The slow but steady flow of information from Intel about its upcoming Arc GPUs continued last week when the company released the final specifications for its four A-series desktop graphics cards. As with the laptop GPUs the company announced earlier this year, the cards Arc for desktop is divided into entry-level Arc 3, intermediate-level Arc 5, and high-level Arc 7.
The only Arc GPU that has been rigorously tested by independent testers is the entry-level A380, which is also the only one to have had any official US launch (this $ 140 ASRock Challenger model listed on Newegg, not counting the more expensive cards imported from China). This is by far the weakest GPU in the lineup, with just eight Intel Xe cores and ray tracing units, plus 6GB of GDDR6 memory on a 96-bit memory bus. Reviews usually show the A380 losing out to older, lower end GPUs like the Nvidia GTX 1650 or AMD RX 6400 depending on the game.
The other three GPUs are much more similar. The A580, A750, and A770 have 24, 28, and 32 Xe cores, respectively, and they all increase clock speeds as you go up. But they all have a 256-bit memory bus and 8GB of GDDR6 RAM (with a 16GB option available for the A770). Intel showed off its own versions of the A770 and A750 of the first “Limited Edition”batch; they share the same basic board and fan design and 225W board power, but the A770 has built-in LEDs while the A750 doesn’t. Presumably, Intel leaves the low-end A580 and A380 cards to their board partners rather than releasing their own versions.
Intel’s own tests show the A750 GPU competing against the Nvidia RTX 3060 in DirectX12 and Vulkan games; Based purely on paper specs, this suggests that the A770 will end up somewhere between the RTX 3060 and 3070, while the A580 will perform worse than the 3060 but better than the 3050.
It’s a pretty narrow performance band, with a big gap between low-end and mid-range cards and no offering at all for high-end gaming PCs, but it makes sense given that the Alchemist family is supposedly based on a couple of graphics cards. GPU dies, one running eight Xe cores (A380) and one running 32 Xe cores (with the 28- and 24-core versions being “binary”versions that disable failed or inefficient cores so the die itself can can still be used). Current Nvidia and AMD GPU lines typically use at least three or four different GPU dies.
Comparing performance with well-known Nvidia and AMD GPUs for Arc GPUs is difficult due to driver issues. The company has recognized that performance in older DirectX11 games will not be at the same level as performance in games using DirectX12 and the low overhead Vulkan API, and the company is betting on translating code for older DirectX9 games rather than allowing GPUs to launch these games initially. And Arc GPU performance is greatly reduced if Resizable BAR (also called ReBar or Smart Access Memory) is not enabled or supported by your motherboard, making Arc GPUs a poor choice for upgrading an old PC.
Compounding Intel’s launch issues, AMD and Nvidia are already gearing up to launch next-gen GPUs. AMD briefly showed off an RDNA3-based GPU at its Ryzen 7000 announcement event last month, while Nvidia’s RTX 4000-series GPUs are expected to be announced as early as next week. The next generation Intel Battlemage GPUs won’t be released until 2023, so these Alchemist GPUs will likely start competing with the RTX 4060 and RX 7600 series GPUs pretty soon.
Intel has said it will price its Arc GPUs based on their DirectX11 gaming performance, which could make its cards more attractive to bargain hunters looking to build an inexpensive yet powerful gaming PC. Companies just need to get them up and running first.