it’s important to point out that floating point and compute performance aren't reliable indicators of how the card will perform in games. There’s an Ashes of the Singularity leak, but the result is a bit unreliable. There’s also the question of driver maturity. If Arc cards are a couple of months or more away from release, it's probable that Intel has a lot of work ahead of it to extract the most out of the cards. That actually leaves us feeling encouraged.

As the GPU shortage grinds on, the hope is that Intel could end up as something of a saviour. At the top end of town, Intel isn’t expected to knock off the RTX 3090 or 6900 XT, but if Arc cards are available in volume and at the right price points, entry level and mid range buyers that have been starved of options may find Arc cards to be very compelling options. Well, that’s the hope anyway. The entry level Arc card may compete with the GTX 1650 Super. If it ends up doing that, it should be able to beat out the underwhelming Radeon RX 6500 XT.

Arc graphic cards were originally scheduled to launch in Q1 but Intel’s landing page now says ‘coming in 2022’. The later the release, the less time Intel will have to make a splash in the market. Nvidia’s RTX 40 series and AMD RDNA3 cards are also tentatively scheduled for 2022 and these cards will of course provide much tougher competition. If you can actually buy them, or even find them that is.