Review: Acer Predator BiFrost Intel Arc A770 OC

With the arrival of the new Intel drivers, we had the project to do a complete test series in order to judge the impact of these drivers on the performance. Well, the arrival of a copy of the Predator BiFrost Intel Arc A770 OC graphics card from Acer is just in time. So we’re going to update our tests in 1080p and 1440p with our entry and mid-range cards. This will give us the opportunity to judge the potential of this Predator BiFrost Intel Arc A770 OC card and the work done by Intel on these drivers.

As a reminder, Intel launched its first entry-level model in June, the ARC A380, and in early October, the A770 and A750 models. This is the first partner card that we have in our hands.

Thanks to Acer for providing us with a copy of this Predator BiFrost Intel Arc A770 OC.

[nextpage title=”Predator Bifrost Intel Arc A770 OC:”]

Architecture:

This Acer Predator BiFrost Intel Arc A770 OC benefits from the ARC Alchemist architecture. It is the first generation of GPU launched by Intel. The goal of Intel is to continue to offer other cards in the future, but it is currently difficult to know at what rate. There is still talk of new cards for this year.

The Predator BiFrost Intel Arc A770 OC board features an ACM-G10 graphics chip with a 6nm manufacturing process by TSMC. The chip hosts 32 Xe Cores, 32 Ray Tracing units and 512 XMX Engines. It has 16 GB of 256-bit GDDR6, which translates into a bandwidth of 560 GB/s. The average TDP is announced at 250 watts, which is 25 watts more than the reference version offered by Intel.

The card is available on the Acer website for $399 in the US or 469 euros in Europe.

The bundle:

As far as the bundle is concerned, apart from the graphics card, we find a USB key from ADATA which contains the drivers and the Predator BiFroste overclocking software. Apart from that, nothing else to report except a quick installation guide.

Cooling:

When the first photos of this Predator BiFrost Intel Arc A770 OC leaked on the web, the reactions were very positive since we are on a rather unusual cooling system, which gives a lot of charm to this card. Acer also highlights the use of three latest generation technologies for the cooling of the card. In terms of dimensions, we are talking about 267 x 117 mm with a total weight of 800 grams. Its format allows it to occupy only 2 slots on your motherboard.

Let’s now focus on the cooling system which uses a 70mm blower fan in the center and is called “Predator AeroBlade 3D”. This fan is equipped with 89 ultra-thin curved steel blades. According to Acer, it increases heat dissipation by 55% and the choice of steel blades improves air intake and dynamic pressure. This is a patented cooling system developed initially for Predator desktop chassis. This is the fifth generation.

The 92 mm axial fan is made of fiberglass, metal powder and plastic. It is also a patented model that sees here with this new generation, the air flow rate increase by 16% and the static pressure by 55%.

The rear is equipped with a double backplate whose role is to stiffen the PCB, but also to optimize the cooling. As you can see, the PCB is shorter than the actual size of the graphics card. So it is the radiator that overflows and the cutout in the backplate allows the hot air to be evacuated towards the interior of your case.

The radiator:

The heart of the cooling system is designed around a vapor chamber which is actually a liquid cooling loop. This liquid with high energy conductivity diffuses in the loop at low temperature to transport the calories synonymous with heat from the main components of the board. At a certain temperature, the liquid evaporates to reach a cooling zone where it condenses until it returns to its initial temperature and returns to the closed circuit to cool the components again.

Acer has chosen thermal pads that are quite strange compared to what we are used to finding on the graphics cards we test. The ones on the Predator BiFrost Intel Arc A770 OC look like chewing gum. We will see during our tests the performance obtained. As far as disassembly is concerned, it is much simpler than that of the reference versions from Intel.

The RGB is present:

It would be a shame not to have RGB backlighting when you consider that this board is called “BiFrost”. Acer has therefore equipped its FrostBlade fans with 4 ARGB LEDs to offer an illuminated choice for customization fans.

