Intel Arc A770: feedback, known issues and workarounds

[SithLikeTraps]

With the video card prices getting back to the reasonable numbers I've finally decided to upgrade my old GTX 970 to something not so ancient and I decided to go for the Arc. The system is i5-11600k, Intel Arc A770 LE with the 4032 driver version, and 32 GB ram though that last part doesn't really matter for SWTOR. Playing at 1920x1080 with all settings on ultra except AA and the grass quality I get stable 200 fps (seems to be the cap) in my stronghold, the fleet is between 180 and 60 and the ops are around 80-100 I'd say. So it is quite playable but there are some issues.

First one is missing visual effects for lightsaber blades, pistol/rifle targeting lasers and probably other things which are simply not rendered if the AA level is above medium. Setting it to medium renders everything just fine.

Another one is the grass, going to a place with a lot of grass (Alderaan, Tython, Onderon is the worst) hammers down the FPS to 20-30 if the grass quality is set to 100. Setting it to 50 gives you 50-60 FPS, and 0 gives you around 100-120.

So this is my experience so far, feel free to share yours. Just let's not turn it into a discussion of "why Intel Arc when X, Y or Z is so much better". In my opinion, if you're looking for an upgrade purely for SWTOR then Intel Arc in its current driver state isn't the best choice, however, if you choose the Arc for the other reasons you can still play SWTOR just fine.

[JediQuaker]

2 hours ago, SithLikeTraps said:

So this is my experience so far, feel free to share yours. Just let's not turn it into a discussion of "why Intel Arc when X, Y or Z is so much better". In my opinion, if you're looking for an upgrade purely for SWTOR then Intel Arc in its current driver state isn't the best choice, however, if you choose the Arc for the other reasons you can still play SWTOR just fine.

I'd be curious to know what possible reason there would be for "choosing" Arc in any case. Other than some sort of bargain priced bundling, there should be no advantage to Ark. 

My suggestion would be to dump the Ark and get a 'real' graphics card, or just use the on-chip graphics in the 11600K. 

[ThanderSnB]

1 hour ago, JediQuaker said:

I'd be curious to know what possible reason there would be for "choosing" Arc in any case. Other than some sort of bargain priced bundling, there should be no advantage to Ark. 

My suggestion would be to dump the Ark and get a 'real' graphics card, or just use the on-chip graphics in the 11600K. 

I think Intel is meaning to compete directly with Nvidia and AMD eventually, but right now it's more of a novelty because "new technology" and all that. Arc will need better driver support and game developers knowing how to take advantage of it before it has a chance. It's not easy entering a market like this. It will take years of investment (time and money) if Intel really wants to compete. Only time will tell if they actually do. In the past, they have made short forays into the graphics space only to move on after a few years. I'm not convinced they are in this for the long haul, but we'll see.

4 hours ago, SithLikeTraps said:

With the video card prices getting back to the reasonable numbers I've finally decided to upgrade my old GTX 970 to something not so ancient and I decided to go for the Arc. The system is i5-11600k, Intel Arc A770 LE with the 4032 driver version, and 32 GB ram though that last part doesn't really matter for SWTOR. Playing at 1920x1080 with all settings on ultra except AA and the grass quality I get stable 200 fps (seems to be the cap) in my stronghold, the fleet is between 180 and 60 and the ops are around 80-100 I'd say. So it is quite playable but there are some issues.

First one is missing visual effects for lightsaber blades, pistol/rifle targeting lasers and probably other things which are simply not rendered if the AA level is above medium. Setting it to medium renders everything just fine.

Another one is the grass, going to a place with a lot of grass (Alderaan, Tython, Onderon is the worst) hammers down the FPS to 20-30 if the grass quality is set to 100. Setting it to 50 gives you 50-60 FPS, and 0 gives you around 100-120.

So this is my experience so far, feel free to share yours. Just let's not turn it into a discussion of "why Intel Arc when X, Y or Z is so much better". In my opinion, if you're looking for an upgrade purely for SWTOR then Intel Arc in its current driver state isn't the best choice, however, if you choose the Arc for the other reasons you can still play SWTOR just fine.

Thanks for the report. I'm not planning to get one of these, but I'm sure lots of people will be doing Google searches on how it works with the game. It will be very useful to these people. Maybe Bioware too, though I think they have their hands full at the moment. 😃 

Edited January 25, 2023 by ThanderSnB

[TrixxieTriss]

If you’re up to it & can be bothered, you  should probably download the 64bit PTS version to test it out. 

BioWare will be going ahead with a live version in the near future & they are asking players with different hardware configurations to test it out & report any problems.

I would think your Intel ARC GPU setup will be one of the most unique out there.  You may even be the first player who is using one of the ARC cards.

