From the launch of Intel's first Arc standalone graphics card, the A380, in mid-2022, it has been nearly two years now. As Intel's official retail discrete graphics card, the Arc series has become quite well-known among gamers.

However, for many people, graphics cards are not just for gaming; they are also tools for making money. For this group, AMD has FirePro, NVIDIA has Quadro, so what about Intel? In fact, Intel does have professional cards, known as the Arc Pro series. Yet, both domestically and globally, they are little known and rarely tested.

This time, through connections, I managed to get all three of Intel's Arc Pro desktop cards, namely the A60, A50, and A40, to give a brief test for everyone to see.

The cards I received are channel cards without packaging, so there is no unboxing segment this time. Let's go straight to the family portrait. Intel's original cards are still very aesthetically pleasing, and it's been a long time since I've seen OTES, as neither NVIDIA nor AMD use it for their public edition gaming cards anymore; only professional cards still utilize it.

First, let's take a look at the highest-end card of the Arc Pro series, the Arc Pro A60. It is also the only full-height card among the three. The front features the graphics card model number, made of metal material.

On the back, you can see that the PCB is quite small, with the fan taking up most of the space. The PCB of Intel's original cards looks genuinely comfortable and neat.

The graphics card is designed for a single slot, and the model number A60 Pro is also on the side, next to a warning label for heat.

It is also the only card among the three that requires an external power supply. To facilitate power connection for workstation hosts, the power connector is designed on the left side of the card, with a single 6-pin connector.

The output interfaces consist of four DP2.0 ports, supporting up to 8K60Hz HDR video signal output.

After removing the cooler, you can see the graphics card's PCB itself. The core is quite large, with six memory chips next to it. The front of the PCB continues to inherit the consistent craftsmanship of Intel's original cards, focusing on comfort.Unlike N cards and A cards, the core is rectangular, more resembling the appearance of an Intel CPU.

The memory consists of 6 Samsung GDDR6 chips, with each chip being 2GB 32bit, and the chip part number is K4ZAF325BC-SC16.

For cooling, thermal pads are applied to the memory and power supply parts to prevent overheating, and the heatsink part is made of pure copper material with a mirror base.

The graphics card is powered by a 6PIN supply connected to the PCB through a cable, similar to the design of the 2060 and 3060 reference versions.

A thermal pad is also applied to the front of the heatsink to conduct heat to the front metal casing.

After looking at the A60, let's take a look at the A50 and A40. Since these two cards have identical PCBs, only one will be shown for the PCB part. First is the A50, with a dual-slot half-height design that can fit most small workstation hosts.

There is no fancy backplate on the back; for professional cards, stability comes first, and the A50 Pro's craftsmanship is not bad either. Although it is an entry-level card, the original factory craftsmanship is retained.

The side also features the Arc graphics card model.

The output interfaces consist of 4 Mini DPs, all of which are DP2.0 specifications, and the graphics card is a dual-slot card.

Removing the shroud reveals the card itself, which contains a heatsink and an OTES fan fixed to the motherboard.The material of the shroud is also metal, which is quite generous, giving the impression that Intel has allocated costs to some peculiar areas.

The heat sink is the same as the A60, made of copper material with a mirror-like base.

This time, heat is not directed to the shroud because the device itself does not generate much heat.

Next up is the A40. Compared to the A50, the graphics card has changed from a dual-slot to a single-slot design.

The backside is identical to the A50, sharing the same PCB.

The model number is also in the middle of the shroud on the side.

Since the PCB is the same, the outputs are naturally the same as well, featuring four Mini DP interfaces with DP2.0 specifications.

After removing the shroud, the heat sink is visible. Unlike the nickel-plated heat sinks of the A50 and A60, the A40's heat sink has undergone a blackening treatment.

Even the shroud of the entry-level A40 is made of metal, with a design similar to that of the A50.

Except for the part in contact with the core, the rest has been blackened. Upon weighing the heat sink, it is likely also made of copper material.On the front side of the heatsink, there is no thermal pad to direct heat towards the shroud.

The A50 and A40 PCBs are the same, with only the graphics card BIOS being different, so they are discussed together here. It can be seen that the A40/A50 is designed with three GDDR6 memory chips, and the back half of the entire card is essentially empty, with space allocated for OTES cooling.

The core is not in the exact center, but slightly to the lower left, and is essentially the same core as the A380.

The memory consists of three Samsung 2GB GDDR6 memory chips, model K4ZAF325BM-HC16, forming a specification of 6GB 96bit.

Since there is some discrepancy between the Arc Pro information I found online and my actual test results, I made my own table, mainly because the power consumption is different. The online search results are 50W / 75W / 130W, while my actual tests are 35W / 49W / 105W. The specifications of the three cards are as follows, with not many cores, mainly positioned for small workstations.

