GPU Comparison

The Intel Arc A350M and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Mobile represent two vastly different corners of the mobile GPU market, and the benchmark data reflects that chasm clearly. In the head-to-head comparison, the RTX 3080 Mobile dominates every single test, leaving the Arc A350M trailing by a massive margin. The data shows a clear hierarchy, with the NVIDIA part delivering roughly four times the raw performance in both available benchmark suites. This is not a close contest; it is a demonstration of the performance gulf between an entry-level Alchemist chip and a high-end Ampere part.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The most striking result comes from the Geekbench OpenCL test, where the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Mobile scores 104,831 points against the Intel Arc A350M’s 24,546. That represents a delta of -76.6% for the Intel part, meaning the RTX 3080 Mobile is approximately 4.3 times faster in this compute-oriented workload. The gap is nearly identical in the Geekbench Vulkan test, with the NVIDIA card scoring 104,066 versus the Intel’s 24,747, a delta of -76.2%. In both cases, the RTX 3080 Mobile wins outright, and the data suggests the Arc A350M is operating in an entirely different performance class.

Looking at the broader benchmark landscape, the RTX 3080 Mobile’s average benchmark score of 23,628 places it in the 69th percentile of all GPUs, while the Arc A350M’s average of 24,647 puts it in the 70th percentile. This is a curious inversion: the Arc A350M has a higher average score and percentile, yet loses decisively in the head-to-head tests. This discrepancy is explained by the fact that the RTX 3080 Mobile’s average is dragged down by a series of PassMark tests (DirectX 9, 10, 11, 12, G2D, G3D, and GPU Compute) that are not run on the Intel part. In the only shared benchmarks, OpenCL and Vulkan, the NVIDIA GPU is unequivocally superior.

The RTX 3080 Mobile’s nearest rivals in the database include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Mobile, which it beats by 0.5%, and the AMD Radeon RX 9070, which beats it by 1%. This places the RTX 3080 Mobile in a competitive tier where small percentage swings define positioning. Meanwhile, the Arc A350M’s nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 590 (-0.4%), the NVIDIA RTX A5000 Mobile (-0.5%), and the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT (0.8%). These rivals are all within a 1.5% band of the Intel part, indicating that the Arc A350M is competitive with older mid-range desktop cards, but nowhere near the performance level of a flagship mobile GPU.

In terms of raw specifications, the RTX 3080 Mobile’s FP32 throughput of 18.98 TFLOPS dwarfs the Arc A350M’s 3.379 TFLOPS, a 5.6x advantage. The texture rate tells a similar story: 296.6 GTexel/s versus 105.6 GTexel/s, a 2.8x gap. The pixel rate is equally lopsided, with the NVIDIA part achieving 148.3 GPixel/s compared to 52.80 GPixel/s. These numbers are consistent with the benchmark results, confirming that the RTX 3080 Mobile is in a different league for both compute and rasterization workloads.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX 3080 Mobile wins every single benchmark in which both cards are tested, so the use-case split is straightforward. For any workload that stresses compute, graphics, or ray tracing, the NVIDIA part is the clear choice. The RTX 3080 Mobile’s 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores provide hardware acceleration for ray-traced effects and AI-based features like DLSS, making it suitable for high-end gaming, 3D rendering, and machine learning tasks. Its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus delivers 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is essential for high-resolution textures and complex scenes.

The Arc A350M, by contrast, offers no competitive advantage in the shared benchmarks. Its only wins are in areas where the RTX 3080 Mobile has no comparable data, such as the PassMark suite, but those tests are not part of the head-to-head comparison. The Intel part’s 6 RT cores and 768 shading units are a fraction of the NVIDIA’s resources, and its 4 GB of memory on a 64-bit bus provides only 112.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This makes the Arc A350M suitable for light gaming, basic productivity, and multimedia tasks, but it will struggle with modern AAA titles or demanding creative workloads.

The RTX 3080 Mobile also has the advantage in API support, with both cards supporting DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, so there is no feature-level gap there. However, the NVIDIA card’s higher transistor count (17,400 million versus 7,200 million) and larger die size (392 mm² versus 157 mm²) give it a fundamental hardware advantage that no driver optimization can overcome. In short, the RTX 3080 Mobile is the winner for any performance-sensitive use case, while the Arc A350M is limited to entry-level scenarios.

FAQ

Q: How much faster is the RTX 3080 Mobile than the Arc A350M in OpenCL?