All modifications can be made via the Predator BiFrost software. We will also notice a third RGB area on the top edge with the Predator logo and inscription.

Connections:

To power the card, there are two 8-pin connectors. These are traditional connectors found on most power supplies. The card has three DisplayPort video outputs and an HDMI 2.1 port.

The bracket is perforated to let the heat escape under the pressure of the two fans. Now, that we have done the tour of the owner, let’s go to the bowels of the card.

[nextpage title=”Specifications and PCB:”]

Technical specifications:

As its name suggests, this Predator BiFrost Intel Arc A770 OCversion benefits from factory overclocking. The base frequency will be higher than the one proposed by Intel on its reference board. The base frequency is 2200 MHz and can reach 2400 MHz via the Predator BiFrost software, which we’ll come back to when we test the card.

The 16 GB of G-DDR6 memory run at 2187 MHz (560 GB/s) on a 256 bit bus. As we said, it is via Acer’s software that you can choose between the three available modes.

A little passage through GPU-Z to check that the information read is correct. No problem, the announced frequencies correspond to what is announced. While we had problems with GPU-Z when we tested the Intel versions, the current version perfectly supports our Predator BiFrost.

Let’s take a look at the PCB:

Since disassembly is much simpler than with Intel’s reference boards, we wanted to know what the PCB looked like. First of all, it is different from that of the Intel A770 with the presence of the two 8-pin power connectors. There is also a larger power supply stage which seems to be an 8+2 phase (GPU + memory) against a 6+2 for the A770.

We did not want to clean the PCB in order to not compromise the reassembly of the board. So we were not able to identify the controllers present on the PCB.

[nextpage title=”The Predator BiFrost software: “]

Acer puts forward its in-house software, the “Predator BiFrost” which has an OC profile to boost the performance of your graphics card. The software seems to be very well designed and in fact, there are three profiles available within the software. There is of course the default one, the Turbo profile (OC) but also a silent profile. Finally, of course, you will also have the possibility to design your own profile!

It is also via this software that you can have an eye on the data of your graphics card such as temperature, frequencies, fan speed, etc. The RGB customization is also present as well as an “Overlay” mode that can be present on your screen during your gaming sessions in order to follow live the graphic parameters that you have selected.

Now it’s time to test the new Intel drivers that were recently released.

[nextpage title=”Intel Xe Super Sampling:”]

Intel also launches in parallel with its new graphics cards, the Xe Super Sampling technology more commonly called XeSS. This is a new graphics technology proposed by Intel that uses AI-optimized scaling to improve performance while maintaining faithful image quality. XeSS renders each image at a lower resolution to first improve performance (FPS) and then uses AI scaling to generate images at the desired resolution.

So, as you can see, XeSS, like FSR, can be used with any graphics card, whether it is an AMD, NVIDIA or Intel model. Only the DLSS technology remains the property of NVIDIA and is only compatible with the Chameleon cards. The advantage of DLSS over FSR and XeSS is the amount of games that support it. In the coming months we should also see the number of games that are compatible with FSR and XeSS technologies grow.

Hitman 3: one of the first games to support XeSS

Hitman 3 is for example one of the first games to support XeSS. We have received access to download the beta version which gives us access to the new settings. This is a game that we will now add to our graphics tests for the Ray Tracing part. We will use it here as an example to illustrate the XeSS, but you will find all the results on page 8. Here are the parameters we used during our tests.

Like DLSS and FSR, there are several modes for XeSS. If we refer to the Hitman 3 game, we can discover 4 different modes: Performance, Balanced, Quality and Ultra Quality. These will be found in all future games that support XeSS.

These different modes have an impact on the number of FPS. As you can imagine, the Performance mode will increase the number of FPS, but more at the expense of graphic quality, unlike the Ultra Quality mode. To see for yourself, we tested our Intel ARC A750 under Hitman 3 with these 4 modes and here are our readings.

