Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Last year, Intel released two independent graphics cards with real mainstream game performance: the Ruixuan A750 and the A770. When CTOnews.com was tested at that time, I was shocked by their DX12 performance far exceeding the same price. But we also found in the test that there is still a lot of room for improvement in their DX9 and DX11 performance. This is because the Ruixuan A750 and A770 need to be translated when running the older runtime, so they lag behind in some traditional games.

However, Intel obviously wants to develop the business of independent graphics cards. The A750 and A770 ushered in ultra-fast drive updates as soon as they were launched. There are fixes for small versions almost every week, and five for large versions. So how much will the latest 4091 version improve compared to the 3490 version just released? Today, CTOnews.com is going to test it.

When building the test platform, CTOnews.com will not fill up all the configurations as usual in the graphics card test, but will try to simulate the configuration of real users. So we used i5-12490F + A750 + 1080p screen to test.

For theoretical performance, we first install the first version of the driver with version number 3490, and conduct a theoretical performance test. Under the measured 3490 drive, the 3DMark TimeSpy score is 12709. It seems that the advantage of the A750 in the DX12 project is really considerable.

In the FireStrike that tests the performance of the DX11 project, the video card scores 30936. It can be said that for most new games that use DX11 and DX12. Intel Arc graphics card performance has been fully released, even the old version of the driver is no problem.

We also tested the Portal Royal light pursuit performance test. The score of 3490 is 6632, which is roughly the same as that of RTX 3060, which is not as bright as DX12 and DX11, but it also reaches the mainstream level under the price.

But the biggest weakness of the A750 was its support for veteran operating libraries such as DX9. So we specially brought in the old version of 3DMark6 to test it. Its BenchMark is based on DX9 and can show the running efficiency of some old games. The measured score of 3490 of factory drivers is 41271. For comparison, the RTX 3060 also has a score of 58611, so it seems that DX9 performance is indeed the deficiency of the A750 in the past.

What about the new version 4091 driver? The first is the DX12-based TimeSpy, which rose by nearly 1000 points, or about 7 per cent.

Then there was the DX11-based FireStrike, where the score rose to 32015 and the new driver improved by about 3 per cent.

Port Royal, which represents the light pursuit performance of DX12, increased by about 4% to 6910 points.

Finally, the top priority this time, 3DMark6, which represents the performance of traditional DX9, soared to 45238 points, an increase of 10%.

CTOnews.com has also made a comparison table of the theoretical performance of the new and old drivers for comparison.

If the theoretical performance of the old driver is 100%, we can see that the biggest improvement is the DX9 performance, which is indeed optimized a lot. The 10% performance gap is already a small iterative gap for competitors, so I'm looking forward to the performance of the Ruixuan A750 in traditional games.

In fact, the focus of the driver update has always been on the optimization of the game, not on the running software. In our current popular games, there are many games based on the older DX9, but before the Arc series graphics card did not choose the native DX9 support, the actual operation needs to be translated. This has led to the inefficiency of many popular but ancient games. These recently released patches focus on fixing these problems.

Unlike the last picture and text evaluation, we only tested the most mainstream games this time. The resolution is 1080p, and the picture quality is high. We will test the games of DX9, DX11 and DX12 to see how much the experience of the A750 has improved for Chinese users. Let's first take a look at "League of Legends" based on DX9. The average number of frames in the 3490 version of the driver channel is about 140150 frames, which is actually not much ahead of the check display and does not perform well.

However, after the update of the 4091 driver, the frame number performance ushered in a qualitative change, and the average frame number soared by 100 frames to about 240250 frames. This means that I was not satisfied with the e-sports monitor before, but now it's okay.

In another mainstream game based on DX9: "CS:GO", it has 271 frames under the 3490 driver, which is not bad, but not particularly ideal.

After we upgraded to the latest 4091 driver, the number of frames soared by more than 70 frames to 348 frames. Even 300Hz's ultra-high-brush display is fine.

Next, let's take a look at two mainstream competitive games of native DX11: "APEX Legends" and "forever." The performance of APEX Legends is impressive. Not only is the frame number higher, but more importantly, the frame number output is significantly more stable. If you look at the number of frames in the upper left corner, the 3490 driver is obviously jagged and the game experience is not stable enough.

After the optimization of the 4091 version, the average frame not only skyrocketed by 45 frames to 175 frames, but the average frame was pulled directly into a straight line, and the game experience was significantly improved. It seems that the Intel graphics card team has been continuously optimizing.

"Forever robbery" has a DX11 toggle button in the settings, but the DX12 option has not been launched for a long time, which will be a boon to the Arc graphics card if it comes online. In the 3490 drive, the 1080p high-quality running picture can achieve an average of about 100 frames. At that time, the game experience was already very good.

After updating the 4091 driver, the number of frames increased by a few more. This improvement is consistent with our previous 3DMark theory achievements, it can be said that "forever" has been optimized very well, and the performance of the A750 has been fully released.

After testing the mainstream online games, let's test a 3A masterpiece to see if it has been improved. We chose the DX11 version of "Metro: leaving" with our own BenchMark. Under the measured 3490 driver, the average frame number of running high-quality BenchMark is 96.3 frames, which can be played smoothly.

After upgrading the 4091 driver, the number of frames has increased to an average of 105frames, which is similar to that of "Forever robbery", which is a fully optimized game. We can also see that the performance improvement brought about by this driver upgrade is universal. Most major DX11 games can benefit from this.

Finally, the author also tested a long-awaited domestic science fiction FPS "Border". The game has been developed for quite a long time, but the latest Intel XeSS technology has been added to the recent test. It is measured that the quality file XeSS can be opened at 2K high quality, and the average number of frames can reach about 120. you are lifelike in space.

The so-called XeSS super-sampling technology is similar to DLSS / FSR. It uses AI for super-resolution and image synthesis to achieve high performance and high fidelity vision. The maximum number of frames can be increased by two times. At present, its game library is constantly expanding. And not just Arc graphics cards, all graphics cards can be used. For example, when the author is playing COD19, I find that the performance of XeSS is a little better than DLSS2 in this game, and the perception is clearer. If your favorite game supports XeSS, give it a try.

Conclusion: sincerity is a must-kill skill in these six months, we can see that Intel has not given up the independent graphics card product line like some rumors. On the contrary, the update frequency of Arc series graphics card drivers is frighteningly high. Some games that could not be played six months ago can now be played; some old games with low frame rate six months ago are now with high frame rates. At the beginning, we said that the Arc series graphics cards "fight the future", but now it seems that we are not deceiving ourselves.

At present, Arc A750 has traditional game performance similar to RTX 3060, new DX12 game performance similar to RTX 3060Ti, and can outperform RTX 3070 in the field of video codec. And recently also ushered in a wave of price adjustment, reduced to 2199 yuan, at this price competitiveness is still very obvious. If your needs coincide with its strengths, the Arc A750 may be a good choice for you.

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