When Intel first announced the Arc A380, it stirred excitement among budget gamers. Many were eagerly awaiting a graphics card that could deliver decent performance at an affordable price. With AMD and NVIDIA dominating the market, Intel’s entry-level card aimed to offer a competitive alternative.
In this review, we’ll take a closer look at whether the Intel Arc A380 truly serves as the budget gamer’s friend or if it falls short in delivering value for money.
Specifications:
Price: $199.00
Memory: 6GB GDDR6 – Provides fast and efficient memory for handling high-resolution textures and smooth gameplay.
Bus Width: 96-bit – This width determines the speed and bandwidth of data transfer between the GPU and the system memory, impacting overall performance.
CUDA Cores: None – This indicates that the GPU does not feature NVIDIA’s CUDA cores, which are used for parallel processing tasks. This may affect performance in applications that utilize CUDA for acceleration.
Teraflops: 5.0 – The GPU offers 5.0 teraflops of processing power, a measure of its capability to handle complex computations and deliver high performance in gaming and other graphics-intensive tasks.
Performance Test: Gaming
We tested the Arc A380’s gaming performance across several popular titles. Here’s a breakdown of the results:
- In Cyberpunk 2077, when set to 1080p resolution with Medium settings, players can anticipate a frame rate between 35 to 40 FPS. This range offers a balanced performance, providing a visually engaging experience while maintaining a relatively stable frame rate. The Medium settings strike a compromise between graphical fidelity and performance, allowing for smooth gameplay in the densely populated and intricately designed world of Night City. While the frame rate is generally steady, players may still experience minor drops during highly demanding scenes or in areas with extensive visual effects. For those seeking an even smoother experience, adjusting settings or resolution might be beneficial.
- When playing Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1080p resolution with High settings, the game typically delivers a frame rate between 28 to 32 FPS. This performance range reflects the intensive graphical demands of the game, which features detailed environments and complex character models. While this frame rate provides a generally immersive and visually appealing experience, players may notice occasional stuttering or drops during particularly demanding scenes, such as high-action sequences or expansive vistas. For a smoother experience, lowering some settings or adjusting the resolution might help stabilize the frame rate.
- In Forza Horizon 5 running at 1080p resolution with Ultra settings, players can expect a frame rate ranging between 30 to 35 FPS. This performance level reflects the graphical demands of the game at its highest settings, ensuring a visually rich and immersive experience. However, the fluctuating frame rate might impact gameplay fluidity, particularly during high-speed racing scenes or when the environment becomes densely populated with dynamic elements. Adjusting graphics settings or resolution could help achieve a more stable and smoother performance if needed.
The card isn’t ideal for AAA games, but it handles older titles well at medium settings. For gamers primarily playing eSports or low-end games, the A380 might be a decent option.
Productivity Performance
Beyond gaming, the A380 can also handle productivity tasks. Video editing and applications like Blender performed moderately well:
- Blender: For a 15-minute rendering project in Blender, the performance with a budget graphics card was fairly impressive. The project, which typically would take around 15 minutes to render, ended up taking approximately 25 minutes. While this is slightly longer than the ideal time, it’s important to note that for a budget graphics card, this performance is quite decent. It indicates that even with more affordable hardware, you can achieve relatively efficient rendering times, though there is room for improvement with higher-end graphics cards. This balance between cost and performance is crucial for users working within a budget but still seeking competent rendering capabilities.
Adobe Premiere Pro: While editing 1080p videos, I noticed occasional playback lag, especially when working with multiple layers or effects. However, despite these minor interruptions during the editing process, the rendering performance was relatively solid. On average, the rendering times were approximately 20% longer than what I initially anticipated. This slight increase in time didn’t significantly impact the overall workflow, making it manageable for projects that don’t demand quick turnaround times. For casual video editors or content creators working in 1080p, the system should handle the task adequately.
Temperature and Power Consumption
During testing, the GPU demonstrated efficient thermal management. Under gaming conditions, it reached a maximum temperature of 75°C, which is considered quite reasonable and suggests effective cooling solutions are in place to prevent overheating and ensure stable performance.
On the other hand, the power consumption of the card was slightly higher than anticipated, averaging around 175 watts. This elevated power draw may be attributed to the GPU’s performance capabilities and high operational demands. Users should ensure their system’s power supply can handle this consumption to avoid potential stability issues.
Conclusion
All things considered, the Intel Arc A380 is a mixed bag. It’s a budget card, but both its gaming and productivity performance have clear limitations. For those on a tight budget looking to try something new without expecting top-tier AAA gaming, this could be a viable option. However, for users who need a powerful card for high-end gaming or creative workloads, this might not be the right choice.
