According to Intel, Arc A770M outperforms GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile.

Arc Alchemist mobile devices were first introduced by Intel in March. Although the high-end Arc 7 A730M and A770M won't be available in the United States until the summer, they are already being shipped in some Chinese laptop models. The A730M and A770M are allegedly faster than the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile and RTX 3060 Mobile from Nvidia, according to a new reviewer's guide from Intel.

The top performances in the A-series mobile range are the A730M and the A770M. The ACM-G10 silicon from Intel is baked using TSMC's 6nm manufacturing node for the discrete graphics cards. The A730M has a clock speed of up to 1,100 MHz, 24 Xe cores, and 24 ray tracing units. The improved A770M features eight extra Xe cores and ray tracing units in addition to reaching 1,650 MHz clock speed. The A770M provides twice the compute performance of the A730M as a result. Between the A730M and A770M, there is also a substantial difference in memory configuration. The A770M has 16GB of GDDR6 memory and a 256-bit memory bus, compared to the A73012GB M's of GDDR6 memory over a 192-bit memory interface.

As always, we advise you to proceed with caution when using vendor benchmarks. The hardware differences between the four gaming laptops that Intel tested are clear. The newest Core i7-12700H, a 14-core Alder Lake-H CPU, and 16GB of DDR5-4800 are included in the A730M pre-production device. On the other hand, the ROG Zephyrus M16, which features the older octa-core Core i7-11800H Tiger Lake processor and 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory, is home to the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile. More significantly, Asus' product makes use of the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti 60W model. The one inside the ROG Zephyrus M16 isn't the best-performing SKU, as there are 70W and 80W variations.

The A770M and GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile systems vary in an even more infamous way. The 14-core Core i9-12900HK, the top Alder Lake-H SKU, and 16GB of DDR5-4800 memory are found in the pre-production laptop for the A770M. The MSI Pulse GL66, which shares almost all of the same features as the ROG Zephyrus M16, houses the GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile. The MSI Pulse GL66 has the 85W edition of the graphics card, which has a TGP range of 60W to 115W.

Let's proceed and run the benchmarks provided by Intel notwithstanding the warnings on the differences in test hardware.

Arc A730M, A770M Benchmarks

	RTX 3050 Ti	​Arc A730M	RTX 3060	Arc A770M
17 Game Geometric Mean	​57.3	64.5	78.9	88.5
Assassin's Creed Valhalla (High)	38	49	76	67
Borderlands 3 (Ultra)	46	50	60	78
Control (High)	40	62	70	88
Cyberpunk 2077 (Ultra)	38	49	55	69
Dirt 5 (High)	63	61	85	87
Death Stranding (Ultra)	89	86	112	102
F1 2021 (Ultra)	68	88	97	123
Far Cry 6 (Ultra)	63	69	80	83
Gears of War 5 (Ultra)	59	51	72	74
Horizon Zero Dawn (Ultimate Quality)	62	50	80	69
Metro Exodus (Ultra)	38	55	53	69
Red Dead Redemption 2 (High)	45	60	66	78
Strange Brigade (Ultra)	98	121	134	171
The Division 2 (Ultra)	62	51	76	88
Total War Saga: Troy (Ultra)	49	66	72	85
The Witcher 3 (Ultra)	96	102	124	141
Watch Dogs Legion (High)	59	70	77	89

The Arc A730M outperformed the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile by up to 13 percent in Intel's 1080p (1920x1080) tests. We are unable to contextualise such figures because Intel did not define the TGP for the A730M. We are aware that the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile ranges from 35W to 80W, whereas the A730M fluctuates between 80W and 120W. For comparison, Intel used a slower processor and the 60W SKU. Even then, there wasn't much of a change.

The GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile was outperformed by the Arc A770M, the company's main mobile Arc SKU, by up to 12 percent. However, the TGP for the A770M is still unknown. The A770M uses between 120W and 150W, according to Intel. The GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile had the same last-generation processor as the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile, but it was only 85W. The tested model is roughly halfway between the GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile's TGP limits of 60W and 115W.

Less than 15% separated the Alchemist and Ampere graphics cards in terms of performance. If Intel had paired Ampere with the same processors as the Intel machines and used the higher TGP versions, the margins would probably be lower. It might even have tipped the scales. But that is the issue with vendor benchmarks. They are not trustworthy.

Overall, it's encouraging to see that Intel may be able to produce GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile-level performance, and affordability will undoubtedly be a consideration. When you combine an Arc GPU with an Intel 12th Generation Alder Lake CPU, Intel can take use of synergies like Hyper Encode and Deep Link as well as AV1 encoding hardware, which is currently unavailable on other GPUs.

Meanwhile, it appears that drivers and gaming performance will fall into the mainstream and low-cost categories; perhaps, sellers will price laptops properly. However, perhaps by the time the U.S. launch comes around, more flaws will have been fixed. Intel is manufacturing all of the Arc GPUs, both mobile and desktop, as China launches them first.