Everyday gaming with ARC

[Dristun]

Let's post our casual experiences, semi-serious tests and any workarounds (if they're needed) here, along with just general impressions.

Now that I've had the card for a few weeks, I have to say I'm quite surprised that everything mostly works fine!
I'll just list the games I tried so far:

Audiosurf 2 (DX11) — works flawlessly, no stutters, crashes, hiccups.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (DX12) — on every startup the game thinks that I've changed my hardware configuration, sometimes twice! Otherwise works normally. I can run it at 4K comfortably above 60 with XESS Balanced with custom settings that I'd call "Medium".
Doom ports (OpenGL) — Zandronum, Zdaemon and GZDoom all work fine.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (DX9) — coil whine symphony but the game runs fine. There are (very) occasional stutters though I don't remember if they were always there. Might be worth trying DXVK with this one.
Quake 2 RTX (Vulkan) — yay, pretty! I get between 35-50fps with FSR enabled and Global Illumination on Medium @1080p. However it crashes when I try to take a screenshot. It clearly doesn't want the world to know that Intel GPUs can run it.

I'll post more as I get to play other games.

 

[Fouquin]

Elden Ring - Originally crashed often for me but after the first driver update it has run perfectly fine with most details enabled at 1440p. 62-70FPS depending on the area (with a mild ~2585MHz OC)

Warhammer 40K: Darktide - Crashes often, fails to start on any preset other than Low, windowed, and has many other bugs. Almost all of that is bugs with the game, but at least on other vendor's cards it's gotten a little more stable. Performance when it works is quite good, though. With the High preset (minus motion blur and bloom, blech) at 1440p (fullscreen) I'm getting between 48 and 65 FPS. With FSR2.0 enabled at the Quality preset that jumps to 65-80FPS. I notice very little obvious ghosting except at the mission terminal where the hologram of the hive is. I've left Global Illumination and lighting alone and the image quality is fantastic.

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands - Couple of hiccups early on with massive texture pop in and some seriously glitchy looking effects. After some driver updates it has since run beautifully above 60FPS at 1440p High.

For a laugh I gave Portal with RTX a go, shockingly it doesn't run at all.

 

[Dristun]

Just encountered my first "old" game (2020) that straight up doesn't work, won't launch, nothing helps — Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War! Seems to be the same for other Arc owners too, Intel's already been notified by others who tried before me, lol.

This aside, I've been mostly emulating Switch games on Ryujinx with Vulkan renderer and it works great. OpenGL is broken but - it's slower anyway.

 

[masterdeejay]

My experience: (old card was Tesla M40 modded, oc-ed to aprox GTX1070Ti)
Intel Arc 770 LE 16Gb stock

Skyrim with 4k-8k 80gb mods it is a little slower than my older card. With DXVK it is much better but enb not working with dxvk
Kingdom Come Deliverance ultra, hd textures: little slower, crashes when i change advanced graphics settings. 40-60fps but with DXVK it is fixed 60 fps
Star Citizen, runs like shit as always not relevant (~30 fps in online mode)
Quake 2 RTX runs good 40-50fps
Call Of Duty UO - opengl but runs better than my old card
Vintage Story - perfect
Street Legal Racing Redline - perfect
All above is tested with pcie 3.0 8x (i put it the wrong slot) but rebar enabled.

 

[masterdeejay]

Cyberpunk 2077 (last patch, fresh install) gives different results for each run.
Not bad on ultra gaphics, if i set to medium fps are better but lags. (Bug?)
RT works. Playable but needs optimalization or custom config ini.

 

[jaded]

can anyone say how valorant or tarkov runs?

 

[Lei]

can anyone say how valorant or tarkov runs?

Did you have a look at this:

You can watch his ARC tests:
https://www.youtube.com/@shadowseven/search?query=arc

 

[jaded]

thanks watching now. read it crashes during gameplay and wondering if recent updates helped at all

yea val could prob be ran on ultra its mostly cpu optimized

 

[DavidC1]

@Lei Hi, so Valorant is a DX11 game right?

Raja reiterated that drivers that focus on DX11 games are coming soon. Based on twitter reports about the DX9 driver, it isn't just DXVK - they are writing some native DX9 code in there too. Since just using DXVK breaks compatibility in some games and multiplayer scenarios they can't straight up use it.

I am guessing based on the frequency of the release date, we should see DX11 update in about 1-1.5 months. The DX9 driver isn't just focusing on few key games either. Based on user reviews and foreign ones, it's a general driver. It wouldn't surprise me if the DX11 update also improves compatibility.

-Intel Discord said back in November or so VR focused one is "3-6 months away".
-Drivers focusing on general performance improvements not just specific APIs are promised as well.

I used Intel graphics for many generations. The pace they are improving with ARC is unprecedented in their history. Their iGPU driver development was slow, or didn't happen at all. The Gelsinger+Lavender combo seems to be paying off. They reorganized the entire software division under one umbrella sometime middle of last year, because until then they had many software groups and people, just not coherent.

Don't expect wonders though. You'd likely not see RTX 3070 Ti performance as rumors and high-level specs indicate. Their architecture is likely behind. True competitiveness will need to wait for Xe2 - Battlemage. But driver development until then will do a lot to build that foundation.

 

[jaded]

im not expecting much its half the price. i cant decide between the stock and acer

howmanyfps says ill get 165 very low settings on tarkov with my setup so could be just enough headroom but its got some unoptimised maps

 

[Dristun]

im not expecting much its half the price. i cant decide between the stock and acer

howmanyfps says ill get 165 very low settings on tarkov with my setup so could be just enough headroom but its got some unoptimised maps

Acer has better VRM, better cooler => better temperatures, higher power limit and their software already supports fan curves. If it's the same price as LE, go for Acer.

Continuing the thread - after I moved on from SMT V, encountered massive issues with sound desync, crashes and artifacting in switch emulation with Ryujinx in many games and straight up unplayable with Yuzu. Looks like SMT was an outlier. PS2 emulation with PCSX2 is okay in the couple of games I tried but I didn't spend dozens of hours there (Ridge Racer V and and Digital Devil Saga).

There are also continuing issues with sound crackling when switching/launching apps that go away when I disable the A770. So it's on the GPU.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

I have the 8 GB variant of Arc A770. From the outside, the build-quality looks good, it's from ASRock. They seem to be building most of the Arcs.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Preliminary findings:

Q: Can you play Gearbox Halo CE on Arc? (Gearbox Halo CE=The original Halo Custom Edition (Halo 1x) that was ported by Gearbox Software)

A: Yes! You just need a modded config.txt with the added information, because this game is DirectX 9 and during that time, Intel graphics were considered bad!

I'm using the latest beta and it doesn't look as bad as the very-early-findings.

Cons: The overlay toggle won't work in Halo 1.0.10! It won't appear when you press Alt+O.