Intel's Arc A380 - Is the A750's little brother any good? Wait? What?

The latest budget card from #intel may have some scratching their head, especially when #AMD's budget efforts are lackluster, but the #Arc A380 does have more than one redeeming quality that makes it worth considering for a NEWER build.
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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:35 How did we get here?
02:10 Benchmarks with the i7 7700
05:29 The 12700KF
10:43 Other redeeming qualities
15:42 Outro

[@TriPBOOMER]

I literally use an Asrock A380 as a second GPU in my system, I use it as a dedicated OBS GPU, I use it for recordings in AV1 and to run my stream, captured through a capture card direct, through duplicated monitor, so no shadow play and 1080p 120fps input, 60fps output, the A380 doesn't skip a beat in recording or running my stream, and because I use the DP to USB-C passthrough on my Mobo (b660 creator) I get to use G-sync with my 165hz monitor, as the capture card captures 120fps, but will passthrough 240hz, so I plugged this passthrough into the HDMI on my main monitor (I play on DP) and, boom G-sync 165hz to both monitors, my CPU deals with it no issues at all and My RTX card is completely free to run the game.

[@ThatPaulGuy]

One of the things I was most impressed with about this card was the encoding. I was already impressed with the Arc A750 in that respect and the A380 matched it. This may be one of the best solutions out there for a dedicated encoding card, especially for the price.

[@TriPBOOMER]

@@ThatPaulGuy Wicked little card to add to a system for AV1 encoding if you want the feature but don't really need to upgrade your GPU, or cant afford a gen upgrade, my OBS is set in windows to work off my A380, this puts CPU usage down to a minimal of 1-2% for OBS, allowing it to concentrate on feeding my gaming card. all works well, and quality of recording and stream, is far better than shadow play, and being able to receive 120fps from a G-sync'd 165hz native signal and recording 60fps has allowed me to get really smooth gameplay. I would happily recommend the card for this purpose. Works well at Quicksync H.264 for Twitch streams as well.

[@ThatPaulGuy]

@@TriPBOOMER pinning this group of comments. 😃

[@TriPBOOMER]

I do have a video on my channel, of some Doom Eternal gameplay, 3060 fully raytraced , I used this setup to capture it 1080p60fps, I even think it shows the A380 in performance HUD, watch in 4k for closest to footage with the KZbin compression. if anyone wants to see how it gets on.

[@ThatPaulGuy]

@@TriPBOOMER cool, I subbed and will check it out!

[@tlstechtalk]

the best argument for this card is "if $100 is your max budget, Please do not buy a GTX 1030!!!." For those of us in the SFF community, I run my Optiplex psu outside my case to make room for a 2slot card. post script: Newegg has an open box Asrock A380 for $79.99 right now!!!

[@ThatPaulGuy]

Im actually thinking about using a flex ATX power supply in the most recent optiplex to get more power. The next step for this card is tests with a 10th and 11th gen intel, then on to Ryzens.

[@tlstechtalk]

@@ThatPaulGuy I am running 10th gen Pentium g6400 and the cpu is not the bottle neck, my rx 550 is. So the a380 might make more sense for me than a cpu upgrade.

[@jrdoughty13]

I bought that open box and it's AWESOME! Love it! Big improvement overy rx550

[@SeeJayPlayGames]

@@ThatPaulGuy have you seen the HDPLEX 250W/500W GaN power supplies?

[@ThatPaulGuy]

@@SeeJayPlayGames not until recently, but the size and design makes something like this perfect for these older Optiplexes, especially the 500W models. I have recently being eyeing a flex-ATX to experiment with.

[@tlstechtalk]

when last we left our hero, Penelope Pitstop was tied to the railroad tracks!!! 🤣🤣

[@ThatPaulGuy]

Exactly!

[@JamesSmith-sw3nk]

A problem with the A380 is most of them have an 8pin psu adapter and the card only pulls 85w. Intel should have tuned it down so it only used 75w and then it could be powered by the motherboard alone. It could have been a huge seller for people with OEM pc's that don't know a lot about hardware.