As you can see, the different XeSS modes allow you to gain from 27 to 74% depending on the one you have selected. We will come back later with a file containing screenshots to judge the visual quality.

[nextpage title=”The test configuration: “]

Lately, we have once again updated all our graphics using the latest drivers from NVIDIA, AMD and of course Intel. We also took the opportunity to slightly modify our test configuration. So here we go again for a new series of tests and therefore of graphics on this slightly modified configuration:

• Motherboard: ROG Maximus Z690 APEX
• Processor: Intel Alder Lake i9-12900K
• Memory: 32 GB Corsair Vengeance 5200 CL38 DDR5
• Graphics Card : Acer Predator BiFrost Intel Arc A770 OC
• Cooling system : ROG Ryujin II 360
• SSD : Western Digital Black SN750 2 TB + EKWB radiator
• Power supply : Corsair AX1600i + 12VHPWR 600W adapter
• Operating system: Windows 11 64 bits

For this test, we used a high-end configuration using an i9-12900K processor and DDR5. The use of a 144 Hz 4K display is also a prerequisite. For our tests we use a copy of the ROG PG27UQ.

Our test protocol:

All cards are tested at stock frequencies and without any optimization. For the various benchmarks, whether synthetic or gaming, we will opt for 1080p, 1440p and 2160p resolutions depending on the performance of the card. Here, with this mid-range model, we will only use 1080p and 1440p definitions.

As you can see, we have switched to Windows 11 and we have enabled the “ReSize BAR” in the BIOS, which is visible in GPU-Z. Now that you know everything about our test configuration, it’s time to start!

[nextpage title=”Synthetic benchmarks: “]

Our first series of tests will be dedicated to synthetic benchmarks. These are often used for overclocking competitions , but are also very interesting to compare different GPUs. So we will focus on the 3DMark benchmarks.

We will test the following benchmarks:

• Fire Strike (1080p)
• Fire Strike Ultra (2160p)
• Time Spy (1440p)
• Time Spy Extreme (2160p)
• DirectX Raytracing
• Intel XeSS
• Mesh Shader

3DMark Fire Strike and Fire Strike Ultra :

Let’s start with 3DMark Fire Strike, which is one of the most used benchmarks today. It consists of two graphics tests, a CPU test and a fourth test that combines GPU and CPU. Don’t forget to deactivate the demo which doesn’t bring anything in the final score and prolongs the benchmark duration (unnecessarily). The version used for these tests is of course the latest one.

Thefirst benchmark we have done with this Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC model is a good one, as it is well placed against competing cards.

Same observation under Fire Strike Ultra with our Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC which is placed before the RTX 3060 TiFE.

3DMark Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme:

The second test is 3DMark Time Spy. Although this one is done in 1440p, it has the particularity of using DirectX 12. It consists of two graphical tests and a CPU test. As for Fire Strike, don’t forget to disable the demo. These two first benchmarks are proposed by UL Benchmark.

The performances obtained in Time Spy are often representative of what we will have in the games. Here, we can see that our Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC allows itself to take the lead over the RTX 3070 FE!

Under 3DMark Time Spy Extreme, our Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC maintains its lead over the RTX 3070 FE. Let’s hope it’s the same in gaming.

3DMark DirectX Raytracing:

UL Benchmarks has added a new test to its series of benchmarks for measuring Ray Tracing performance. The idea will be to use the 3DMark DirectX Raytracing test to compare the performance of Ray Tracing hardware dedicated to AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards but now also to Intel!

The 3DMark DirectX Raytracing test is designed to make Ray Tracing the limiting factor. Instead of relying on traditional rendering, the entire scene is traced and drawn in one pass. The test result will depend entirely on the performance of the Ray Tracing. It will be easy to measure and compare the performance of the different cards between them.

This benchmark has always been dominated by NVIDIA cards and we continue to be surprised with an excellent position in this graph.