The test platform uses a combination of Colorful Z790 Flow with i7 13700K, with the Resizable-BAR feature enabled. The memory is 32GB DDR5 6000, the system is Windows 11 23H2, and the graphics card driver is the latest Arc Pro 31.0.101.5319.

The GPU-Z information screenshots of the three cards are as follows, and it can be seen that the release time is quite early, with availability as early as August 2022.

First, let's look at the stress test performance of the three cards, among which the A50 performs the best, with only 70°C at 49W power consumption, and the fan speed is also at a lower level. The A60's fan speed is similar, but because the power consumption reaches 105W, the core temperature also rises to 82°C, and the entire card reaches 90°C. The A40 is not very good, due to the reduction in cooling scale, it is noisy and has high temperatures. I tested it in my bedroom, and the turbine sound could even be heard in the adjacent bedroom.

The stress test performance of the three cards is summarized as follows. If your small host is not very compact, then the dual-slot A50 is definitely better, and the A40 is not very recommended.

Although this card is not for gaming, since it is a graphics card, let's roughly look at the gaming performance. First is the 3Dmark Timespy theoretical test. Although the A40 and A50 have the same core and PCB, the difference in power consumption makes their scores quite different, and the A60's score should be sufficient for playing mainstream games.Reflecting on in-game performance, I tested Cyberpunk 2077 and Tomb Raider. The A50 with XeSS enabled can basically meet the 1080p medium-quality requirements for AAA games, while the A40 struggles. The A60 feels quite similar to the 3050. After all, even if the A60's core specifications are not as good as the A580, it's normal for the gaming performance to be subpar.

Let's move on to productivity capabilities. The dual encoder feature on Arc consumer graphics cards is naturally present on the Arc Pro, which can significantly increase the transcoding speed during video output. Here, I used DaVinci Resolve 18.6.2 to test, converting a 4K 8Mbps HEVC video to 4K AV1 format, and it's clear that both encoders are working.

In terms of final output time, the A40 and A50 are quite similar, while the A60, thanks to its ample power supply, is much faster. Coupled with the advantage of 12GB of VRAM, it offers a better experience in video editing.

Additionally, Arc graphics cards also support stable diffusion AI drawing and are compatible with the most mainstream Autumn Launcher. I used the Autumn Launcher for AI drawing tests, utilizing IPEX, which is slightly slower than Intel's own OpenVINO.

With the reverse prompt words maximized and the forward prompts set to the best quality, the A60 Pro produced a 1024*768, 30-step image in 26.8 seconds, which is quite fast. The performance of the other cards is as follows.

Finally, there's SPECviewperf, which represents professional software testing. I used version 2020V3.0 for the test. The only comparison card I have is the 4070Ti S, which might seem a bit unfair, but let's compare them.

However, the test results were quite surprising. It turns out that professional work still requires professional cards, even for Intel's novice professional cards. The A60 outperformed the 4070Ti S in most tests, especially in Maya, where even the A40 was stronger than the 4070Ti S. However, the performance in energy and caita was significantly worse, likely due to suboptimal optimization. Considering the core scale and power consumption differences, it can only be said that optimization for professional software is the greatest value of professional cards.

The unboxing is all done, and now it's time for a summary.

Firstly, the craftsmanship of Intel's original cards is truly impeccable, which is also the most comfortable PCB I've seen since the NUC, and except for the A40, the noise performance is quite good.

Currently, this card is available on JD.com through third-party sellers at prices of 1999 / 2599 / 4599 yuan, which at first glance seems to have average cost-performance. Let's compare it with its counterparts, the Quadro T600 / T1000 / A2000. The A40 and A50 still have cost-performance value. Mainly, these two cards only have 4GB of VRAM and output specifications of DP1.4, which gives the A40 / A50 with 6GB VRAM an advantage. If the price of this card drops by a few hundred more, many people would be willing to buy it, especially the A40, which, despite average noise performance, has many application scenarios, such as Mingfan's MS-01, a 1L small host that can only accommodate a single-slot, half-height card, making it a perfect match. The A50, on the other hand, is suitable for some SFF small hosts.However, the price of the A60 is a bit high. After all, the current OEM A2000 12G is only around 3000, and the price of the A60 is really not that interesting. It should be significantly cheaper than the A2000 at least.

As Intel's first-generation professional card, I think this performance is quite acceptable. After all, the highest level of desktop cards is just the 3060ti, and the optimization has just caught up. In the professional field that needs more optimization, Intel is doing quite well too. As a first-generation card, it's already very good, and I hope to see the Arc series continue to be updated in the future, forming a tripartite balance. This would also be beneficial for us consumers.

Thank you for watching.