[@ThatPaulGuy]

The 6GB model doesn't have the external power need, but also isn't as good of a performer. It seems to do well with newer generation hardware so far in testing, though.

[@legosinmotion1231]

I was on the fence about buying an a380 but this video helped a lot thanks!

[@ThatPaulGuy]

Glad if I could help.

[@Ryhillchibulls]

A lot of time and effort for a 380. You made some great points. If I were skimping by and saving up for one piece at a time was a tall task for whatever reason I definitely wouldn't mind settling for a 380 short term if a $200 gpu was out of the question. Great things have been said about things like the 5700, apparently so much so that prices went up. If I weren't going 6000 series, I would go for a 380 and tinker with it.

[@ThatPaulGuy]

I was originally going to add it into the last video, but was so disappointed in the performance I figured there had to be more to this card than I was seeing. It turned out being a good experiment.

[@SuspiciousPixels]

I agree the majority use case for the A380 is the encoder, many Jellyfin users have it for transcoding and PC content creators for AV1 recording to save on storage space and those who have low bandwith due to ISP limitations streaming using AV1 QSV to KZbin currently

[@ThatPaulGuy]

Thats a great point. The file size is much smaller than other encoding methods and the quality is arguably better as well.

[@rickh8380]

Great video Paul. I have an ASRock arc a380 challenger card paired with a Celeron G6900 on a Gigabyte H610 motherboard with 16gb of DDR4-2666. Both pair up very well for what they are. I mainly use it for streaming videos and light gaming. PC Builds says it has a bottleneck of 3.1%. Not much at all. Thanks for sharing Paul. I will do those two things you mentioned. Take care.

[@ThatPaulGuy]

Thanks. Glad to know its working well in a 'real world' scenario instead of just a test set up. Sounds like you have a great budget minded set up there. Kudos!

[@rickh8380]

@@ThatPaulGuy Thanks Paul

[@AFKwithyourSis]

thanks for the vid Paul 👍

[@ThatPaulGuy]

Thank you.

[@papac6831]

im well impressed with my a 770, the drivers are good now, the a380 is well useable too. thanks.

[@ThatPaulGuy]

I'm very happy myself with the A750. As the drivers have improved its turned into great card.

[@ryanspencer6778]

A380 is mostly for media and display out, but it's not a bad little 1080p gaming card, especially with XeSS.

[@ThatPaulGuy]

I was very pleasantly surprised with the results paired with a newer CPU.

[@dcikaruga]

A 1650 would be a better rival than the 1660, been wondering how it matches up with the latest drivers.

[@ThatPaulGuy]

Unfortunately I don't have my 1550 any longer, but did notice the 1650 and 1660 were simarly priced. I'm currently testing the A380 against the RX6400 with an i7 12700, and hope to test with an RTX 3050 6gb soon.

[@dcikaruga]

@@ThatPaulGuy 1650 had the slight edge last time I checked but since Intel's optimized the drivers even more now....

[@RANDOMNATION907]

Strictly for gaming, I think I would opt for an RX 580 2048SP 8GB (RX 570) chY-kneesium card from Amazon, Newegg or Aliexpress for around the same money.

[@ThatPaulGuy]

You can probably find it cheaper, just keep in mind the 580 takes external power.

[@michaelnarh828]

Hello sir.. I have a hp elitedesk 800 G3 SFF with core i7 7700. I'm looking to buy a rx6400 low profile.. any advice? Thanks 🙏

[@ThatPaulGuy]

The 6400 low pro is one of cards that is usually more expensive than it should be because of the size and it continues to perform decent enough to be in demand. My best advice is try to be patient and catch one on sale, or if you find a retailer/etailer you can trust try a used card. I had high hopes for the Intel Arc A380, but the 6400 still out performs it on older systems, including with the i7 7700. Trust your gut, shop around and you may be able to take advantage of someone like Amazon or Zip allowing you to split the payments. My other thought is thinking about spending about twenty bucks more and getting the RTX3050 6gb low profile. You pc should have room for it where the Optiplex sff cases dont.

