Question Intel ARC A770 Performance and idle power draw after Feb. 2023 driver update

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Kocicak

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Jan 17, 2019
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I got A770 16GB card (BTW for less than what I sold my RX580 8GB for a while ago), I wanted to test how it runs after the 4091 driver update.

It still consumes 40W being idle. Is there some setting that might be causing this? Since I most of the time do nothing graphic intensive on my PC, I find this idle power draw unacceptable!

Playback of Youtube 4K video adds just 5W on top of that.

So far I experienced no problems, I ran 3D mark test multiple times, no crashes etc.

Some results:

a770 2.png


a770 3.png
 
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solidsnake1298

solidsnake1298

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Aug 7, 2009
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I know AMD and Nvidia have power profiles like "performance", "optimized", and "efficiency" in their control panels. Check the Intel control panel for something similar.

It's also possible this is normal for this GPU. Looking around the web, ~40W idle power draw appears to be the norm.
 
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K

Kocicak

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I found out, that in ARC Control power draw is missing in the monitored values... Curious.

You cannot undervolt this card, voltage can be only increased. You can increase power draw limit though to 228 W. I did that and the score improved some, but the card was already hitting 90°C (in my poorly ventilated case):

a770 4.png
 
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Hans Gruber

Hans Gruber

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Dec 23, 2006
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You have to give the ARC cards 6 months from release to iron out the drivers. It may take 3 or 4 months beyond that. Intel is making good progress on their drivers. The experts say the ARC cards are not terribly efficient. The 6nm TSMC silicon is very efficient.
 
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K

Kocicak

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mikk said:
You have to use the ASPM L1 workaround, this is the only solution. It works or not works depending on the monitor setup and mainboard.
Click to expand...
I just checked it and to do this, you need to set Maximal power savings for PCIe devices, including SSDs. I do not want my SSDs to switch between a power saving and normal state too often.

Hans Gruber said:
You have to give the ARC cards 6 months from release to iron out the drivers. It may take 3 or 4 months beyond that. Intel is making good progress on their drivers. ...
Click to expand...
Are you sure this is just a driver problem? This seems to be a hardware problem.

BTW all the led lightbulbs in my flat are not more than 40W combined. My 32 inch 4K PC monitor consumes less than that as well.

The card itself looks nice and solid. I also had pretty positive feeling from it, when I watched Gamers Nexus teardown video of it (and ignored the childish rants of the author).
 
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Hans Gruber

Hans Gruber

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Kocicak said:
I just checked it and to do this, you need to set Maximal power savings for PCIe devices, including SSDs. I do not want my SSDs to switch between a power saving and normal state too often.


Are you sure this is just a driver problem? This seems to be a hardware problem.

BTW all the led lights bulbs in my flat are not more than 40W combined. My 32 inch 4K PC monitor consumes less than that as well.

The card itself looks nice and solid. I also had pretty positive feeling from it, when I watched Gamers Nexus teardown video of it (and ignored the childish rants of the author).
Click to expand...
A motherboard is hardware and the bios is the firmware/software that runs a motherboard. A CPU has chipset drivers that control the CPU. A GPU has graphics drivers. This is Intel's first run into the GPU segment.

From what I have read, the ARC 770 is supposed to be somewhere between a 3060ti and a 3070 in power/performance capability. It's above both of them in Vram 16GB to 8GB for the 3060ti and 3070.

Right now with the latest drivers the ARC 770 seems to be at the 3060 level of performance. The RT is very good and the AV1 encoding is class leading.

It will not be until the Battlemage Intel GPU that they start taking shots at the top line GPU's. I guess even then it will be a bit behind but in the performance neighborhood.

Keep us updated in the coming month on the performance of your ARC 770.
 
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K

Kocicak

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Hans Gruber said:
Keep us updated in the coming month on the performance of your ARC 770.
Click to expand...
I am giving Intel ONE WEEK to fix this. The card eats 40W, is warm, the chip is 50°C, fans spin, when the card does nothing. I cannot have this.

I am already looking at RX6600, 6700 10G and 6750 12G. I do not know what to get.

BTW I shortly owned 6700 12G card, but the video playback had horrible jumps in it, I could not figure out, what setting to change to get rid of it. I do not want to repeat that with another RX card.
 
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Tup3x

Tup3x

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Dec 31, 2016
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Kocicak said:
I am giving Intel ONE WEEK to fix this. The card eats 40W, is warm, the chip is 50°C, fans spin, when the card does nothing. I cannot have this.