3DMark Intel XeSS

UL Benchmarks in collaboration with Intel will add this new benchmark to the 3DMark suite. We had early access to this new test for our testing. This Intel XeSS test is designed to evaluate and compare the performance and image quality of XeSS (Xe Super Sampling). There are four XeSS modes to choose from: Ultra Quality, Quality, Balanced and Performance. The 3DMark inspection tool helps you compare image quality with a side-by-side view of XeSS rendering and native resolution rendering. You need a graphics card that supports Intel XeSS to run this test.

So we’ll have two scores, a FPS number with XeSS disabled and then on the right with XeSS enabled. The mode chosen is “Ultra Quality” which is actually the default mode for the benchmark.

In this new benchmark, all graphics cards without exception benefit from XeSS, but it is Intel that has the best gain. ARC models see a gain of 50% while NVIDIA and AMD models see a gain of about 35%.

3DMark Mesh Shader:

Here is the new test we added to the synthetic benchmaks: Mesh Shader. We added it because it is managed by the RDNA 2 architecture of AMD and therefore our RX 6000. It allows us to analyze the performance level of GPUs concerning this feature. As a reminder, it allows to exploit more complex calculations at the geometry level, in a more flexible way, for each meshlet . The displayed result is the one with the Mesh Shaders active.

Well, as we conclude this first series of synthetic tests, we are still under the spell of the performance of this Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC.

[nextpage title=”Gaming performance 1080p and 1440p: “]

We decided to select six games because they seem to be representative enough. We have opted for DirectX12 and Vulkan with the following games:

• The Division 2 (DirectX 12)
• Borderlands 3 (DirectX 12)
• Red Dead Redemption II (Vulkan)
• Far Cry 6 (DirectX 12)
• Watch Dogs: Legion (DirectX 12)
• Cyberpunk 2077 (DirectX12)

We have chosen to use the benchmarks integrated in these different games.
Why do we do this? Simply to allow you to compare your results with ours if you also have a copy of one of these games. It’s a thought that seemed relevant to us and that will allow you to compare your results with ours.

As we mentioned on page 4 of this article, we have activated the Resizable Bar in the BIOS, which is now supported by all (recent) GPUs. Finally, we have chosen only 1080p and 1440p resolutions, which is what you should expect from these cards.

The Division 2:

The Division 2 game will be tested under DirectX 12. As far as graphics settings are concerned, they will be set to ” ultra ” mode with vertical synchronization disabled.

The first game and the trend noted for the synthetic benchmarks is not confirmed since our Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC is positioned just above the RTX 3060. Note that this is one of the least demanding games in our panel.

Good surprise in 1440p, where we can see a gain against the Intel A770 version. The gain is therefore more interesting in this definition and we tend to believe that it will be the same for the rest.

Borderlands 3:

For the second game, we switch to Borderlands 3. The graphic options are set to ” Brutal “. It is important to know that Borderlands 3 is quite greedy and that this choice of settings has a strong impact on the FPS. It is a game that is often praised in the announcements of new graphics cards and precisely in this Brutal mode.

The performance here is better and the gap with the RTX 3060 EX and the RX 6600 is widening. Our Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC matches the RTX 3060 Ti in 1080p.
In 1440p, it’s top three for our sample of the day.

Red Dead Redemption 2:

Third game and not the least, Red Dead Redemption II on PC. The advantage of this opus is to offer the possibility to test the integrated benchmark under Vulkan. We opt for the graphics options in ” ultra “.

Third game and not the least, RDR2 offers the possibility to test the integrated benchmark under Vulkan. The increase in power is confirmed once again. In 1440p, the observation is the same as for 1080p definition.

Far Cry 6:

The latest game we are adding to this section is Far Cry 6, since it supports DXR as well as SFR offered by AMD. We will also find it on the next page. For our benchmarks, we opted for an ” ultra” graphic quality.

