CHF130.–
AsRock Arc A380 Challenger ITX 6GB OC
6 GB
Product ratings
Pros
Cons
7 reviews
Does what I bought it for, and does it really well.
I bought the A380 to transcode/encode videos/movies. It's really good for that, whether it's x264, HEVC or AV1. Transcode 4k with HDR to 1080p SDR? No problem, not even multiple streams.
Mind you, kernel 6.2 is required, and a few libraries, some of which are not yet in the package sources of various distros, as the hardware is very new.
Negative point is only the size, there was briefly a MSI A380 low profile which was not available in Switzerland. There is also (soon) the Matrox Luma A380 single slot, which will probably be difficult to get and probably quite expensive, because it is more a product for business customers.
I don't know how the performance is under Windows or for games, but I didn't buy it for that.Pro
- Encoder
- Decoder
- Price
Contra
- Size
Get two cards. Monday series or beta production. Didn't work at all.
Pro
- Small and inexpensive, but too much for a letter insulator
Contra
- No display signal (on all ports) or only artefact-like without driver
- PC hangs completely after starting OBS. Hardware is compatible
Beautiful colours
but on PCI 3.0 bad, try it again on PCI 4.0, too bad but does not change the fact that it does not run properly on PCI 3.0
sometimes yes sometimes no.
Put the old one back in, works...Pro
- better details, sharper colours are also 2 GB more and better production than the old card
Contra
- hangs up even with YT or older games,
What do you want to use it for?
So, this is not a bad product, but the drivers prevent it to perform as it should in gaming. If you intend to use this for transcoding or similar tasks you will have a great time, but gaming is more a russian roulette, the GPU is obviously not powerful enough for the most recent AAA games, so you might want to play some older titles, but since Intel is focussing on the most played and recent ones, you might be out of luck and find various of your games not working properly (or at all).
The included image shows my notes regarding some brief testing I did. Here 'Green' indicates that the game runs as intended (good frame-time/good experience), 'Orange' indicates that the game works, but has some problems (normally inconsistent frame-time), 'Red' simply indicates that the game is not playable due to crashes, or perhaps does not even launch.
Note that the settings for the individual games were tweaked in order to get a >60fps experience, and vram usage was kept under 6GB in order to avoid unnecessary stutters. And yes, the power budged was maxed out in Intel Arc software and resizable bar was enabled. (Also all games where in a situation of STRONG GPU bottleneck).Pro
- Cheap (100fr)
- Small
Contra
- Drivers
- Not small enough(?)
- Additional 8pin
Disaster
Do some online research on Intel graphics cards before buying.
You will come across many videos with unsatisfactory ratings on Google or YouTube.
I can only confirm the driver problems described on the net. I only use the graphics card to operate 2 screens -> no gaming. The two-screen operation alone is asking too much. Constant crashing of the driver. The only thing that has probably helped is the installation of the oldest available driver for this card, so far it works, but must continue to test. ARC Control Centre no chance to install. I work in IT and have a lot of trouble with this graphics card. Please take this card out of the range!Contra
- Driver problems
- ARC Control Centre does not work
- Freeze image
- Image flutter
Maybe an older model with AMD and NVIDIA will perform better
I puchased this video card for extending my small factor mini desktop computer with integrated GPU from AMD.
The motherboard DisplayPort connector is faulty and I'm not able anymore to connect two monitors to it.
I was thinking that this card, despite of having low expectations, will perform somehow better compared to the IGPU, well, unfortunately that's not the case.
Despite of that, the possibility to connect multiple monitor is enough for me even if, at that point, a 50 CHF NVIDIA 7 series will do the trick anyway.Pro
- Cheap
Contra
- Poor performance
- Requires 8 Pin PCI-E Popwer
6 out of 7 reviews
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