Intel targets RTX 3060 takedown with Arc Alchemist price cut

Intel is cutting the price of its Arc A750 graphics card in an attempt to strike at Nvidia’s popular RTX 3060. Starting today, the Arc A750 starts at $250 for Intel’s Limited Edition model.

As you can read in our Intel Arc A770 and A750 review, the card narrowly beats the RTX 3060 at 1080p, while carving out a more significant lead at 1440p. The price cut brings a $40 reduction in the price the A750 debuted out, tipping the value scales in Intel’s favor.

Intel claims the A750 offers a 52% better value considering its price and performance compared to the RTX 3060. However, Intel based this assessment on a starting price of $391 for Nvidia’s GPU. At the time of publication, you can find new, in-stock RTX 3060 graphics cards starting at $340. Based on that, the A750 offers closer to 39% more performance per dollar.

The main hurdle for Intel’s Arc Alchemist GPUs has been DirectX 9 performance. Near launch, Intel announced that it wouldn’t directly support DirectX 9, instead relying on emulation. This had a big impact on DirectX 9 games, such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Stellaris, as confirmed through reviews.

Intel says it’s made major strides with DirectX 9 since launch, however. Along with the price cut, Intel is debuting a new driver that further improves DirectX 9 performance.

Compared to the driver at launch, Intel claims a 77% increase in Counter-Strike, a 45% boost in League of Legends, and a 10% jump in Guild Wars 2. On average, Intel says the A750 is 43% faster in DirectX 9 games than it was at launch.

Intel says it has made headway in DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 games as well, showing a 57% jump in Warframe. Intel clarified that it specifically targeted Warframe for optimization, however, so you shouldn’t expect that large of a jump in other DirectX 11 and 12 titles.

Although those are impressive claims, it’s important to wait for third-party testing. Now that Intel’s latest driver is available, we can throw the Arc A750 back on the test bench to see if the performance jumps are as large as Intel says they are.

GPU prices have dropped massively over the past year, but budget options are still few and far between. At $250, where the Arc A750 now lands, the only other option is AMD’s RX 6600. It’s a solid GPU, but it falls behind the Arc A750 in ray tracing performance as you can read in our RX 6600 review.

Starting with the price drop, Intel is also offering new Arc GPUs with codes for Nightingale and The Settlers: New Allies.

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