Gaming with Intel Arc graphics card – is it possible?
Recently, we got our hands on a laptop with an Intel Arc A370M dedicated GPU – Lenovo IdeaPad 5i Pro 16 (16IAH7). Our laptop is a powerful one and the video card isn’t bottlenecked at all – a Core i7-12700H paired with 16GB of DDR5 RAM should be more than fine for such a graphics card (by the way, the i7-12700H is a great match even for modern high-end video cards as well). You can our second YouTube channel called “LaptopMedia Benchmarks” which also contains gameplay videos of Intel Arc A370M and 40 different playlists of mobile GPUs.
All laptops equipped with the Intel Arc A370M
We were excited to see the actual performance of the Arc GPU but after testing some games we realized that the whole testing procedure will be a bit harder than usual. We noticed visual artifacts in games, some titles need time before the FPS becomes stable and reaches playable values. Other games won’t start at all, and we will explain some other problems further in this article. Let’s see the problems that we experienced one by one:
1. In CS:GO the MSI Afterburner / Riva Tuner combo is unusable because game will crash before seeing the main menu of the title. The solution is to not use MSI Afterburner but this is the first time that we’re experiencing such strange behavior. Actually, CS:GO doesn’t like any OSD by default while the game is running and for seeing the MSI Afterburner OSD info you have to set this launch option in the game’s properties “-allow_third_party_software”. We were using this method for years and it’s working like a charm but not with this Arc GPU. You can see more info in our video. We also tried the new MSI Afterburner 4.6.5 (Beta2) but unfortunately, the result is still the same.
2. We experienced exactly the same thing with Team Fortress 2 and that’s why our video is lacking OSD info.
2. Doom Eternal looks super-strange – the game is very dark and there are some noticeable visual artifacts as well. It’s easy to spot the difference with the provided pictures down below. The first two from left to right are screenshots taken from Doom Eternal gameplay with the A370M, while the other two are showing the in-game visual quality with a Radeon RX6850M XT. For additional info check our video.
3. Need For Speed Heat runs decently but after some time we realized (the hard way) that after you start the game you have to let it settle for around 8 minutes and after that, the FPS will become stable and normal. Yes, after the initial loading the FPS was all over the place (and even the textures of the road were blurry) – it was jumping around from 5 to 20 FPS before reaching 45-50 FPS in a static scene. Again, check the video to see it for yourself but 8 minutes and 30 seconds of waiting to play a game as should be is strange. We noticed something else – even after some time the gameplay was smooth but after four runs of our test scene, we saw that the FPS in the last run was noticeably higher compared to the first run. For example, on Low, we went from 29 to 39 average FPS which is a 34% difference. Last but not least, when you’re driving in an unexplored area, the FPS is lower, and after some “driving around town”, the FPS will become stable again.
4. Battlefield V has problems close to the ones that we saw in Need For Speed Heat. After starting the game, we have to load the test mission and let the game settle for around 10 minutes before seeing normal FPS values. Interestingly enough, the initial first 20 seconds of the level seem super heavy for the Arc GPU because on High and Ultra we experienced a crazy amount of stutters on these two presets while further in the mission the gameplay wasn’t that choppy but still stutter-ish on High and Ultra (unfortunately even on Low and Medium the gameplay wasn’t butter-smooth).
5. Red Dead Redemption 2 is looking fine on Low settings but on Medium and High, a lot of artifacts are clearly visible.
6. God Of War is another game that needs some time before you can play it normally. See the video for more information.
7. The benchmark of Metro Exodus is running in 720p despite that in the settings the resolution is set to 1080p and even after the end of the run, the result screen is showing 1080p! It’s clearly visible that the benchmark is running in a much lower resolution because the bigger pixels are easy to spot and the OSD of MSI Afterburner is much bigger in size.
8. In Ghost Recon Breakpoint we noticed some strange shadows behind the two vehicles at the beginning of the benchmark.
9. In Overwatch 2 we can spot the same behavior that we saw in Need For Speed Heat and God Of War. The first 10 to 15 minutes of gameplay are choppy and after that the FPS is normalized.
10. Last but not least, some games aren’t working at all like Far Cry 6 and Shadow Of The Tomb Raider. During our testing, we experienced two BSODs which is quite unusual as well.
The Intel Arc A370M isn’t a bad GPU, it just needs better driver support which probably will happen in the near future. On top of that, the video card looks like an efficient product because the average chip power draw is just 24W. At least for now, the driver version 31.0.101.3490 doesn’t seem stable and optimized enough, at least when it comes to the abovementioned titles.
All laptops equipped with the Intel Arc A370M
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