[SithLikeTraps]

14 hours ago, JediQuaker said:

I'd be curious to know what possible reason there would be for "choosing" Arc in any case. Other than some sort of bargain priced bundling, there should be no advantage to Ark. 

My suggestion would be to dump the Ark and get a 'real' graphics card, or just use the on-chip graphics in the 11600K. 

I can't speak for the others, but in my case I wanted a card with the ray tracing to see what the fuss is about. And according to the benchmarks I've seen (which I'm not going to quote, I'm not here to promote one brand or the other) Arc does quite well in that regard.

8 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

If you’re up to it & can be bothered, you  should probably download the 64bit PTS version to test it out. 

BioWare will be going ahead with a live version in the near future & they are asking players with different hardware configurations to test it out & report any problems.

I would think your Intel ARC GPU setup will be one of the most unique out there.  You may even be the first player who is using one of the ARC cards.

That could actually be an interesting experience, thanks for the idea.

EDIT: and I'm definitely not the only one, in all fairness those workarounds are not discovered by me, I just found them online in various places. I initially went with DXVK layer to translate DX9 calls to Vulkan and it worked mostly fine, but when I asked the support if it's safe to use DXVK they said that it might trigger the anti-cheat because it's technically game modding and they suggested that I could create a thread here on the forum with the workarounds I've found.

Edited January 26, 2023 by SithLikeTraps

[OwenBrooks]

using reshade ? symptom with reshade AA not on medium is lightsaber, skills effects and loots on monsters missing

In D3D9 tab, check the box "Disable replacement with INTZ format". 

Edited January 26, 2023 by OwenBrooks

[SithLikeTraps]

9 hours ago, OwenBrooks said:

using reshade ?

No, I do not use reshade, pure vanilla game. It could be the case that the Intel drivers are doing something similar to what reshade does to translate the DX9 calls and that "INTZ format" is a culprit, whatever it is.

[OwenBrooks]

2 hours ago, SithLikeTraps said:

No, I do not use reshade, pure vanilla game. It could be the case that the Intel drivers are doing something similar to what reshade does to translate the DX9 calls and that "INTZ format" is a culprit, whatever it is.

Not familiar with Arc drivers however see if the Intel driver can switch between the below types of AA for example and see if any difference ingame

• Multisample Anti-aliasing (MSAA)
• Temporal Anti-aliasing (TXAA)
• Morphological Anti-aliasing (MLAA)
• Supersample Anti-Aliasing (SSAA)
• Fast approximate Anti-aliasing (FXAA)

[KumbayaGOD]

On 1/25/2023 at 10:57 PM, SithLikeTraps said:

With the video card prices getting back to the reasonable numbers I've finally decided to upgrade my old GTX 970 to something not so ancient and I decided to go for the Arc. The system is i5-11600k, Intel Arc A770 LE with the 4032 driver version, and 32 GB ram though that last part doesn't really matter for SWTOR. Playing at 1920x1080 with all settings on ultra except AA and the grass quality I get stable 200 fps (seems to be the cap) in my stronghold, the fleet is between 180 and 60 and the ops are around 80-100 I'd say. So it is quite playable but there are some issues.

First one is missing visual effects for lightsaber blades, pistol/rifle targeting lasers and probably other things which are simply not rendered if the AA level is above medium. Setting it to medium renders everything just fine.

Another one is the grass, going to a place with a lot of grass (Alderaan, Tython, Onderon is the worst) hammers down the FPS to 20-30 if the grass quality is set to 100. Setting it to 50 gives you 50-60 FPS, and 0 gives you around 100-120.

So this is my experience so far, feel free to share yours. Just let's not turn it into a discussion of "why Intel Arc when X, Y or Z is so much better". In my opinion, if you're looking for an upgrade purely for SWTOR then Intel Arc in its current driver state isn't the best choice, however, if you choose the Arc for the other reasons you can still play SWTOR just fine.

first mistake you made are buying intel arc , because the problem with vga card is not the hardware but mostly of driver support which both nvidia and amd already matured , 

while nvidia and amd already optimized the driver for new and old games, intel are only doing it as they go

so you will face alot of issue from the card , trust me 

better of you sell it off and find new nvidia or amd vga card 

[SithLikeTraps]

1 hour ago, KumbayaGOD said:

first mistake you made are buying intel arc , because the problem with vga card is not the hardware but mostly of driver support which both nvidia and amd already matured , 

while nvidia and amd already optimized the driver for new and old games, intel are only doing it as they go

so you will face alot of issue from the card , trust me 

better of you sell it off and find new nvidia or amd vga card 

I was well aware that the drivers are not optimized for the old games, trust me. So far those "alot of issues" were only those that I mentioned in the initial post, the other games I've tried run just fine.