I am already looking at RX6600, 6700 10G and 6750 12G. I do not know what to get.

BTW I shortly owned 6700 12G card, but the video playback had horrible jumps in it, I could not figure out, what setting to change to get rid of it. I do not want to repeat that with another RX card.
Click to expand...
As others have said, there's a workaround. If that is not good enough for you or doesn't work in your case... Then just buy something else.
 
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K

Kocicak

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You can always hope that somebody will finally figure out, how to fix this. The workaround is not usable for me, because I do not want to put any unnecessary strain on my SSDs.
 
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I

igor_kavinski

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Jul 27, 2020
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Kocicak said:
because I do not want to put any unnecessary strain on my SSDs.
Click to expand...
That's what SSDs are designed to do, especially in laptops. There's no strain on them if power saving is a feature built into them for the purpose of extending battery life. You are possibly thinking something along the lines of the SSD getting a jolt of ripple current every time it wakes up from low power mode and enters normal mode. I don't think anyone would design power level transitions in a way where the device gets zapped with unnecessarily large current between transitions.
 
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mikk

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Kocicak said:
I just checked it and to do this, you need to set Maximal power savings for PCIe devices, including SSDs. I do not want my SSDs to switch between a power saving and normal state too often.
Click to expand...

PEG ASPM L1 is enough, you don't have to use ASPM L1 for other peripherie. Or set it to L0/L0s for the SSD.
 
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Hans Gruber

Hans Gruber

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carrotmania said:
I needed a thread like this to cheer me up this morning. LOL. "One Week!!" LOL. What's with the outrage, when YOU bought hardware derided in every publication? The blame is all yours dude.
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I do not think the ARC cards were slammed by every publication. The ARC cards were described as rough, functional and buggy upon release. Inconsistent and unplayable at times. I am impressed that Intel has fixed the drivers as fast as they have. Obviously, there is still a lot of work to be done.

I cannot understand why Intel is not selling these cards directly from Intel. If the ARC 770 was $200-225 there would be a lot of us jumping on the Intel platform. Maybe not as a main card but a tester/backup GPU.
 
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Kocicak

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Hans Gruber said:
If the ARC 770 was $200-225 there would be a lot of us jumping on the Intel platform. Maybe not as a main card but a tester/backup GPU.
Click to expand...
I believe that they are losing money on it already. The card looks well made and all other cards with 16 GB are substantially more expensive.

I have no idea when was my card made, but it was shipped out of Malaysia a month ago. In case they do not make them anymore, I guess they do not care, whether the rest of the stock sells in 1 or 6 months and they may not feel any need to decrease the price of these.

So far it seems they could make them to work well and some people may not care about the idle power draw, if it is really not fixable. I did not experience any instability or problem yet, I only cannot close the ARC center sometimes, I have to kill it in task manager.
 
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TESKATLIPOKA

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Kocicak said:
So far it seems they could make them to work well and some people may not care about the idle power draw, if it is really not fixable. I did not experience any instability or problem yet, I only cannot close the ARC center sometimes, I have to kill it in task manager.
Click to expand...
You can fix high power draw, but you didn't even try. Instead, you are complaining how It's unacceptable to you and that you give them a week to fix It or you will buy something else.
It was well known It has high power draw, the same happened with RDNA3, but that was already fixed.
You bought It knowing this, It's totally your fault.
ARC A770 for that price is a very good deal, but you have to accept some disadvantages.

Next you will buy AMD and you will complain about not enough Vram or weak RT or something else.
Just buy Nvidia and give us a break.
 
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K

Kocicak

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Jan 17, 2019
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I did that in the first sentense.
Kocicak said:
... after the 4091 driver update.
Click to expand...



TESKATLIPOKA said:
...
You bought It knowing this, It's totally your fault.

ARC A770 for that price is a very good deal, but you have to accept some disadvantages. ...
Click to expand...

Before buying the card I tried to find, if the new driver fixed the idle power draw problem, and found nothing. I had to test it myself.

What price? I payed 9600 CZK for it. That includes 21% VAT. That is approx. 360 USD without VAT.
 
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K

Kocicak

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Jan 17, 2019
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Here are my settings now:pcie bios.jpg
pcie set 1.png

I restarted the computer after making the change in the power settings, it did not help. The GPU still sits at 40W.

What now?
 
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