Technically, only one GPU, Arc A330M, has been officially released but we’re starting to see more models make their way onto storefronts. Amidst this hastily-executed launch, leaks and performance benchmarks are still prevalent due to how scarce Arc A-Series really is at the moment. Today is no different as we have a new leaked benchmark for the Arc A730M laptop GPU, and it points towards really good news.
Arc A730M benchmark breakdown
The benchmark leaks comes from a user named “Golden Pig Upgrade” who uploaded pictures of a 3DMark TimeSpy benchmark run on Weibo. As I mentioned, this benchmark was conducted using an Arc A730M running inside a Chinese Mechanike laptop with an Intel Core i7-12700H processor. The Arc A730M is an ACM-G10 based variant, using 24 Xe-Cores out of the total 32 that the G10 offers. Jumping to the result, as you can see in the picture above the Arc A730M managed to break the 10,000 points barrier and score 10,138 points in TimeSpy. This is a mighty impressive score since the RTX 3070 mobile GPU only averages around 9,462 points in the same benchmark. Even with news of premature drivers, if Intel’s premier mobile GPU can beat the RTX 3070, that’s something to boast about. Or maybe the drivers are actually finally ready. The list of GPUs attached above, courtesy of Notebookcheck, shows their benchmark scores in 3DMark Time Spy (and Fire Strike). From it, we can see that the Arc A730M isn’t that far off from even the RTX 3070 Ti mobile GPU, granted that’s the sub 115W variant of the 3070 Ti. Now, we’re comparing official scores to scores from a leaked benchmark, which isn’t fair, but we do have something more official to look at, as well. A few hours after this benchmark initially leaked, Mechanike came forward and released the official 3DMark scores of the Arc A730M themselves. The GPU scored very similarly to the leaked benchmark in terms of the TimeSpy benchmark. The Fire Strike results, on the other hand weren’t as impressive. All in all, these scores put the A730M somewhere between the RTX 3060 and RTX 3070 series.
Time will tell
However, it’s not all roses and daisies as Intel is known to provide unique optimizations for benchmarking software such as 3DMark which automatically lends Arc A-Series GPUs an unfair advantage and prevent them from being compared 1:1 to other GPUs in the same segment. Essentially, the score is invalid despite it being quite impressive in a vacuum. Referring back to the shaky launch of Arc mobile, we’re only just now starting to see Arc A730M laptops pop up, and even those are exclusive to China. As mentioned before, it’s using a cut-down version of the ACM-G10 GPU with 12GB of GDDR6 memory running across a 192-bit wide bus interface. The maximum TGP is set at 120W. The true flagship Arc mobile GPU which will utilize the full-fat ACM-G10 die will be the Arc A770M, going up to 150W. Slowly by slowly, Intel’s Arc A-Series is beginning to materialize into the lineup the company had hoped for. It’s unfortunate that so far we’ve been evaluating Arc GPUs’ performance through leaked benchmarks only, but with the silicone shortage still prevalent and this being Intel’s first launch of this stature, this was almost expected. With the desktop release of Arc nearly upon us, it looks like drivers are finally close to ready so we don’t have to wait long before seeing more and more of Arc around us, officially that is.