As I said at the first post, let's not turn this thread into discussion of "why arc" and "buy amd/nvidia/whatever instead". Thank you for your concern, but if I wanted nvidia or amd I'd bought those, wouldn't I?

[SithLikeTraps]

11 hours ago, OwenBrooks said:

Not familiar with Arc drivers however see if the Intel driver can switch between the below types of AA for example and see if any difference ingame

Thank you for the suggestion. The only choice the driver gives is whether to force CMAA (Conservative Morphological Anti-Aliasing) but applying that makes no difference.

[OwenBrooks]

On 1/27/2023 at 9:57 PM, SithLikeTraps said:

Thank you for the suggestion. The only choice the driver gives is whether to force CMAA (Conservative Morphological Anti-Aliasing) but applying that makes no difference.

What happens if you turn AA on in the driver for the game ( i presume intel can do this like NVidia and AMD ) and then turn AA off ingame to let the card do it directly

[Baconrind]

I also picked up an ARC 770 , but it's terrible in SWTOR , im running at 4k. I previously had a GTX970 and run smooth at High settings , i cant get a playable experience at Medium due to almost a stuttering effect.

Has anyone had any success with settings and or work arounds. Im on  4257 driver. 

Currently looks like it will have to go back and i will have to spend more cash to get something that works.

Thanks in advance.

 

[AliciaWolfe]

On 1/25/2023 at 1:43 PM, JediQuaker said:

I'd be curious to know what possible reason there would be for "choosing" Arc in any case. Other than some sort of bargain priced bundling, there should be no advantage to Ark. 

My suggestion would be to dump the Ark and get a 'real' graphics card, or just use the on-chip graphics in the 11600K. 

Sound like a NVIDIA fanboy here!

The reason people choose ark is simple, they want to help Intel gain better performance on their new video cards and future cards as well now that Intel is in the video card market. They also set the price low so they can gain market share, since NVIDIA has a monopoly of it. AMD might be going out of business due to the lack of deep learning or AI assisted technology in their latest cards and the price fixing they teamed up with NVIDIA on, that got both of them slammed by the FTC, along with AMD don't really have a good budget compared to Intel and NVIDIA.

 

Yes their video cards may not be the best of the best, but wait for two more generations of their cards, and you have something that could be a strong competitor towards nvidia, or possibly one-up NVIDIA to be the leading cooperation for video cards.

[JediQuaker]

So, we have an Intel fanboy whining about nVidia fanboys. Classic! 😂

[AliciaWolfe]

10 hours ago, JediQuaker said:

So, we have an Intel fanboy whining about nVidia fanboys. Classic! 😂

Who's the fanboy? I mean most people should be happy that we have more competition in the graphics card market. Unless you enjoy those price fixing folks in AMD & Nvidia.

Edited March 29, 2023 by AliciaWolfe

[SithLikeTraps]

On 3/29/2023 at 10:39 AM, Baconrind said:

I also picked up an ARC 770 , but it's terrible in SWTOR , im running at 4k. I previously had a GTX970 and run smooth at High settings , i cant get a playable experience at Medium due to almost a stuttering effect.

Has anyone had any success with settings and or work arounds. Im on  4257 driver. 

Currently looks like it will have to go back and i will have to spend more cash to get something that works.

Thanks in advance.

 

I'm still playing on 4146, I saw that they released the new driver but I didn't bother to download it yet. In my case I'm playing at 1080p and it runs smoother than on my old 970, and with the higher quality too. I play with all settings maxed out except the AA set to medium due to the lightsaber blades bug and the grass set to 50, I get over 100 fps on the fleet but it does drop when there are lots of people around due to the nameplates.

Also, do you have ReBAR enabled in BIOS? I've read that not having it hampers the Arc performance.

[the_lohmanns]

@SithLikeTraps Just curious how it is doing with newer drivers. 

[SithLikeTraps]

4 hours ago, the_lohmanns said:

Just curious how it is doing with newer drivers. 

There were issues like that lightsaber blades, when they fixed it they introduced another issue of texture tearing, finally in the driver version 4369 they resolved it all and that's the one I'm using now. I know there is a newer version already but I haven't tried that one.

Anyhow, running on 1920x1080, all ultra, grass at 100%, when running solo I constantly get 60 fps (that's the monitor cap). It does fall down to ~20 fps sometimes on 16-man operations and if you have two full ops groups hunting the Ancient Threat boss it becomes a slideshow but that's more of a limitation of the game engine I believe. I haven't noticed any visual glitches with the driver that I have and it runs stable (as stable as swtor can be these days...), so I'm happy with it.

[the_lohmanns]

Thanks for the update.