The story of Intel’s Arc GPUs—like the Arc A750—continues to evolve. One can almost imagine Intel engineers by candlelight in the late hours tuning their drivers. They are up against competition from established players like AMD, so we expect nothing less.
How does the Intel Arc A750 fare against AMD’s Radeon RX 6600? The Radeon RX 6600 is a great GPU for 1080p gamers, offering a lot of bang for the buck. It’s also priced aggressively as it ages—prompting Intel to drop the Arc A750 to $249.
Let’s talk about the price, game performance, and important things to know. Both GPUs are aimed at 1080p gamers who want to squeeze the most out of their purchase. The big story here is driver stability. Intel has had an uphill battle against AMD’s more established (read: Stable) driver implementations over time. Should you take the risk and go with Intel, or stick with the tried-and-true AMD? Let’s check!
Intel Arc A750 vs. AMD RX 6600: Price and availability
Availability of Microcenter GPU Feb 23 Intel vs. AMD.
Thiago Trevisan
Good news: Intel just dropped the price of the Arc A750 to $249. This is due to competitive pressure from AMD’s 6600 GPU, which is priced in that range or lower. There’s also a general malaise in the GPU market, with far fewer sales than we’re used to seeing. (Sorry Intel, you missed the GPU craze by a year—where anything usable was taken!)
Availability due to this new market atmosphere is good for both GPUs—you can find them at their MSRP or even below. The question then is if you NEED. Nvidia remains more expensive overall, with the RTX 3060 and 3050 still selling for more.
Even with a more relaxed GPU shopping experience, you’re more likely to find the AMD 6600 at multiple retailers due to its wider market spread. The Intel Arc A750, which is newer and no longer available from the same vendor, will be available at select retailers.
A real-world Amazon search returned some results for AMD’s RX 6600 for $249 and up, but no results for the Intel Arc A750 at the time of the search. Newegg proved more successful, with the Intel Arc A750 found for $249. In addition, it also has several AMD RX 6600 GPUs, and some are under $249.
Microcenter—another popular retailer for those lucky enough to live near one—has a large number of well-priced AMD 6600 in stock. Some are as low as $219! In contrast, only four or five Intel Arc A750s are available, the lowest at $249.
This sample of major retailers is a good example of where most gamers will find these products. This is a big win for AMD—you should be looking for an Intel GPU and be willing to pay more.
Intel Arc A750 vs. AMD RX 6600: Performance
Thiago Trevisan
Intel needs to provide a significant performance advantage to regain market position as described in the price section, along with driver stability.
The big story here is Intel’s driver updates, which will “reveal” more performance and stability over time. For example, the recent update has a big improvement for older DX9 games. If Intel wants to compete with the big players, they need to do the same with the triple AAA title. (You’ll also want to check out the PCWorld Youtube channel, which posts Intel Arc updates.)
From PCWorld Intel Arc Review.
Brad Chacos
Starting with Cyberpunk 2077 (Ray tracing and DLSS / FSR off) the Intel Arc A750 is not very good at 1080p – 50 FPS vs 64.3 FPS on the AMD 6600. It falls short of the magical 60 FPS figure, not to mention the 6600 is cheaper generally. At 1440p, the results are closer – but still a measly 38 FPS. It shows that Intel GPUs seem to favor slightly higher resolutions compared to 1080p, however. In the update of the PCWorld Youtube Arc for the A770, similar conclusions show that it falls behind AMD and Nvidia.
From PCWorld Intel Arc Review.
Brad Chacos
Moving on to Watch Dogs Legion, the A750 fares better – matching the 6600 at 1080p and beating it by 7 FPS at 1440p. (Interestingly, Keith’s video at PCworld found that the A770’s performance dropped a bit after the initial driver launch, so the results can be shaky at times.)
From PCWorld Intel Arc Review.
Brad Chacos
Metro Exodus is another title that features the A750 with a pronounced lead over the AMD 6600, and Nvidia RTX 3060 as well. This is done at both 1080p and 1440p, which shows that usually the best performance can be found on a game-by-game basis. If you’re considering the A750’s performance, it might be worth checking out the comparisons for the specific titles you plan to play.
The A750 runs with ray tracing performance compared to the 6600 XT.
Thiago Trevisan
If we revisit Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing, we have some interesting results. The A750 runs perfectly with the performance here, which is much better than the AMD 6600. It even manages to perform well against the Nvidia, which is not too shabby – that’s the strength of Nvidia!
Of course, you don’t want to run ray tracing at this GPU level. The performance penalty is too much for it to deserve. It will be interesting to see how it fares well with the Intel Arc, though.
What if we take the performance to a different plane – and consider upscalers? Nvidia has DLSS, AMD has FSR, and Intel has XeSS. While Intel certainly has some great performance gains with XeSS, it’s still newer than the competition and not widely available.
While this may vary from game to game, AMD’s 6600 is generally the better performing GPU here overall. When you factor in better availability, cheaper prices, and more mature drivers, it usually wins against the A750. The A750 outperforms it in some titles, though, which is certainly impressive. (And don’t mention the ray tracing, the 6600 isn’t very good!)
We’d still give this round to the AMD 6600, it’s a better overall bet for gamers mostly looking for its 1080p performance.
Intel Arc A750 vs. AMD RX 6600: Power and other things to know
Efficiency and power draw are important to control your temperature. It’s also easier to budget for cheaper components with less draw, too. Here the AMD 6600 runs with performance – with better numbers than the Intel Arc GPUs. Arc GPUs are known to be quite power hungry, so this isn’t surprising – but it does have an impact on your system as a whole.
Full system power draw for Arc A750 and RX 6600.
Brad Chacos
Temperatures can usually be reasonable, but the AMD 6600 has a wider variety of cooler types available for case customization, too.
In terms of other things to know – Intel Arc Control is improving, but you may still have some software issues at times. AMD Adrenaline software is more stable overall, but it’s not perfect. AMD recently took longer than usual to update drivers for the RX 6000 GPU compared to the newer RX 7000 GPUs, which left some people worried. In general, their driver support is generally good, though.
Intel Arc A750 vs AMD Radeon RX 6600: The Verdict
The Intel Arc A750 is definitely an interesting addition to the GPU landscape. We hope that with continued support and driver updates, it will mature into a stable platform. It also has some good performance chops if it wants to. Add ray tracing and XeSS to that and it will all be exciting to see where it goes. Recent improvements for legacy games and DX9 are promising.
That’s the key issue here, though—”where it’s going.” The AMD Radeon RX 6600 is the clear winner here for most gamers, right now. It’s more widely available across a variety of vendors, which in turn means it’s usually priced more competitively.
The Radeon RX 6600 also competes well against the Arc A750 in various metrics. It has surprisingly good efficiency, puts out great performance and blows little power. While the A750 can beat the 6600 in some cases, especially in DirectX 12 and ray-traced games, it’s more of a mixed bag. Overall consistent performance favors the AMD GPU.
While ray tracing, and even 1440p performance is impressive, many gamers looking to spend $249 or less will likely want good 1080p performance first. Here the AMD Radeon RX 6600 is generally superior, making it a no-brainer.