Arc A380 may not be one of the best graphics cards out there. However, Intel’s entry-level Arc Alchemist graphics card has what it takes to run Crysis, the gold standard for gaming.
youtuber PCGH Benchmarks and Analysis (opens in new tab) I recently tried the Gunnir Arc A380 with Crysis and it didn’t wow the budget Arc graphics card. Note that this is his original Crysis released 15 years ago, not Crysis Remastered which debuted 2 years ago. Nevertheless, the ten-year-old title didn’t budge his Arc A380 at all.
The Arc A380 performed great in Crysis, delivering over 60 FPS at 1080p (1920×1080) with very high settings and anti-aliasing set to 4x MSAA. We also got a glimpse of how the Arc A380 peaked above his 80 FPS. Unfortunately, it’s common knowledge that Arc doesn’t deliver great performance outside of DirectX12 or Vulkan titles. Despite this, the Arc A380 provided excellent performance numbers in Crysis, a title that utilizes DirectX 10. The YouTuber reported that the game ran beautifully and didn’t see any frame stutter.
Intel’s current Arc drivers keep the Arc A380 at bay, so the graphics card may still have some performance in the tank. More development is needed to tackle the previous API. However, Intel recently allowed it to reuse its integrated graphics software for Arc. This explains why the driver slows down the performance of Arc Alchemist’s discrete graphics card.
Earlier this year, Intel promised to ship 4 million discrete graphics cards in 2022. The company is still optimistic about putting desktop Arc in the hands of gamers later this year.
