Early Intel Arc A380 benchmarks and specs slip beneath GeForce RTX 3050

SiSoftware, a diagnostic and benchmarking software manufacturer, has published results for Intel’s upcoming Arc A380 ahead of its release with the Arc Alchemist laptop GPUs. While these benchmarks may not be the best indicators of gaming performance, they offer a first look at how the specs stack up next to other entry-level competitors.

Intel’s Arc A380 card rated in the benchmark as a lower-end card, meaning its performance is more comparable to recent budget cards like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 and AMD RX 6500 XT. In the specs breakdown, Intel’s Arc A380 features 128 Vector Engines that inform 1,024 shaders. Pairing shader count with the rendering backend of 32 ROPs and 64 TMUs puts the A380 right on level with AMD’s RX 6500 XT but beneath the RTX 3050 or even the GTX 1660 Ti, which is still holding its own in the conversation.

There are a few areas where the RX 6500 XT and RTX 3050 pull away from the Arc A380, for better or worse. Looking at the L1, L2, and L3 cache, both the RX 6500 XT and the RTX 3050 boast 128kB L1 cache, while the RTX 3050 doubles up on L2 cache. These contrast the Arc A380’s 64kB L1 cache. Further, the 64kB shared memory of both the RX 6500 XT and Arc A380 falls below the 3050’s 96kB.

Specs diverge significantly when comparing the memory of the three modern entry-level cards. The Arc A380 hosts 6GB GDDR6 memory on a 96-bit bus, which seems small until the troubled RX 6500 XT enters the frame. AMD’s newest entry-level card only packs 4GB of memory on a 64-bit bus. Meanwhile, the RTX 3050 is off on its own with 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, outpacing the other two entry-level options.

While the GPGPU benchmark included in the SiSoftware page may not be the best indicator of gaming performance since it has a fundamentally different approach to benchmarking, this is where we can most easily see the Arc A380 sitting between the RX 6500 XT and the RTX 3050. For full benchmark results, visit SiSoftware.

These early marks do little to gas up expectations, but a new challenger in the discrete GPU market is cause enough for excitement. While the Arc A380 may not be the heavy-hitter some were hoping for at the entry-level, price is everything these days. If Intel can somehow maintain the rumored $199 MSRP, there’s a lot of potential for its entry-level Arc A380.

Intel’s new Arc GPU roadmap puts laptop models on shelves next month but leaves PC building enthusiasts to wait until Q2 2022 to get their hands on desktop cards.