[@michaelnarh828]

@@ThatPaulGuy thanks a lot sir.. I live in Ghana so shopping on Amazon is quite expensive considering the shipping. AliExpress is more convenient for me. There aren't many low profile GPUs there except the rtx 1650 (220usd) and Rx 6400 (160usd).. UPDATE: I can get the rtx 3050 for 180 pounds in the UK and I have someone to get that for me. Do you think my 180watts power supply can handle it?

[@outlawkings6133]

Why did you say this won’t work for streamers av1 on twitch? This card must be perfect for this or I’m wrong?

[@outlawkings6133]

I’m talking about using this card for second streaming pc paired with i3-12100f

[@ThatPaulGuy]

Twitch is only now beta testing the AV1 encoder for live streaming. You can stream, but you'd be using the CPU.

[@outlawkings6133]

@@ThatPaulGuy beta also uses only cpu on twitch for av1?

[@prostagma6055]

Relatively newer i7 12700kf how has everyone memory holed that 13 and 14th gen is just 12 gen slightly over clocked and with 2 megs of cash added same chips and everything

[@ThatPaulGuy]

Been very happy with the performance of the 12700KF so far and definitely not upset about 13th and 14th gen issues with poeer limits on motherboards.

[@prostagma6055]

@@ThatPaulGuy 12700f is even better value if you can get one of the 2 cheap bclk oc motherboards and match the performance. definitely still the best value of any modern cpus

[@RobertFixit]

I had high hopes for the 380. I wonder though, if you had a $120ish budget, would you really pick the 380? Possibly, if someone on Amazon otherwise did not know better, might pull the trigger. We will meet again when it starts selling for $89 😂😂😂

[@ThatPaulGuy]

I'm thinking after a few months the price will slide down, or we'll start to see gently used soon for 80-100. I didn't want to like this card, but I kind of do.

[@enka5908]

Yes, OR… the drivers get improved in again but to the point where it’s kicking butts, especially if they decide to release a significant improvement right before/during battlemage.. Then prices will be probably be $120-$160.

[@Boogie_the_cat]

Nice video. It will be interesting to see what Intel brings to the table with the BattleMage cards. Hopefully, this AIB partner has some other good offerings, as "Sparkle Elf" is a winning company name. In all seriousness, i am excited that Intel is releasing their BattleMage line of cards (i believe) this year. Both AMD and Nvidia have forsaken the budget parts consumer, although both companies unfortunately have their fanboys, who like to pretend one is less evil than the other. I personally own an Nvidia card, but i hold no illusions about how they are screwing over the budget gamers as much as AMD, possibly more. Please, people reading this, stop holding onto fanboy hardware "crushes". That only leads to lying to yourself, pretending you bat for the "good guys" In 2024, both manufacturers are the "bad guys". Intel hopefully will cause a shakeup, resulting in AMD and Nvidia being forced to innovate instead of stagnate and the price fixing will stop. Don't let corporations pull wool over your eyes. There is no "good guy" in the current market. Arguing about which company is better, when both are burning their customers with price-gouging and inferior hardware (compared to previous gen similarly priced hardware), the only ones that benefit from such a stupid favoritism is the companies that are f***ing us over and laughing about it.

[@ThatPaulGuy]

The big two keep trying to tell us they're looking after the consumer but their actions definitely tell a different story. The bottom line is all they care about and the both see AI as the way to do that which leaves the consumer that doesn't need that kind of power behind. I'm actually kind of happy the both Intel and AMD will not be able to put out $2000 cards in the next generation. Maybe we will have a chance at decent cards that are priced fairly.

[@TT-go3sl]

The title got me lmao

[@ThatPaulGuy]

Thank you.

[@toseltreps1101]

your explanation of Resizable BAR is completely wrong

[@chloedevereaux1801]

so paul, as i was saying on twitch, that aria guy, i think he may be a bit scammy...... every stream he's been in he's tried to offer his services to you to upgrade your channel.... this seems a bit odd to me... just be careful dude......

[@ThatPaulGuy]

Yeah, I thought I was pretty clear last time, but evidently not. It annoyed me enough to cut the stream off.

[@J_..._]

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