Intel Arc GPUs could beat Nvidia RTX ray tracing performance

pcgamesn.com:

Not one to be deterred by a troublesome launch, Intel is now claiming that its Arc GPUs will be able to match or exceed the performance of Nvidia GeForce RTX cards. Team blue continues to drum up excitement for its Intel Arc A series graphics cards, despite the fact we’re yet to see more than one model materialise let alone be widely available.

These bold assertions about Intel Arc GPUs come from Intel’s Ryan Shrout and Tom Petersen, who say the graphics cards are “definitely competitive or better than Nvidia with ray tracing hardware,” in an interview with PC Gamer.

However, this doesn’t mean we should expect team blue’s offerings to match the performance of the best graphics card in the RTX 3000 series. Shrout and Petersen indicate as much as they highlight the capabilities of Arc ‘RTUs’ (ray tracing units), stating that in “comparisons with an [RTX] 3060 versus A750 or A770, we should fare very, very well.”

Should these claims hold water, this would mark an impressive showing for Intel Arc graphics, as it would mean the company has surpassed both AMD and Nvidia in crafting their first generation ray tracing architectures.

Intel’s victory of sorts may be short-lived, as both AMD RDNA 3 and Nvidia RTX 4000 series graphics cards should enter the gaming PC space imminently. Team blue could find itself quickly back in the race with its Arc Battlemage pixel pushers, but this remains to be seen.