Even if our dedicated article on this game highlighted an advantage for the RX 6000 cards, we expected better from our two samples of the day. We still find this observation that gives our Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC better performance in 1440p than against their competitors in 1080p.

Watch Dogs Legion:

Last but not least, Watch Dogs Legion which will also be used for our tests with Ray Tracing. For our benchmarks, we have opted for a graphic quality in ” very high”.

In the Watch Dogs Legion benchmark, the A770 passes the symbolic 100 FPS mark, beating the RX 6000. In 1440p it is now becoming obvious, our ARCs are much more comfortable there.

Cyberpunk 2077:

This is a game that we have been wanting to add for a while and now it is done since it now has an integrated benchmark. We will also use this game for our tests with Ray Tracing. For our benchmarks, we have opted for a “high” graphic quality.

New and last benchmark of this gaming panel. It’s going to plummet the performance of our Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC a bit, which is at the bottom of the pack here. In 1440p, things get a little better.

Gaming average:

For the gaming average, it is the RTX 3060 that acts as the reference card in 1080p while it is the RTX 3070 in the 1440p definition. The other cards score either higher or lower depending on their performance against this model.

In the end, we are on two different views. In 1080p, our Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC does well and takes a more marked advantage over the RTX 3060. But it’s finally in 1440p that the differences are more important with a Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC that shows itself very interesting! The gains of the new drivers offer us 2.7% in 1080p and 4.5% in 1440p.

[nextpage title=”Ray tracing and DLSS/FSR performances:”]

Let’s now take a look at the six games we have selected that support Ray Tracing as well as DLSS and for some of them AMD’s FSR as well as Intel’s new XeSS technology which is supported by Shadow Tomb Raider and Hitman 3. As we have already reminded you, if the DLSS remains the property of NVIDIA, the FSR and the XeSS can be used with all cards from AMD, Intel and even NVIDIA.

The six DirectX 12 games that we will test with Ray Tracing or DirectX Ray Tracing and DLSS, FSR or XeSS are :

• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DLSS – XeSS)
  
• Watch Dogs: Legion (DLSS)
  
• Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition (DLSS)
  
• Far Cry 6 (DLSS – FSR)
• Cyberpunk 2077 (DLSS – FSR)
• Hitman 3 (DLSS – XeSS)

Of course, we had to make a choice and as we started with heavy Ray Tracing, we settled for 1080p definition. So yes, some games will also go to 1440p, but for the most part, the number of FPS does not reach 60 FPS. Remember that Intel ARCs do not support DLSS. Our assumption is that there should be some balance between image quality and technologies like DLSS, FSR and now XeSS.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider:

First that we add to this comparison and that supports Ray Tracing and DLSS 1.0. Three levels of Ray Tracing are offered in the game (medium – high – ultra) and only one level of DLSS. For our benchmarks, we chose Ultra graphics quality, ” ultra ” Ray Tracing and DLSS enabled. The good news is that this game is now XeSS compatible and we were able to use it in “Balanced” mode for our Intel and AMD GPUs.

Even with Ray Tracing enabled, our Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC does just fine as the average is over 78 FPS. Enabling XeSS offers a gain in FPS for a smoother rendering.

Watch Dogs Legion:

Second game, Watch Dogs Legion supports Ray Tracing and DLSS 2.0. It is one of the most demanding games of the moment. Three levels of Ray Tracing are offered in the game (medium – high – ultra) and four levels of DLSS (performance – quality – balanced – ultra performance). For our benchmarks, we opted for Ultra graphics quality, ” high ” Ray Tracing and ” balanced ” DLSS.

The Ray Tracing in Watch Dogs Legion makes all the cards suffer and therefore automatically our sample of the day. We are finally not far from 60 FPS. As this game only offers DLSS, it is impossible to achieve a gain in FPS like on the three NVIDIA cards.

Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition:

Third game and supports DLSS 2.0. Three levels of Ray Tracing are offered in the game and four levels of DLSS (performance – quality – balanced – ultra performance). For our benchmarks, we opted for Ultra graphics quality, ” high ” Ray Tracing and ” quality ” DLSS.

