Gaming is one of the most popular pastimes in the world, with over 3 billion people enjoying video games. Whether you prefer first-person shooters, open-world adventures, or competitive multiplayer, your graphics card plays a huge role in determining the quality of your gaming experience.
New graphics processors are constantly being developed to push visual fidelity to unprecedented levels. However, one stands proud among them. ARC GPUs are carefully crafted and have the potential to significantly improve your gaming.
Let's take a look at 10 ways the ARC GPU could benefit your gaming experience.
1. Increased Frame Rates
The ARC GPU is designed from the ground up for high-performance gaming. Its Xe-HPG architecture features hardware-accelerated ray tracing, AI-enhanced upscaling, and other advanced technologies to maximize frame rates. This means games will feel much smoother as you'll be getting higher frames per second at a given resolution and quality preset.
Whether you prefer playing competitively at 240+ fps or being immersed in stunning visuals at higher resolutions, the ARC delivers improved performance across different games and settings.
2. Ray Tracing Powerhouse
Ray tracing brings a new level of visual realism to games with realistic reflections, shadows, and lighting. However, it can be quite taxing on your graphics card. The ARC GPU features dedicated ray-tracing units on its Xe cores to accelerate this computationally intensive process.
This allows it to run the latest games with ray tracing enabled without as much of a performance hit. With the ARC in your system, you'll be able to experience the cutting-edge ray-traced effects in games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Battlefield 2042 to their fullest potential.
3. AI Upscaling for Sharp Images
While raw power is important, the ARC GPU also uses artificial intelligence to enhance image quality. Its Xe-HPG cores support Intel's XeSS upscaling technology, which uses a temporal neural network to reconstruct frames. This allows it to intelligently upscale games to your display's resolution while minimizing loss of sharpness and details for a clearer picture.
So whether you game at 1080p or higher resolutions like 1440p or 4K, XeSS ensures textures and objects appear crisp and defined on screen.
4. Supports the Latest Display Technologies
The ARC GPU is designed for the latest display connectivity standards.
It features DisplayPort 2.0 and HDMI 2.1 outputs that allow it to drive high-refresh-rate monitors at resolutions up to 8K.
If you upgrade your display panel to take advantage of technologies like NVIDIA G-Sync or AMD FreeSync Premium, the ARC will fully leverage those capabilities for an immersive visual experience.
Its support for the latest display specs also ensures your games will look their absolute best.
5. Plenty of VRAM for Texture-Heavy Games
Graphics memory, also known as VRAM, is important for loading large game textures, maps, and assets into fast memory. The top-end ARC GPU models are expected to come with up to 16GB of GDDR6 memory, which is more than enough even for the most visually demanding titles.
With such a generous helping of VRAM, you won't have to worry about textures popping in late or games stuttering due to insufficient memory at higher settings. This means you can crank up texture quality and resolution scales without any compromises.
6. Hardware-Accelerated Encoding and Streaming
The ARC provides hardware acceleration for streaming and encoding workflows. This allows it to offload these tasks from your CPU for faster and higher-quality streams. Whether you want to broadcast your gameplay sessions on Twitch and YouTube or share clips and screenshots online, the ARC GPU's dedicated encoders ensure a lag-free and stutter-free experience.
You can also stream to friends at higher quality with less performance impact compared to only using your CPU. This makes sharing and showing off your gaming moments more convenient.
7. Versatile Connectivity with Thunderbolt
The ARC supports Thunderbolt connectivity, which offers high-speed data transfer speeds. This is great news for laptop and mini-PC gamers. With Thunderbolt, you can purchase an external graphics dock and plug the ARC GPU into it for significantly boosted gaming performance compared to integrated graphics. Thunderbolt also allows seamless connection to external drives, docks, displays, and other peripherals for an uncompromised desktop-like experience on the go. Its versatile connectivity expands how and where you can game.
8. Low Power Consumption for Cool and Quiet Gaming
While raw power is important, efficiency also matters, especially in small-form-factor PCs and laptops where heat dissipation can be an issue.
The ARC processor is built on Intel's power-efficient Xe architecture and 7nm process node.
This allows it to offer great performance at lower power draws and thermal outputs compared to competing GPUs.
So whether you're gaming for hours or on the go without an AC adapter, the cool and quiet ARC processor will keep your system running smoothly without overheating.
9. Competitive Pricing Against the Competition
As Intel's first discrete consumer GPU in decades, the company aims to make ARC competitive through aggressive pricing. Initial ARC GPUs are expected to undercut similarly performing NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards by at least $50–100. More affordable pricing means you don't have to spend a fortune to experience improved frame rates and visuals.
This could make building a capable mid-range gaming PC or upgrading it more affordable than ever before. Intel also promises regular driver updates to further optimise performance over time.
10. Future-Proof Your Gaming Rig
With support for the latest display, memory, and API standards, the ARC GPU is designed to remain relevant for years with future games. As developers continue optimising engines for technologies like ray tracing and utilising more VRAM, the ARC will be ready. Regular driver updates from Intel will also help it keep getting better.
So whether you upgrade other parts or build a new system later, the ARC can continue serving your gaming needs. It's an investment that will retain value and keep your favourite games playable.
Conclusion
From higher frame rates to top-notch images, the ARC GPU is the best choice for upgrading your PC gaming. Intel, as an entry into the discrete GPU market, is a performance-priced competitor. Together with support for such things as ray tracing technology, DisplayPort 2.0, and Thunderbolt connections, ARC provides gaming PC and laptop players with more choices.