Once you’ve found enough space on your SSD to install it, the God of War Ragnarok system requirements can be a bit daunting when it comes to how new the hardware listed is. Especially as the lower end only looks to target 1080p 60FPS, but Sony’s announcement seems to omit one new addition to the graphics card market, the Intel Arc range.
Well, at least the Steam page puts them in, ad so we put one to the test. In particular, we tested the Intel Arc A770 we reviewed previously to see how well it does in the game, and if it even supports it. Seeing as it aims to improve its drivers and capabilities, we wanted to see how it faired so we installed it and put it to the test.
- GPU: DG2-512
- GPU cores: 4,096
- VRAM: 16GB GDDR6
- Memory bus width: 256-bit
- Base clock speed: 2100 MHz
- Boost clock speed: 2400 MHz
- Bandwidth: 512.0 GB/sec
Game performance
We put the GPU and game through our testing lab. Fitted with the below components, it’s a bit more than the recommended requirements, but it still mainly comes down to the graphics card and that is obviously the bottleneck in the setup. We also downloaded the latest Intel Graphics 32.0.101.6077 driver that added support for the game.
- Motherboard: ASUS ProArt X670E-CREATOR WIFI
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
- GPU: Acer Predator BiFrost Intel Arc A770 OC
- RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB 6400
- Cooler: ROG Ryujin II 360 AIO
- PSU: Phanteks 1000W
With that, we ran the game and took the framerate and performance with Intel Presentmon software. That enabled us to get an average of over a minute in the same scene where we changed up the settings to try and get a better performance out of the graphics card. We ran it at 1080p, as we didn’t expect it to get much better out of it.
Starting off with pure rasterization with no upscaling, we tried the game on the Ultra settings preset to see how well it did. There it was rather a bit disappointing in not being able to reach 60 FPS and only average at 48. But at least the frame drops in the 1% and 0.1% are rather high and didn’t give an impression of stuttering.
Dropping it down to pure does improve it by an average 8FPS bringing it to 56, but just about missing that smoother 60FPS refresh rate of most monitors. That left us resorting to trying some additional upscaling features, as we tried on both frame generation and Intel’s own XeSS on the first setting, Ultra Quality+. That boosted it up to a much better 83FPS, with the frame drops still above the 60 mark. This will satisfy the majority of basic gaming monitors.
So then we decided to push it even further to see what it is capable of. Still giving AMD’s FG a chance but turning down the settings to low and knocking the upscaling more to balanced. That obviously gave it a much better boost up to an average of 114 FPS. Then just using more of XeSS or FSR you could try to hit the 120 or 144Hz mark, but it’s quite the change in quality you have to deal with as we see further on.
Image quality
Now, on the other hand, is the impact on the quality from the different settings. In a couple of screenshots below, you can see the differences from the settings we tested on the Arc A770. Hopefully, you’ll be able to see the difference (although compression might make it unclear) see if it will satisfy your needs, and see what it takes to improve the framerate as much as it did.
Intel Arc A770 God of War Ragnarok Light comparison, Image by PC Guide
Intel Arc A770 God of War Ragnarok Sled comparison, Image by PC Guide
At the top end, the Ultra settings and pure rasterization do create a great-looking game with amazing physics creating a great immersion. The details on the terrain and objects are incredible, but it’s not exactly at a playable framerate on the A770. Even just knocking the preset too high doesn’t detriment the quality too much and still gives a great-looking game.
However, running upscaling does quickly knock down the quality. Quickly it starts to lose a lot of its nice details and becomes a bit more flat and lacking those extra cuts and edges. That is no surprise as just balanced knocks down the render resolution to 1472×824 with balanced further pushing it down to just 960×536. That makes it a lot more reliant on AI trying to make it a bit more like it should.
Surprisingly, it’s still passable and enjoyable, to be honest. It might lack that last bit of polish and the fur on the wolves blowing in the wind does become a bit weird to look at, but it still gets you a much better gameplay experience. If you don’t mind it overall and prefer the frames it’s certainly a good option.
Final word
Well, honestly I’m quite impressed that the Intel Arc A770 can do what it does in such a demanding game. Sure it requires a bit of tweaking to find the best graphics settings for God of War Ragnarok but it does make it a lot more playable. Especially with the driver support and keeping on top of something that plagued its initial launch. This leads us to look forward to Battlemages release, where hopefully it can target higher resolutions and qualities.
Either way, it might not be the best GPU for the game, but it’s still capable of running well when you set your target a bit lower for 1080p 60FPS, not expecting something too much from the card.
