Intel Arc A770 desktop GPU debuted on Geekbench

Looking Ahead: Intel is finally starting to launch mobile GPUs, and it’s set to launch its first desktop GPUs later this summer. Somewhere near the top of the stack will be the Arc A770, a piece fully loaded with 512 EUs, a 2-2.5GHz boost clock, and 16GB of memory.

Intel first announced the Arc flagship as the ACM-G10 GPU, and then launched in print as the A770M for mobile. Presumably, laptops equipped with the A770M will appear on the shelves in the coming months. The now unannounced desktop equivalent Found In the Geekbench OpenCL database.

It’s not a groundbreaking leak as the devices themselves have been leaked multiple times, including once in the Geekbench database. However, this is the first time it’s officially called Intel Arc A770 Graphics to give it its full name.

This is also another point on the clock speed map: 2.4GHz. Late last year we talked about rumors of 2.5GHz, then in February we saw 2.4GHz for the first time. Intel itself introduced 2.25GHz last month, but it may have been referring to a different model.

And the critical point: In line with previous leaks, the A770 has an OpenCL score of 85,585. Slightly more than the RX 6600 XT, about the same as the RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070, and a little less than the RTX 3060. In other words, quite a mid-range.

But this is not the full story. Geekbench divides the OpenCL score into its component classes, of which there are 11. Some architectures are better in some categories than others. For example, the 6600 XT is about 35% faster than the 3060 in the Gaussian Camouflage test, despite being slower in eight classes and having a worse overall score.

Although the 3060 outperforms the A770 in more than half of the categories, the A770 leads significantly in particle physics and Gaussian blur tests. It loses by the largest margins on the Sobel, Histogram Equalization, Horizon Detection, and Canny tests, all of which are based on computer vision.

From there, you can see some trend: The A770 performs poorly on memory sensitivity tests but otherwise is computationally strong.

Given the A770M’s specs on paper, it’s surprising that the A770 likely shares: 16GB of GDDR6 clocked at 17.5Gbps and connected via a 256-bit bus. It’s not a bad memory subsystem, so maybe it’s an OpenCL oddity, or maybe the Alchemist architecture has a memory throttling.

Realistically, there would be no major repercussions if that were the case. At worst, it can make the architecture more suitable for lower than high resolutions and reduce its longevity. However, it is interesting to see what distinguishes Alchemist architecture from Ampere and Navi.

In terms of gaming performance, the OpenCL results don’t say much. As noted above, the 6600 XT is more than 10,000 points behind the 3060, but in our review we found it faster in most games at 1080p and 1440p. The benchmark leaks before we knew its name put the A770 ahead of the 3060 and into the world of the 3070 Ti.