Intel Arc A310 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU vs Intel Arc A580

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU or 3080 Mobile (for laptops, GN20-E7) is the fastest graphics card for notebooks in early 2021. It is based on the GA104-775-A1 Ampere chip and offers 8 or 16 GB GDDR6 graphics memory with a 256 Bit memory bus. It supports PCIe 4.0 and will be available in different variants from 80 - 150 Watt (TGP) (80, 90, 115, 125, 135, 145 and 150+ Watt). As package the notebook graphic card uses GB5-256 and the chip size is 40x40mm. The GPU supports eDP 1.4b to connect the internal monitor.

There is no more Max-Q variant (formerly used for the low power variants) but every OEM can choose to implement Max-Q technologies (Dynamic Boost, Whispermode).

The performance depends on the TGP setting and cooling of the laptop. At the same TGP level the RTX3080 should be faster than the old top model, the RTX 2080 Super Mobile and similar to the desktop RTX 3070. This means, the GPU should be well suited for 4k gaming or QHD with high frame rates. The similar named RTX 3080 desktop card is significantly faster.

The GA104 chip offers 6,144 FP32 ALUs of which half can also execute INT32 instructions (i.e. 3,072 INT32 ALUs). With Turing all shaders could still execute FP32 or INT32 instructions. The raytracing and tensor cores on the chip were also improved according to Nvidia. The Ampere chips also include an improved 5th generation video encoder (NVENC for H.264 and H.265) and a 7th generation decoder (for various formats now including AV1).

The GA104 chip is manufactured by Samsung in 8nm (8N), which is not quite able to keep up with the 7nm node at TSMC (e.g. used by AMD and also for the professional GA100 Ampere chip).

The Intel Arc A580 is an affordable mid-range desktop GPU and is manufactured using the 6 nm process at TSMC. The Intel Arc A580 is also equipped with the DG2-512 graphics chip for the graphics processor, although this only has 3,072 shader units. The VRAM is based on 8 GB GDDR6 with a 256-bit interface (16 Gbps, 512 GB/s). This makes the Intel Arc A580 the third fastest graphics card model from Intel.

Features

Based on the Alchemist architecture, the Intel Arc A580 can rely on the same features as an Intel Arc A750 or an Intel Arc A770. Intel is extremely well positioned in the price range up to 200 euros with the Arc A580. AMD and Nvidia hardly have any suitable models in their portfolios in this price range. Features such as ray tracing are also supported and upscaling technologies such as XeSS can compete with DLSS and FSR. The latter can also be used on Intel graphics cards due to the open standard. With support for AV1, the graphics card is also interesting for content creators. Only the significantly more expensive Ada Lovelace models from Nvidia and the RDNA3 GPUs from AMD are currently capable of hardware-side encoding and decoding with the new codec.

Performance

The performance of the Intel Arc A580 is comparable to an AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT. The Intel Arc A580 can also keep up relatively well with an Intel Arc A750 in the internal duel. Newer games are somewhat more suited to the Intel Arc graphics cards. Nevertheless, many games can now be played well on Intel graphics cards and can be adapted well thanks to the constant driver improvements.

Power consumption

The power consumption of the Intel Arc A580 is estimated by the manufacturer at 175 watts (TGP). In terms of efficiency, however, the Intel Arc A580 is not convincing. Intel is at a disadvantage here compared to AMD and Nvidia. Whether this will change with the successor aka "Battlemage" remains to be seen.