announced its first set of Arc discrete GPUs for laptops in March this year before following up with the launch of the Arc 3 desktop graphics cards in June. The company then launched the Arc Pro A-Series professional GPUs last month for creators and artificial intelligence tasks. However, the high-end A700-series desktop cards have remained MIA until now.
Over the past few months, multiple leaks have revealed several aspects of the cards. One of these leaks earlier this year even seemingly revealed the entire list of the company's forthcoming Arc desktop GPUs. According to the leak, the range will include the Intel Arc A770, A750, A580, A380 and A310 desktop GPUs and A770M, A730M, and A550 laptop GPUs. However, Intel has faced multiple issues with its graphics division. The GPUs have been delayed repeatedly due to various problems, including glitchy drivers and the impact of the stringent Covid-related lockdowns in China.
According to Intel's Tom Petersen and Ryan Shrout, the company will launch its Arc A700-series graphics cards "very soon." Talking to German tech site PC Games Hardware and popular YouTube channel Digital Foundry, Petersen and Shrout also confirmed that the following two Alchemist desktop graphics cards will be the much-anticipated Arc A770 and A750.
Intel Arc A770 And A750 Performance
The two Intel reps also said that the company would sell reference cards directly from its website, while third-party manufacturers will also make custom boards, as is the norm in the GPU market. What's more, both the reference cards and the custom boards will launch simultaneously, meaning s will have many options to choose from right from the get-go. The company also clarified that the new cards would get a wider release, unlike prior launches confined to China. However, the initial launch will only happen in select countries, meaning it won't be a global release.
Petersen also confirmed something significant about the cards. According to him, the flagship A770 will sit somewhere between the vanilla RTX 3060 and the 3060 Ti in of performance and will be faster than AMD's Radeon RX 6600XT. He also claimed that the Arc A750 will offer a similar performance to that of the RTX 3060. Of course, the performance will vary substantially between games, with DX11 titles expected to see somewhat degraded performance compared to DX12 or Vulcan. Overall, the Intel Arc GPUs are expected to offer an exciting alternative to existing options from NVIDIA and AMD, but it remains to be seen how they turn out going forward.
Source: PC Games Hardware, Digital Foundry