Intel Arc A530M vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q vs Intel Arc A370M

Intel Arc A530M

The Intel Arc A530M (device ID 5697) is a dedicated mobile lower- mid-range graphics card for laptops based on Xe HPG microarchitecture. It uses the ACM-G12 chip and offers 12 of the 16 Xe-cores (192 ALUs), 12 ray tracing units and a 128-bit memory bus for 8 GB GDDR6 graphics memory. The cores can clock from 300 MHz (low frequency mode) to 1300 MHz (high frequency) or in short bursts 2050+ MHz (short bursts / Turbo).

The performance of the Arc A530M should be slightly below the older Arc A550M (more cores but less clock speed).

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 A530M is produced in 6nm at TSMC (N6 process) and supports dynamic power share (using Deep Link) with 12th gen Intel CPUs (Alder Lake).

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with the Max-Q design is a mobile high-end GPU from the Pascal series. It is designed for thin and light laptops and about 10-15% slower than a regular GTX 1060 for laptops based on the cooling capabilities. The base frequency (1063-1265 MHz) is also much lower than on the regular GTX 1060 (1506 MHz, at least -16%) and the Boost (1341-1480 MHz) is also much lower compared to 1708 MHz (at least -13%) for the regular GTX 1060. The memory clock, however, is identical.

The clock is not the only difference compared to the regular GTX 1060 though. The drivers for the Max-Q version were optimized for efficiency (and not performance; only for Max-Q models), there are optimized voltage converters for 1V operation, high-end cooling methods, and a 40 dB limit for the fan noise (with clock adjustments to ensure this at all times).

Features

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 of the Max-Q design is notably lower than the normal GTX 1060 for laptops and ranges between 60 and 70 Watt (TGP) according to Nvidia.

Intel Arc A370M

The Intel Arc A370M is a dedicated mobile entry level graphics card for laptops based on Xe HPG microarchitecture. It uses the ACM-G11 chip and offers all 8 Xe-cores (128 ALUs), 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 performance is in the entry level of dedicated graphics cards for laptops in 2022. AMD did publish some gaming benchmarks with medium settings in 5 games that showed that the Radeon RX 6500M is clearly faster. Intel only compared the A370M (with a faster CPU) to the slower Iris iGPU in the i7-1280P (see below). Thanks to the additional 2 cores and higher clock speeds, the entry level Arc A350M should be clearly left behind.

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 A370M is produced in 6nm at TSMC (N6 process) and supports dynamic power share (using Deep Link) with 12th gen Intel CPUs (Alder Lake).