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We have been waiting for this for a long time. Intel has finally revealed the release date and price of its next Arc A770 graphics card: October 12 and $329.
Intel told us it would be competitive on price for its upcoming A770 and A750 graphics cards, and it appears to be at least for the A770. The price of A750 is not yet known.
Because the A770 is said to face the RTX 3060 in performance (opens in a new tab)—Intel says it will be compatible or better in at least DX12 and Vulkan games—that price makes a lot of sense. It’s actually the same MSRP as Nvidia’s popular budget GPU, although Intel says no RTX 3060s are actually available for that price, instead listing a price around $418 for that card.
Intel previously told me that we will see “a card that is faster than the [RTX] 3060 at lower prices.” That has to be the A750, then, as Intel said that should compete with the RTX 3060 and maybe beat it in some cases. The A750 should be priced lower than the RTX 3060, too, but again, we haven’t heard confirmation about the price of that card. I sure hope Intel can keep that promise, anyway.
After looking around a few retailers just now, I’m inclined to agree that Nvidia’s card doesn’t sell close to its MSRP (at least for a brand new model rather than an open box). Although you can at least find them a touch cheaper than mentioned, like this MSI model for $410 (opens in a new tab).
But point made, Intel. If it can stick to that price point and maintain a steady supply of cards (which it says it has plenty of, but will release gradually), it might prove a decent card for players on a slimmer budget.
However, it goes up against AMD at this price point and the RX 6600 (opens in a new tab) launched for about the same price but is often found for less today. That Radeon card tends to slip behind the RTX 3060 (opens in a new tab) in our testing, but it looks like the Intel A770’s performance will really depend on the API you choose.
In Vulkan and DX12, Intel seems confident in the performance of the A770. But in DX11 and older APIs, not so much. At least with ray tracing games, Intel seems very confident in the A770’s ability. Heck, it even claims a 65% “peak performance” improvement against “the competition” (presumably the RTX 3060) in bandwidth.
Although who can say if Intel’s third-party models will also make it to that $329. Intel is only confirming the A770 Limited Edition model MSRP here, which is a model of card it produces under its own brand instead of relying on AIBs to do it. So far we don’t know which partners Intel has secured for its upcoming first-generation Arc GPUs, but we do know that it has at least talked to a few. ASRock produced an A380 GPU, which was Intel’s first, and very low-end, discrete GPU out of the gate, so maybe ASRock will take it on the A7 cards as well.
Admittedly, there are still some unknowns about Arc—most of it activity outside of Intel’s own labs. Fortunately, as Pat notes during Intel Innovation, Intel A770 cards are headed to reviewers, including yours truly, so I’ll have that information to share with you closer to that October 12th release date. Stay tuned.
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