Intel Arc graphics cards have been announced for quite some time now, but we are still waiting for their official release. New details about it were revealed at the Intel Innovation 2022 conference.
Intel announces Arc A770 graphics card launch
Intel’s CEO’s speech began with criticism of the rising prices of graphics cards. The manufacturer wants to change this with the introduction of the Arc A770 model – the card is scheduled to debut on October 12, priced from $329. Will it be worth the wait?
Intel Arc A770 is the top representative of the Alchemist generation, but in general, it will be a mid-range design. The construction is equipped with an ACM-G10 graphics chip with 4096 shading units and 32 Xe cores (average clocking here is to be about 2100 MHz). In addition, depending on the version, 8 or 16 GB of GDDR6 256-bit video memory is provided.
During the presentation, the manufacturer boasted that the Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition is expected to offer a peak performance of up to 65% better than its competitor (this is the GeForce RTX 3060 model that debuted at the same price). The key term here is “peak”.
According to the manufacturer’s earlier tests, the Intel Arc A770 card will actually offer similar or only slightly higher performance against the GeForce RTX 3060 in most titles. However, it is unknown how the performance will look like in traditional rasterization or against competing Radeon models (especially since at a similar price you can currently get a very interesting Radeon RX 6700). Thus, it is not known whether the Arc A770 will be a recommended graphics card for gaming.
Pat Gelsinger has confirmed that the first samples of the card have already been sent to reviewers, so we can expect independent performance tests to be published at launch. Let’s hope this time the launch goes better than the Intel Arc A380, which was criticized for underpowered drivers.
More Intel Arc graphics cards on the horizon
It is worth adding that on the manufacturer’s website there are also data with the specifications of two more models – a little weaker Intel Arc A750 and the budget Intel Arc A310 (so far we do not find there the “medium” – Intel Arc A580). However, it is not known when the cards would debut and how much they will cost.
It is the Intel Arc A750 model that could prove interesting – according to the manufacturer’s tests, the card is not much weaker than the Arc A770 (at least at 1440p resolution).
Intel’s position, despite appearances, is not so bad, and mid-range models could be successful. Especially since the “mid-range” models of Nvidia’s new GeForce RTX 4000 and AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 series will probably appear only in a few months or so, but a lot here will depend on the price, availability and overall performance of the hardware.
