I unfortunately had to make the decision to replace my Intel Arc A770 after 5 months of use.
The reasons are basically issues with flight simulators and addons that I use. The first is GSX Pro in MSFS 2020/2024. Since January this year, there has been a compatibility issue related to Intel graphics drivers with couatl.exe, which is responsible for GSX to work.
Because of this issue, GSX Pro is not compatible with Intel Arc GPU or even with Intel iGPUs from 11th generation processors and above, which use the same graphics drivers. From what I could see, this is a problem for Intel to solve. I did everything I could: I posted on Intel’s forums, I pestered the GSX developer to go to Intel’s forum and show that he’s willing to collaborate with them to solve it, but Intel’s responses were disappointing in this regard, in addition to the silence even with the GSX dev willing to work with them on a fix.
The impression I have is that Intel’s devs are convinced that since the problem is related to a game “mod” and not the game itself, this is a problem for the mod dev to solve, not them.
Even with this issue, I was still able to use the GSX Pro with my A770 using a workaround, which worked until the latest GSX update, when this workaround stopped working and now I’m unable to use the GSX until the problem is fixed.
I personally consider the GSX Pro to be an essential add-on for immersion in my flight simulator sessions and this recent non-functioning of the GSX, along with the slowness of Intel devs in fixing this, was what most motivated me to abandon the Arc A770.
Another reason is the performance in X-Plane 12. I also use X-Plane 12 and the Arc A770’s performance in it is bad. It runs worse than my old RTX 2060, which wasn’t all that great. I once did a long haul flight on XP12. I took off with about 25-26 fps, and after 8 hours of flight, on final approach, the fps dropped to below 10 and stayed that way until landing. I did the exact same flight on my 2060 and it managed to maintain about 30 fps both on takeoff and landing.
The Intel Arc cards didn’t even have official XP12 compatibility at the time I bought the card. They added official compatibility some time later. But even so, Intel Arc performance hasn’t improved since then. Unlike the GSX issue, the Arc’s low performance in XP12 is something for the X-Plane devs to fix, but I can understand their lack of urgency in doing so considering that Arc cards have less than 1% market share. In fact, this is something that affects Intel Arc in other games as well, where performance is below expectations compared to competitors, and the devs of these games have no urgency to improve/fix this due to the low number of Intel Arc users.
I decided to buy an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB. It’s ironic because I spent several months badmouthing the RTX 5000, saying that it’s Nvidia’s worst generation, that they’re overpriced and have several problems, and now I’m buying a card from the series that I’ve openly criticized until now. I’m waiting for it to arrive.
It’s a shame that I have to get rid of my Arc A770. It works well in MSFS 2024 and also in 99% of the games I have without many problems and with good performance, but I should have listened to the advice I wrote in this thread months ago about not being a paying beta tester for a newly released product line. I can criticize Intel devs for not being as proactive in fixing issues, but I’m not going to go around trash-talking Intel Arc because of specific issues with selected applications, when everything else works fine.
I wish Intel all the best with this Arc GPU line, that one day may be as popular as the two main brands currently (Nvidia and AMD) and that maybe in the future, I can go back to using Intel Arc.
