A new laptop packing Intel’s Arc Alchemist A730M mobile GPU was tested in 3DMark Time Spy, as seen in this Weibo post (opens in new tab). The notebook, called the Mechanic Dawn Exploration Edition 2022 (opens in new tab), features an Alder Lake i7-12700H CPU and is already on sale. The Time Spy result of 10,107 puts the A730M laptop into competition with RTX 3060-equipped laptops (opens in new tab) in both performance and value.
The A730M comes from the upper end of Intel’s mobile A-series lineup, sitting one step down from the flagship A770M. The A730M sports 24 Xe-cores and 24 ray tracing units, with an 1100 MHz graphics clock and 12GB of GDDR6 operating on a 192-bit bus. Power consumption depends on the notebook manufacturer and can be anywhere between 80 and 120 watts.
The notebook sells for approximately $1,277 on item.jd.com (opens in new tab) and features a solid spec sheet: Intel Core i7-12700H, 16GB of GDDR5 memory, and Intel’s new Arc A730M mobile GPU. The notebook comes in a 16-inch form factor with a respectable 165Hz screen featuring 100% sRGB color output.
We aren’t sure if this particular model will make it to the U.S. market, but at $1,277 it would definitely make for a competitive offering against RTX 3060 laptops.
You’d be hard-pressed at the moment to find a laptop with RTX 3060 performance and an i7-12700H processor for under $1300 (opens in new tab). Most of the laptops with the RTX 3060 in that price range currently have 11th or 10th gen Intel Core i7 processors.
3DMark Time Spy Results
Let’s dive into the 3DMark Time Spy results: The A730M-powered notebook achieved an overall score of 10,138 points, with a graphics score of 10,107 points and a CPU score of 10,321 points. This is a respectable result for a midrange gaming notebook.
One of the closest Time Spy results we could find in the 3DMark browser was with a notebook powered by a Core i7-11800H CPU and RTX 3060 mobile GPU, which had a Time Spy benchmark result of 10,546 points. The graphics and CPU score results were 10,269 points and 12,455 points respectively.
The A730M comes very close to matching the highest-performing RTX 3060 mobile GPU in graphics performance. Every other RTX 3060 mobile GPU in 3DMark has a graphics score under 10,000, which means the A730M would take second place if we jammed it into the RTX 3060 mobile GPU lineup.
If Intel can duplicate this value proposition with its Arc A730M in notebooks from Asus, MSI, Dell, Lenovo, etc. the A730M could be a great competitor against the midrange RTX 3060 laptops. Of course, the bigger question is how 3DMark Time Spy performance will translate to real-world gaming workloads. There have been plenty of rumors suggesting drivers and compatibility are a primary concern for Intel’s Arc GPUs, and we’ve seen our share of issues with the previous generation Iris Xe graphics solutions.
It’s far easier to optimize drivers for a major benchmark like 3DMark rather than focusing on a wide suite of games. Obviously, getting the drivers to work properly and run fast with games is more important in the grand scheme, but at least this early 3DMark result looks competitive. We’re looking forward to testing A730M and A770M in shipping laptops as soon as we can. Note that the A770M has substantially higher clock speeds and 33% more GPU cores, meaning if Intel gets its drivers into shape, it could compete with mobile RTX 3070 or even 3070 Ti laptops.