Intel Arc is supposed to score with low prices – what’s the deal?

Sebastian Schenzinger

After what feels like an eternity and countless postponements and teasers, Intel is finally releasing its Arc A desktop graphics cards on October 12th. The flagship is the Arc A770, which is being launched in two versions: one with 8 GB of video memory for $329 and one with 16 GB of VRAM for $349. At the same time, the Arc A750 located below it will be launched, which is supposed to compete with Nvidia’s RTX 3060 (read the test report) for only 289 US dollars.

Of course, the Arc A750 is a bit slower than the flagship A770, but Intel states that it can beat Nvidia’s mid-range GPU RTX 3060 in both 1080p Ultra and 1440p high in over 50 different games on average. Even so, the MSRP of $289 is a whopping $40 lower than the competition. How the price will turn out in Germany has yet to be seen. At the current exchange rate of 1.02, we calculate a price of around 349 euros for the A750, including German VAT of 19 percent. The RTX 3060 is currently in the price comparison

from 376 euros

listed. The A770, on the other hand, should cost 399 euros or 429 euros, depending on the version.

Accordingly, both the Arc A750 and the A770 should have more to offer from a price-performance point of view than the competition. Intel employee Tom Fellow speaks of an “amazing price that will stir up the market”. Interestingly, however, Intel avoids a comparison with AMD’s Radeon RX 6600 XT or RX 6650 XT. The latter is eleven to 14 percent ahead of the RTX 3060 in our GPU comparison, depending on the resolution, is in the price comparison

from 359 euros

but still a bit cheaper.

Either way, we’ll have to wait for independent test reports to assess the actual performance of the Alchemist GPUs. Intel’s Xe HPH architecture is primarily optimized for modern games based on DirectX12 or Vulkan. These graphics interfaces are mainly used in current AAA titles. Many e-sports games, on the other hand, still rely on the predecessor DirectX 11 and in some cases even on DirectX 9. So it still has to be seen how well the Arc A graphics cards perform overall.

The image above shows the gaming performance-per-dollar for the Arc A750 vs. the RTX 3060. Intel shows different charts where the GPU is often faster, sometimes slower than the competition and the price depends on the game , in which Intel performs worst compared to the competition.

What’s more, Arc’s memory controller is specifically designed to take advantage of the full video memory access made possible by enabling PCIe Resizable Bar (or Smart Access Memory as it’s known on Ryzen systems). Intel systems up to 9th Gen Core processors have received a BIOS update to support ReBAR, but you shouldn’t get an Arc GPU if your system doesn’t support this feature. “If you don’t have a PCIe ReBAR, get a 3060,” Petersen admitted frankly to reporters.

So at first glance, the Arc GPUs seem to be coming out at really attractive prices – at least in the US. In this country, the currently weak euro exchange rate and the high VAT could put a spanner in the works for really attractive prices. Nevertheless, competition stimulates business, and sooner or later a third player could definitely ensure that the prices of the GPUs become more attractive, especially in the middle class. With the presentation of the RTX 4000 on September 21, Nvidia simply ignored the majority of gamers, so the cheapest model costs 1099 euros. Accordingly, it could be just the right time for Intel and AMD to launch inexpensive GPUs.

Intel’s Arc A graphics cards come onto the market with a delay of more than a year but almost too late. Because the next GPU generation is in the starting blocks at both Nvidia and AMD. So Intel has to go the way of an attractive price and that’s exactly what the manufacturer seems to want to do if you look at the MSRP of the Arc A750 and A770. Now it only remains to be seen whether the Alchemist graphics cards can actually keep up with Nvidia’s RTX 3060 in independent test reports and, above all, how the Xe HPG GPUs perform compared to AMD’s Radeon RX 6600 (XT), which has a very good price-performance ratio. provide relationship.

The Arc A GPUS will be released on October 12th and thus on the same day as Nvidia’s RTX 4090. So while one manufacturer wants to score with brute performance, the other wants to go the price-performance route.

A notice:

This article first appeared on our US colleagues under the title “Intel’s $289 Arc A750 graphics card aims to ‘reset the market’ on Oct. 12”