A: The RTX 3080 Mobile scores 104,831 versus the Arc A350M’s 24,546, a delta of -76.6% for the Intel part. This means the NVIDIA GPU is roughly 4.3 times faster in this benchmark.

Q: Does the Arc A350M win any benchmark against the RTX 3080 Mobile?

A: No. The head-to-head data shows the RTX 3080 Mobile winning both the Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan tests. The Arc A350M has zero wins in the comparison.

Q: Which GPU has a higher average benchmark score?

A: The Arc A350M has an average benchmark score of 24,647, which is higher than the RTX 3080 Mobile’s 23,628. However, this is due to the RTX 3080 Mobile including additional PassMark tests that the Intel part does not run.

Q: How does the RTX 3080 Mobile compare to its nearest rival, the RTX 3070 Ti Mobile?

A: The RTX 3080 Mobile has an average score of 23,628, which is 0.5% higher than the RTX 3070 Ti Mobile’s 23,518. The gap is small, indicating these are closely matched cards.

Q: What is the memory configuration difference between the two GPUs?

A: The Arc A350M has 4 GB of GDDR6 on a 64-bit bus with 112.0 GB/s bandwidth. The RTX 3080 Mobile has 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus with 448.0 GB/s bandwidth.

Q: Which GPU has more shading units?

A: The RTX 3080 Mobile has 6,144 shading units, while the Arc A350M has only 768. This is an 8x difference in raw shader count.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ in nearly every measurable specification. The Intel Arc A350M uses a 6 nm process from TSMC, while the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Mobile uses an 8 nm process from Samsung. The Intel chip has 7,200 million transistors on a 157 mm² die, whereas the NVIDIA chip has 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die. Transistor density is similar, at 45.9M/mm² for Intel and 44.4M/mm² for NVIDIA.

Clock speeds also differ: the Arc A350M has a base clock of 1150 MHz and a boost clock of 2200 MHz, while the RTX 3080 Mobile has a base of 1110 MHz and a boost of 1545 MHz. Despite the lower boost clock, the NVIDIA card’s much larger core count delivers far higher performance. Memory is a major differentiator, with the Intel part offering 4 GB of GDDR6 on a 64-bit bus (112.0 GB/s), versus 8 GB on a 256-bit bus (448.0 GB/s) for NVIDIA. The memory clock is identical at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective).

Compute resources are where the gap is most apparent. The Arc A350M has 768 shading units, 48 TMUs, 24 ROPs, and 6 RT cores. The RTX 3080 Mobile has 6,144 shading units, 192 TMUs, 96 ROPs, 48 RT cores, and 192 tensor cores. The Intel part has no tensor cores listed. Power consumption differs as well: the Arc A350M has a TDP of 25 W, while the RTX 3080 Mobile has a TDP of 115 W. The bus interface is PCIe 4.0 x8 for Intel and PCIe 4.0 x16 for NVIDIA.

Architecture Differences

The architecture gap is fundamental. The Intel Arc A350M is built on the Xe-HPG architecture, specifically the DG2-128 chip, and belongs to the Alchemist generation (Arc 3 Mobile). The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Mobile uses the Ampere architecture, based on the GA104 chip, and is part of the GeForce 30 Mobile generation. These are completely different design philosophies: Intel’s Xe-HPG is a first-generation gaming architecture, while Ampere is NVIDIA’s second-generation ray tracing architecture.

The Intel chip is fabricated on a 6 nm TSMC process, while NVIDIA uses an 8 nm Samsung process. The RTX 3080 Mobile has 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores, enabling hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI features. The Arc A350M has only 6 RT cores and no tensor cores, limiting its ray tracing capability and offering no equivalent to DLSS. The NVIDIA card also has a much higher FP32 throughput (18.98 TFLOPS) than the Intel part (3.379 TFLOPS), and its FP16 performance is identical to FP32 (1:1 ratio), while the Intel chip’s FP16 is double its FP32 (2:1 ratio).

The release dates differ significantly: the RTX 3080 Mobile launched on 2021-01-11, while the Arc A350M arrived on 2022-03-29. Both are marked as end-of-life. The RTX 3080 Mobile has a predecessor in the GeForce 20 Mobile series, while the Arc A350M has no direct predecessor. The display outputs for both are listed as "Portable Device Dependent," and both support identical APIs: DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The core architectural differences, node size, core count, and feature set, explain the massive performance delta observed in benchmarks.