Sparkle Intel Arc A310 ECO, 4GB GDDR6, 50W TBP, Low-Profile, Single Fan, Single Slot, HDMI x1, Mini DisplayPort x2, SA310L-4G

I purchased this as a dedicated hardware transcoding GPU for a rack mount server, it requires no external power, fits in a 2U case, comes with both full size and low profile brackets, but swapping them requires a little creativity as the plastic shroud covers the upper screw. Installation is easy as no external power needs to be connected. Out of the box, the cards firmware contains a bug that causes the fan to constantly spin up for a few seconds, this is fixed by installing the Intel GPU drivers under Windows which also upgrades the firmware during install. After that, it runs quietly and fulfils that role perfectly and runs cool, the fan is barely noticeable, even at full chat. While it was in a windows environment, I ran 3D Mark, being a 4GB card it’s clearly going to struggle, so had to drop to the basic benchmarking test, 3D Mark predicted FPS results on 1080 High: Fortnight 180+ Battle Field V 55+ Apex Legends 110+ GTA V 145+, Red Dead Redemption 2 35+ Obviously those are just guide numbers, but for a basic card at 1080p, it looks like Arc has some decent performance potential. It handles transcoding multiple streams with ease, unlike NVIDIA, no artificial session limit on transcodes, the only concern is 4GB VRAM, but that is more than enough for over a dozen H264/H265 transcodes from 1080 down to whatever. If you need more, then choose a card with extra VRAM. Is it good value? That depends on your needs. For gaming at 1080, I would pay a little more and go Arc 570/580, at 1080 they are significantly more capable. If you just need to add a low power, quiet GPU for transcoding duties with AV1 support for the future, it’s the cheapest and arguably best option, also ideal if you stream and want to hardware encode in real time without hitting your main GPU’s resources.

Got this for £104 at the time of purchase, was a really good deal. Bought for my Plex server as a transcoder device. Works perfectly with AV1 4k streams, I only have a maximum of 3 streams so this card is perfect for the job Installation is just plug into a x4 slot and away you go. Is small low profile card and comes with a full height and low profile bracket so will fit any size case. Has a small fan but didnt see any issues with over heating even when it was decoding 2 4k streams AV1 at the same time Perfect card .. Would recommend if you are after a decent AV transcoding device.

This works amazingly as a little transcoding accelerator for Plex or Jellyfin, which makes playback so much faster. However, there is a firmware problem at least with my unit which makes the fan ramp up and down constantly which is insanely annoying and the fan is not quiet to begin with. I know this isn't a cooling issue as the GPU temperature was showing consistently under 40c. If you don't have it in the same room as you work or sleep, its amazing, but otherwise I would go for an integrated GPU or a larger, newer GPU. Compatibility is still lacking as Intel Arc is so new, but these cards are amazing and will shine when software catches up to these little cards.

Bought this to add hardware transcoding support to Plex and other apps on my TrueNAS machine. What can I say. This added proper hardware transcoding support to my machine, and fantastic encoding for such a small GPU. I tested this with Handbrake running via Docker. Previously I was getting maybe 150 fps encoding via software H.264 for my DVD rips, but now I'm encoding at the slowest preset, HEVC H.265 at 800 fps. I ordered this on 28th December and it arrived all the way from the USA on 5th January. For it to arrive so quickly over the New Year is amazing.

It brought new life to my Dell Optiplex 9020. I've used it with Windows 10 and the driver support has been fantastic. I can say that within the time of owning it, a driver update fixed the noisy fan, as you can easily set the curve now etc. Great small, single slot card the performs well at a low temperature at a great price. Instalation was a little fiddly, changing the plate from the long to short one. However, it is possible to do it without damaging it.

Bought this card to run transcoding operations for Plex and Handbrake. While the low power consumption, Intel GPU, and small form factor are enticing, the fan has a major firmware bug where it continuously spins up and down. Sparkle claims that installing the latest Intel drivers will push a firmware update, but after trying several times through a Windows VM and on bare metal this was proven false. After researching this further, I found that users have the same issue and neither Sparkle nor Intel seem to care to fix this. If you're looking for a small, efficient graphics card, look elsewhere.

Excellent good value budget graphics card. I got it for encoding videos in AV1 with hardware acceleration using qsv av1 which is does very well

Good card, but there's a bug in the firmware when running in a Linux host where there is no fan control, so it constantly revs from idle to about 30%, can make the noise a bit annoying depending how quiet your environment is