We continue with the greedy games but our Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC does almost as well as the RTX 3070 FE. The gain here from the new drivers is clearly visible.

Far Cry 6:

The latest game we add to this section as it supports DXR as well as SFR offered by AMD. For our benchmarks, we opted for Ultra graphics quality, we enabled both DRX options as well as FSR in ” quality ” mode for the three definitions: 1080p, 1440p and 2160p.

We had already noticed a gain in rasterization under Far Cry 6 and this is confirmed when Ray Tracing is activated. It is once again an excellent score.

Cyberpunk 2077:

New game we just added that offers in its settings the activation of DLSS but also FSR. For our benchmarks, we have chosen a “high” graphic quality, an ” ultra ” Ray Tracing and a ” balanced ” DLSS/FSR.

This is the most demanding game where our cards have a hard time keeping up. We will most likely set the Ray Tracing back to “high” for our next update. We did not post our scores with the two AMD cards because for some reason we had a performance bug in our previous test and did not get a chance to test them again.

Hitman 3:

New game also added as this one now supports XeSS in addition to DLSS. We have received access to a beta version which should be officially released soon. We talked about this game in more detail on page four of our article. For our benchmarks, we opted for “high” graphics quality, ” enabled ” Ray Tracing and ” balanced ” DLSS/Xess.

As soon as the game is more optimized and takes advantage of the XeSS technology specific to Intel cards, our two specimens can take full advantage of the gain brought by XeSS. So you’ll be perfectly comfortable in 1080p to enjoy the combination of Ray Tracing and XeSS.

No Ray Tracing in 1440p with ARCs?

We decided that as long as our six games didn’t pass the 60 FPS mark, we didn’t think it was necessary to post the performance in 1440p. So yes, Ray Tracing is possible in 1440p with the A770 but only in certain games like Far Cry 6, Shadow of Tomb Raider and Hitman 3. We can simply say that if the game is XeSS compatible, then yes, you can imagine playing in 1440p with Ray Tracing enabled and combined with XeSS.

[nextpage title=”Temperature, consumption and nuisance: “]

Temperature:

In order to measure the temperatures, we opted for the Superposition stress test in Extreme mode. We opted for three 5 minutes runs with 10 minutes interval between each test. We took advantage of this benchmark in order to measure the power consumption of the graphics card for the table above.

In order to know the temperature in Idle, after having finished the three loops of the stress test, we let the card rest for 20 minutes before reading the temperature. It should be taken into account that most of the cards have the “0 dBa” technology and therefore, the fans turn off below a certain temperature, often between 50 and 55°C. This means that it takes longer to dissipate the heat after a period of stress testing or gaming. A card without this technology will be noisier than the others at rest. Small reminder: our temperature readings are taken in Open-Air. In a closed case, the cards will necessarily be hotter.

Our Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC is placed at the bottom of the graphic, which is not a very good thing in itself, but… the ventilation curve seems to us to be very well defined since the card is very quiet. We were afraid of the noise of the blower fan but no worries on that side.

Power consumption (whole configuration) :

We use a power meter by reading the power consumption on the outlet of our power supply. Our modular power supply is a CORSAIR AX1600i. The result we propose is the average of the total consumption of our configuration. Only the graphics card changes between each reading. It is therefore easy to calculate the difference between each graphics card.

Surprise but not really in a good way since the power consumption is above all its direct competitors. Even if we would have preferred a better energy consumption, we are on a first generation and we will be a little more indulgent with Intel.

[nextpage title=”Overclocking:”]

At the time of the release of Intel graphics cards, overclocking was far from obvious with crashes when we touched the different parameters. So when is it with its new drivers and can we finally enjoy a gain?

