Intel Arc A380 with OC and on AMD Ryzen in test

How high can the Intel Arc A380 overclock and how fast is the graphics card with an AMD Ryzen CPU? The second article on Intel’s first discrete Arc graphics card provides answers to these and other questions. It also reveals a big surprise, this time positive.

A second look at the Intel Arc A380

In the first test, the Intel Arc A380 (test) proved to be problematic. The hardware can certainly compete with the Radeon RX 6400 and GeForce GTX 1650, and there are also areas where Intel’s first discrete graphics card is superior. But driver bugs and other issues prevailed in the test.

• Intel Arc A380 in the test: A week of laughter and tears

Tests on AMD Ryzen platform and including OC

Some test series were still missing in the first article, now they will be compensated. So, the test will address the question of how well the Arc A380 overclocks and how the performance looks in combination with AMD’s Ryzen CPU, and there will be a positive surprise here. In addition, the article will also be about the Gunnir Arc A380 Photon 6G fan that did not work a week ago, where the second surprise is coming.

A lot in advance: the general impression of the Arc A380 will not change with the new findings. But it will be shown that not everything that was criticized in the first test has to be found in all systems.

This is how the Intel Arc A380 is overclocked

Common overclocking tools are not yet compatible with Intel’s Alchemist architecture, but Intel has integrated an OC function into the new driver menu. It can be found under “Performance Adjustment” and consists of the four items “GPU Performance Boost”, “GPU Voltage Offset”, “GPU Current Limit” and “GPU Temperature”.

So far, so good, and the user still doesn’t really know what the purpose of each function is. The GPU clock, which can be increased with this driver, is simply hidden behind the performance boost. However, the clock speeds are not directly set by the driver, but rather incremented in percentage increments. There you can specify between 0 and 100 percent, which is ultimately both unrealistic and wrong. Because 10 percent doesn’t mean 10 percent more clock in this case. At 10 percent, the Arc A380 runs at 2,499 MHz instead of 2,450 MHz, which is just 2 percent more clock speed.

Even with the OC not everything works (correct)

The Voltage Offset slider allows you to increase the GPU voltage. Theoretically at least, it has virtually no effect. And maybe that’s a good thing, because at the +0.725V adjustable maximum, the Arc 380 would probably immediately die OC at the 1.012V factory. Not being able to do that at all is still a problem, as the GPU, as far overclocked, it drops the voltage from 1.012V to 0.997 to 0.995V without being able to do anything about it.

With GPU current limiting, the power consumption of the GPU can probably be limited without the other components. The controller can be freely adjusted between 32.5 and 97.5 W and it works, but again not as expected. For example, if you set 40.5 W, the GPU will still consume 46 W. The factory setting is 64.5 W.

Finally, there is the temperature of the GPU. It probably ensures that the GPU throttles down at a certain temperature. The factory setting is 90 °C, but the value can be freely set between 55 and 125 °C.

Anyone who now misses overclocking in memory has paid attention. Because the VRAM cannot currently be overclocked on the Arc A380 with the driver menu.

OC potential is low on the A380

The Gunnir Arc A380 Photon 6G is already overclocked from 100 MHz to 2450 MHz and this is pretty close to the maximum that the graphics card at the editorial office was capable of. The 2,562 MHz was still stable before the computer crashed. They are achieved by setting the GPU performance boost to 23 percent, even if this corresponds to only 5 percent more clock.

Manual intervention at the power limit was not yet necessary because the GPU is still relatively far from the maximum allowable 64 °C at around 56 W. Likewise, the temperature controller did not need to be raised.

GDDR6 memory cannot currently be overclocked. Consequently, it works at the usual 7,750 MHz.

OC benchmarks with the Arc A380

Although some YouTube videos claim otherwise, the Arc A380 responds to overclocking just like any other graphics card from AMD and Nvidia. Consequently, 5 percent more clocking only brings a maximum of 5 percent more performance; anything else is simply not possible apart from a measurement inaccuracy.

The Arc A380 never seems to suffer in terms of memory bandwidth, because the graphics card perfectly converts the 5 percent higher GPU clock into a 5 percent higher frame rate, it couldn’t be better. The Arc A380 thus outperforms the GeForce GTX 1650 by 2 percent in AVG FPS in the test course and comes to a tie with the Radeon RX 6400. However, it should be mentioned that AMD and Nvidia graphics cards of course , they can also be overclocked.

Even if 5 percent more FPS is the standard in individual games, the value is sometimes a bit lower. In Elden Ring, for example, the performance increase is “only” 4 percent, the same applies to Fortnite, Overwatch, Resident Evil Village, and The Witcher 3. However, in three of the five games, the Arc A380 it has problems anyway, so the slight discrepancy maybe that can be justified.