Intel is bringing its Arc A-series graphics to desktop computers. Earlier this year the company launched a line of mobile graphics solutions based on Intel’s new GPU architecture. But the new desktop graphics cards can hit higher speeds and deliver more performance… because they’re more power hungry than their laptop counterparts.
There will be four Intel Arc desktop graphics cards available at launch, and Intel has revealed detailed specs for each.
The lineup ranges from an entry-level Intel Arc A380 GPU (which already began shipping earlier this year) to the top-of-the-line Arc A770 (which is coming this fall). There are some big differences in the number of Xe cores, XMX Engines and memory, among other things:
| Arc A380 | Arc A580 | Arc A750 | Arc A770 | |
| Architecture | ACM-G11 | ACM-G10 | ACM-G10 | ACM-G10 |
| Xe cores | 8 | 24 | 28 | 32 |
| Ray Tracing Units | 8 | 24 | 28 | 32 |
| XMX Engines | 128 | 384 | 448 | 512 |
| Graphics Clock | 2000 MHz | 1700 MHz | 2050 MHz | 2100 MHz |
| GDDR6 Memory size | 6GB | 8GB | 8GB | 8GB / 16GB |
| Memory Bus | 96-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory Clock | 15.5 Gbps | 16 Gbps | 16 Gbps | 17.5 Gbps |
| Memory Bandwidth | 186 Gbps | 512 Gbps | 512 Gbps | 560 Gbps |
| TDP | 75 | 175W | 225 | 225 |
If you’re wondering what to expect in terms of real-world performance, Intel provided a sneak peek last month, when the company released a series of benchmarks showing that the Arc A750 GPU should be able to outperform NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3060 in some games… although not by a spectacularly wide margin.
So… Intel’s second-best desktop GPU might be competitive with NVIDIA’s second-worst.
More competition is a good thing, but I doubt Intel will stick with these very long. A month from the supposed release window and they still haven’t announced pricing. What are they waiting for?
It seems like we’ve heard about these for ages and Intel still isn’t shipping them in bulk in any sort of way, stretching the pre-pre-previews to ungodly limits. Again, Intel is its own worst enemy, they need to shake that off first and for all.
Exactly.
It’s vapourware, at least until Late-2023. Which is rich coming from the fact it was supposed to ship in Mid-2021. And even more stupendous since it would’ve been outdated unless they released it in Early-2020. They completely missed lucrative periods with cryptominers, covid WFH consumers, and the chip shortage equiliser.
All in all, a 3+ years delay. This is feeling just like their stagnation with Skylake architecture or 14nm lithography.
My guess is that we are only going to see these in significant volume in the OEM PC business. If we see any significant volume in retail, it will likely only happen if Intel licenses 3rd parties to make these cards (which would match Nvidia and AMD’s model, but somehow seems unlikely for Intel).
I think Intel’s strategy is going to be to introduce the discrete models to the retail market just enough to give them the attention they need for people to understand their place in the market.
Following that, I think Intel is going to back off from the discrete model sales, and sell them to OEMs exclusively.
I get the feeling that their GPUs are going to follow the path of their NUC products, of which I have always had the feeling that Intel only makes enough of them for retail to convince OEM partners that the product has demand.
I think the reason for this is that Intel enjoys maintaining a half-assed customer support model, as being primarily a component manufacturer. They’ve spent decades relying on PC OEMs to support their products for them, and the prospect of growing their company in the direction of being closer to their end-customers is either risky or uninteresting to them.
“My guess is that we are only going to see these in significant volume in the OEM PC business.”
Sadly, even this justification has been going around for far too long and we are still waiting (well, those who still believe in Arc) – and this only delays the discrete GPUs further, which are already far too late to hit the market to make any difference.
Arc series needs to come out before Geforce 4xxx and Radeon 7xxx series, which are coming in just a few weeks – Intel’s GPU endeavours will get utterly destroyed if further delays don’t already tank them.
Cynically, I expect Intel to just pull out of the GPU market due to their own issues and despite having put so much effort/money into it.
I agree with both Grant and Julian’s analysis.
Intel missed the period where these could have been competitive, then they missed the period where they would be scalped, then they missed the period where it would be useful, finally they missed the period where it wouldn’t be obsolete.
So against RDNA-1 and RTX-2000, it would’ve been great and carved a market for itself from 2019 to 2023.
Now, crypto-boom is over, chip shortage is over, demand for Home PCs has shrivelled, and lastly there are RDNA-3 and RTX-4000 devices coming. So it is going to be HARD SELL for Intel to push these to OEMs and Pre-Built systems. And virtually impossible to sell it outside that. So Intel won’t make a big profit, probably won’t make any profit, and possibly will make losses on this product. That means it will be cancelled sooner rather than later.
….the best case scenario is if Intel sells their Arc-GPU department to a competitor. Then someone like Imagination Technologies snaps it up, and we get a competent third-horse in this race. Duopoly is almost as bad as a Monopoly.
Intel drivers were being developed in Russia, according to one source. Getting them relocated to a different country is behind the delay we are seeing.
As long as you can use these cards for gaming on a Linux desktop without tearing your hair out, I feel like that’ll still be one definite plus over Nvidia…