Step 1: benchmark scores

Of course, it is important to already know the scores we obtained on the Time Spy benchmark as well as on the maximum boost frequency reached. This will allow us to have a reference score and thus be able to judge the gains in overclocking . We obtain a global score of 14777 points under Time Spy and more exactly 14427 points if we isolate only the one obtained by the GPU. The maximum frequency for the Boost is indeed 2400 MHz.

Step 2: the two other modes within the software

As we have shown you, the ” Predator BiFrost ” software has a silent profile and a Turbo profile (0C). We will activate them in turn to see what impact they have.

Let’s start with the silent mode which gives us an overall score of 13947 points and 13513 points for the GPU score. The card sees its Boost frequency decrease to 2250 MHz and therefore a lower temperature too since we go from 73°C to 66°C. The card is already silent by default and we did not really notice any difference with the silent mode.

The Turbo mode did not bring us anything in terms of performance since the Boost frequency remains blocked at 2400 MHz and is therefore perfectly identical to the default mode.

Step 3: Manual overclocking

To do this, we went back to the Intel drivers and the software that allows you to set up and monitor your graphics card. We were able to push the Boost frequency to 2580 MHz while keeping the fan in automatic mode. Unfortunately, there is still no way to change the memory frequency.

We were thus able to obtain an overall score of 15440 points and 15141 if we isolate the GPU score. It’s a very good thing that overclocking is easier than at launch, hoping to see the memory frequency unlocked in the coming weeks.

[nextpage title=”The last word:”]

A card as interesting as ever!

Since the launch last year, Intel has improved its drivers and has corrected the defects that the press had reported at the time of the launch, such as the high power consumption in Idle. It is therefore with great impatience that we awaited the reception of this Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC from Acer. The gains in performance are quite interesting and can hold some pleasant surprises depending on the game you choose. You will be able to take full advantage of the 1080p definition and 1400p in rasterization. The use of Ray Tracing will force you to opt for 1080p unless the game has XeSS technology, which is always very efficient.

The price of the Intel models seems to have dropped quite a bit, which makes this card even more attractive. Finally, and this is also one of the important things, the arrival of a third contender in the graphics card market. It is the buyer who should be the first beneficiary of the arrival of Intel knowing that their objective seems to be to (re)propose a “correct” price when buying a graphics card. Intel should also offer other GPUs this year.

Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC

Let’s talk about the model we tested today, starting with its price, which is announced at $399 in the US or 469 euros in Europe, but with an immediate discount of 50 euros, that is, 419 euros, which for us is one of the most interesting offers currently for the purchase of a new graphics card. We are not talking about the possibility of acquiring a GPU on the second-hand market. The price of the Intel model is currently $409 so the Acer model has everything to please you!

The very special cooling system is efficient with a perfectly coherent ventilation curve to reduce noise pollution as much as possible. The two fans, either the 70mm blower or the 92mm axial fan, are quickly forgotten. And not to change anything, it is an atypical design but perfectly realized by Acer as the rear panel of our Predator BiFrost Intel Arc A770 OC.

We liked:

• A card to fully enjoy 1080p but also 1440p!
• Performance close to the RTX 3060 Ti in 1440p rasterization
• A power supply stage that has been upgraded compared to the Intel reference card
• A very goodoverclocking potential
• The excellent cooling system combined with reduced noise pollution
• The atypical but very well done design
• The quality of the card’s design
• The XeSS support which allows Ray Tracing in 1440p
• The interesting price for a card that allows to enjoy 1440p

We would have liked :

• A lower power consumption compared to the competition
• The possibility to overclock the memory

We must admit that we did not expect Acer to offer such an interesting card. Indeed, if it is very famous in the world of gaming laptops, it is almost a faultless card with this Predator BiFrost A770 OC resulting from the collaboration with Intel. Let’s hope that this collaboration will continue when Intel expands its offer. If your budget is limited and you want to acquire a powerful card with an atypical design, we can only advise you to choose this model. Thanks to Acer for making this sample available.