Intel Arc A550M vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (Desktop) vs Intel Arc A730M

Intel Arc A550M

The Intel Arc A550M (device ID 5692) is a dedicated mobile lower- mid-range graphics card for laptops based on Xe HPG microarchitecture. It uses the ACM-G10 chip and offers 16 of the 32 Xe-cores (256 ALUs), 16 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 900 MHz (high frequency) or in short bursts 2050 MHz (short bursts / Turbo). The chip integrates 21.7 billion transistors, uses a BGA2660 package and the die measures 406 mm2.

The performance of the Arc A550M should be between the Radeon RX 6500M and 6600M and therefore well suited even for demanding games in medium to high detail settings and 1080p. The slower Arc A370M is based on the smaller ACM-G11 chip and should be significantly slower.

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 A550M 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 (Desktop)

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 is a graphics card for desktops and high end laptops (upcoming, see our article for the mobile GTX 1060 for benchmarks and specs). It is based on the Pascal architecture and manufactured in 16 nm FinFET at TSMC. The GPU is be based on the smaller GP106 chip. In laptops it has the codename N17E-G1 and will be the successor to the old GTX 970M (predecessor). The laptop version should be launched in August 2016. The desktop version is already out.

The performance of the 6 GB version is on par with an older GeForce GTX 980 (desktop and laptop). Therefore, 1080p gaming at highest detail is currently the best use case for the card. A comprehensive review of the desktop GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition with 6 GB GDDR5 can be found here. Beware, the upcoming 3 GB desktop variant should feature 128 shader less but clocked slightly higher. Still the performance should be definately slower than the 6 GB version.

Intel Arc A730M

The Intel Arc A730M (device ID 5691) is a dedicated mobile lower- mid-range graphics card for laptops based on Xe HPG microarchitecture. It uses the ACM-G10 chip and offers 24 of the 32 Xe-cores (384 ALUs), 24 ray tracing units and a 192-bit memory bus for 12 GB GDDR6 graphics memory. The cores can clock from 300 MHz (low frequency mode) to 1100 MHz (high frequency) or in short bursts 2050 MHz (Turbo). The chip integrates 21.7 billion transistors, uses a BGA2660 package (soldered), and the die measures 406 mm2.

The performance of the Arc A730M is not yet known. The power consumption is similar to a RTX 3060 and therefore we see the performance slightly below a RTX 3060 mobile.

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 A730M is produced in 6nm at TSMC (N6 process) and supports dynamic power share (using Deep Link) with 12th gen Intel CPUs (Alder Lake).