SPARKLE Intel Arc A770 ROC LUNA OC Edition

SPARKLE Intel Arc A770 ROC LUNA OC Edition Hands-On Review

The Intel Arc discrete GPU has been on the market for some time now, offering a slightly more affordable alternative to its Nvidia counterpart, the RTX 3060 Ti. But how does the Intel Arc A770 stack up against the Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti today? In this review, we’ll explore the SPARKLE Intel Arc A770 ROC LUNA OC Edition, one of the few Intel Arc A770 GPUs available locally.

Specifications and Unboxing

The SPARKLE Intel Arc A770 ROC LUNA OC Edition comes in packaging that prominently features Intel’s branding. The box provides essential information about the GPU, including its design, specifications, and features.

Design-wise, the A770 ROC LUNA resembles a typical dual-fan cooler graphics card and is available in two colors: white and black. Despite its decent dual-fan cooler, Sparkle has not provided detailed information about the cooler on its official product page. The A770 ROC LUNA requires a minimum 650W power supply with 2 x PCIe 8-pin connectors and has a rated TBP of 225W. The display output includes 3 x DisplayPort 2.0 and 1 x HDMI 2.0b.

Test System Configuration

CPU: Intel Core i9-12900K
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX
Memory: ADATA XPG LANCER RGB DDR5@6000MHz CL30 (16GB x2)
Graphics Card: SPARKLE Intel Arc A770 ROC LUNA OC Edition
Power Supply: Cooler Master M2000 Platinum
Primary Storage: Kingston KC3000 2TB
CPU Cooler: Cooler MasterLiquid PL360 Flux
Chassis: Cooler Master MasterFrame 700
Operating System: Windows 11 Pro 64-bit 22H2

Performance Benchmarks

Blender Test: Using splash art by Nicole Morena, the Intel Arc A770 with its OneAPI rendered the image in about 18 seconds, while the Nvidia card, using CUDA and OptiX, took only 13 seconds. This result is expected as Blender and Nvidia are well-optimized together.

Premiere Pro Test: For applications like Premiere Pro that utilize GPU acceleration for effects, the overall editing process is smoother. However, rendering times for a two-minute video benchmark showed no significant difference between both cards.

Handbrake Test: Focusing on the AV1 codec, using the SVT-AV1 codec on a CPU is slow, but switching to AV1QSV on the GPU reduced encoding time from 5 minutes to just 37 seconds. Unfortunately, the Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti only supports AV1 decoding, not encoding, requiring an upgrade to the RTX 40 series for AV1 encoding.

3DMark Test: In gaming benchmarks, the Intel Arc A770 outperformed in most tests except for Speedway. Interestingly, it performed better in the Port Royal benchmark, which relies heavily on ray tracing.

Verdict

Is the Intel Arc A770 a good choice? For creators using Premiere Pro, Photoshop, OBS, and Handbrake, it’s not fully advantageous unless converting footage to AV1 becomes standard. For streamers, AV1 support can improve streaming quality without increasing upload speed, making it a valuable feature.

For gamers, the Intel Arc A770 delivers respectable frame rates in raster performance. You can achieve reasonable frame rates and graphics quality for titles with ray tracing enabled using Intel’s XeSS. However, NVIDIA still dominates this area thanks to DLSS and Frame-Gen. While Intel’s XeSS provides extra performance on supported titles, gamers might find NVIDIA’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR more beneficial.

Ultimately, whether the Intel Arc A770 is worth the price depends on your needs. The SPARKLE Intel Arc A770 ROC LUNA OC Edition, priced at RM 1658, is a strong option for creators who want to take advantage of the 16GB VRAM and AV1 encoding, which isn’t present on the RTX 3060 Ti.