Intel Arc A310 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile vs Intel Arc A350M

Intel Arc A310

The Intel Arc A310 is a dedicated entry-level graphics card from Intel for desktops. It is based on the ACM-G11 chip and offers 6 of the 8 Xe cores (96 ALUs), 6 of the 8 ray tracing units, 1.152 MB L1 cache and 4MB L2 cache. The memory interface is 64 bits wide and supports 4GB GDDR6 graphics memory with 15.5 Gbps. The TGP is between 40 and 75 watts depending on the model.

The A310 is similar to the mobile Arc A350Mexcept for the higher clock rates of the cores and memory.

The ACM-G11 chip is manufactured at TSMC in 6nm (N6 process) and offers 7.2 billion transistors and is 157 mm2 in size. It integrates two media engines for VP9, AVC, HEVC, AV1 8k60 12-bit HDR decoding and 8k 10-bit HDR encoding. The integrated 4 display pipes support 4x 4k120 HDR, HDMI 2.0B, DP 2.0 10G and Adaptive Sync.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile

The mobile Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 is a graphics card for high end laptops. It is based on the Pascal architecture and manufactured in 16 nm FinFET at TSMC. The GPU is using the smaller GP106 chip. Compared to the desktop version of the GTX 1060, the laptop version offers the same amount of shaders but slightly lower clock rates. The TDP is slightly less than the old GTX 970M (predecessor).

For thin and light laptops Nvidia offer a Max-Q called version of the GTX 1060 with lower TDP and also significantly lower performance. Sadly this variant im sold with the same GTX 1060 name, making it hard to judge the performance.

The performance of the mobile GTX 1060 is a few percent below a reference GTX 1060 desktop card. In our benchmark so far (no max-Q version) the mobile GTX 1060 was somewhere between -1 and -16% slower than a desktop variant. A comprehensive review of the dekstop GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition with 6 GB GDDR5 can be found here. Therefore, the card is most suited for Full HD or WQHD gaming in high to maximum details (see benchmarks below).

The GP106 chip is produced in 16nm FinFET at TSMC and offers a range of new features, like DisplayPort 1.4 (ready), HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) and improved H.265 video de- and encoding (PlayReady 3.0). A list of improvements and features can be found in our article on the Pascal architecture.

The power consumption is specified with a TGP of 80 Watt and therefore slightly below the old GTX 970M. Since summer 2017 a low power variant (Max-Q) is available for thin and light laptops with reduced performance and a lower TGP of 60 - 70 Watt.

Intel Arc A350M

The Intel Arc A350M is a dedicated mobile entry level graphics card for laptops based on Xe HPG microarchitecture. It uses the ACM-G11 chip and offers 6 of the 8 Xe-cores (95 ALUs), 6 of the 8 ray tracing units and a 64-bit memory bus for 4 GB GDDR6 graphics memory. The chip integrates 7.2 billion transistors and the die measures 157 mm2.

The chip also integrates two media engines for VP9, AVC, HEVC, and AV1 8k en- and decoding. The 4 display pipes support up to 4x 4k120 HDR via DMI 2.0B or DisplayPort 2.0 10G. 

The A350M is produced in 6nm at TSMC (N6 process) and supports dynamic power share (using Deep Link) with 12th gen Intel CPUs (Alder Lake).