PC World - USA (2021-06)

38 PCWorld JUNE 2022

REVIEWS TESTED: ARC A370M

off MSI’s Summit E16 Flip Evo) through the

wringer. I was given a little more than an hour

to test Intel’s entry-level GPU using

benchmarks of my choosing, in a similar

arrangement to our recent early performance

preview for 12th-gen Core i9 laptop

processors (fave.co/3wg1xIw).

Bottom line? Intel might just be getting

started in discrete graphics, but Arc’s results

are already impressive.

3DMARK TIME SPY

We start in 3DMark Time Spy, a classic

synthetic graphics benchmark PCWorld

frequently uses to judge the performance of

anything that comes across our test bench.

The Intel Arc A370M posted a strong

score of 4,405 in 3DMark Time Spy. This is

almost two and half times quicker than Intel

Iris Xe on its own, a significant uplift that

certainly puts the Arc A370M in a different

performance class.

Of course, it’s the entry-level discrete

GPUs that provide the real challenge, and

here the Arc A370M holds its own. It’s

roughly 15 percent quicker than Nvidia’s RTX

3050, as tested in HP’s Spectre x360 16, and

essentially tied with the Asus Vivobook Pro 15

OLED (fave.co/3lf4nra), which again

equipped an Nvidia RTX 3050.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Arc A370M falls

behind the more mid-tier discrete graphic

options found in laptops that explicitly target

gaming. The RTX 3050 Ti in the MSI GF76

Katana (fave.co/3yF9xVo) is just a bit less than

50 percent quicker, and the Acer Nitro 5 with

an RTX 3060 nearly doubles the Arc A370M’s

performance in this benchmark.

FINAL FANTASY XIV:

ENDWALKER BENCHMARK

The game tests begin with Final Fantasy XIV:

Endwalker. This is not a test PC World

normally runs but, given that the Arc A370M

is an entry-level discrete offering, I thought

testing an older, popular game with no

cutting-edge features could provide some

insight. After all, many people (myself

included) spend more time in games like this

than in Cyberpunk 2077 or Metro Exodus.

This test pegs the Intel Arc A370M’s

performance a bit less than 50 percent above

that of Intel’s Iris Xe graphics with 96 EUs. It’s

a much smaller gain than in 3DMark Time Spy,

but still large enough to substantially improve

the real-world experience. The Iris Xe just gets

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

MSI Summit E16 Flip EvoIntel A370M Reference

MSI Summit E14 Flip Intel Iris Xe Reference

HP Spectre x360 16Nvidia RTX 3050

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLEDNvidia RTX 3050

MSI GF76 Katana RTX 3050 Ti

Acer Nitro 5 Nvidia RTX 3060

4,405

4,396

3,772

8,201

5,998

3DMark Time Spy

Graphics performance

1,832