The Intel Arc A770 and A750 Limited Edition Review Kits have arrived. You can now view photos and videos of your kit. Of course, Intel and many other places have him making unboxing videos for over a month, so this is kind of silly. Still, I’m thrilled that Intel’s “real” competitor finally has the best graphics card in the house (because the Intel DG1 and Arc A380 don’t really count in my book) , working on testing for review. Over the next few days.
Intel announced the official Arc A770 and A750 pricing yesterday. This is good news for those looking to upgrade to a new graphics card without breaking the bank. Mid-range GPUs are back, or at least that’s what Intel is messaging, with the A750 priced at $289, going head-to-head with Nvidia’s RTX 3060. The Arc card is set to launch on his October 12th.
October 12th, shouldn’t there be something else going on that day? Oh yeah it’s about time Nvidia also launches the GeForce RTX 4090 and it’s priced at $1,599 and it’s clearly mid-range It’s nowhere near pricing or performance. It’s a strange dichotomy, but if Intel wants to gain market share in discrete GPUs, this should be a promising start.
The review kit included Intel’s own branded A770 and A750 Limited Edition cards from Arc. Think of these like LE car models from different manufacturers. These aren’t limited production or anything, but I would like to know how many Arc GPUs Intel has ordered from his TSMC.
In summary, the Arc Alchemist GPU is built using TSMC’s N6 process node and has a die size of 406mm^2. Smaller than AMD’s Navi 21 (520mm^2) but larger than Navi 22 (335mm^2). Prices start in the $300 range, so Intel certainly isn’t going to make a ton of money off these GPUs, but they can carve out a modest slice of the graphics card pie.
The two limited edition cards are nearly identical, but the A770 includes RGB lighting and comes with a USB cable if you want to sync the lighting with the motherboard’s LEDs. Other than that, the main design elements are identical, featuring a dual-slot form factor, two 15-blade fans, and an 8-pin + 6-pin power connector. The same is true for TBP (Total Board Power) at 225W.
Under the hood, the A770 Limited Edition comes with 16 GB of fast 17.5 Gbps GDDR6 memory and 32 Xe cores. The A750 Limited Edition only has 8 GB of 16 Gbps GDDR6 with 28 Xe cores. Based on the specs listed below, the A770 is expected to offer around 10-15% higher performance. Note that the A770 8GB model will have slower VRAM speeds. So I can’t help but think it’s worth the extra $20 for a 16GB card.
| Ark A770 | Ark A750 | Ark A580 | Ark A380 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| architecture | ACM-G10 | ACM-G10 | ACM-G10 | ACM-G11 |
| process technology | TSMC N6 | TSMC N6 | TSMC N6 | TSMC N6 |
| Transistor (billion) | 21.7 | 21.7 | 21.7 | 7.2 |
| Die size (mm^2) | 406 | 406 | 406 | 157 |
| Xe core | 32 | 28 | twenty four | 8 |
| GPU core (shader) | 4096 | 3584 | 3072 | 1024 |
| MXM engine | 512 | 448 | 384 | 128 |
| RTUs | 32 | 28 | twenty four | 8 |
| Game clock (MHz) | 2100 | 2050 | 1700 | the year of 2000 |
| VRAM Speed (Gbps) | 17.5 (16GB) / 16 (8GB) | 16 | 16 | 15.5 |
| VRAM (GB) | 16/8 | 8 | 8 | 6 |
| VRAM bus width | 256 | 256 | 256 | 96 |
| ROP | 128 | 128 | 128 | 32 |
| TMU | 256 | 224 | 192 | 64 |
| TFLOPS FP32 (Boost) | 17.2 | 14.7 | 10.4 | 4.1 |
| TFLOPS FP16 (MXM) | 138 | 118 | 84 | 33 |
| Bandwidth (GBps) | 560 (16GB) / 512 (8GB) | 512 | 512 | 186 |
| PCIe link | x16 4.0 | x16 4.0 | x16 4.0 | x8 4.0 |
| TBP (Watts) | 225 | 225 | 175 | 75 |
| Release date | October 12, 2022 | October 12, 2022 | ? | June 2022 |
| starting price | $349 (16GB) / $329 (8GB) | $289 | ? | $139 |
Intel seems confident in its ability to compete with Nvidia’s RTX 3060 with one of its Arc A700 models. That’s all well and good, but I should point out that AMD also has cards that sell for around $300. Radeon RX 6650 XT starting at $299 (opens in new tab) (after $20 rebate card), Radeon RX 6600 starting at $229 (opens in new tab).
According to the GPU benchmark hierarchy, these AMD cards are just above and below the RTX 3060 in standard gaming performance. Again, the RTX 3060 outperforms the 6650 XT by around 30% in ray tracing games, but Intel seems to be more confident in Arc’s ray tracing abilities. XeSS and DLSS should also be factored into the equation, but DLSS gives a pretty head start in terms of adoption rates.
In other words, it will be an interesting end to 2022. Arc GPUs are finally here, along with the Nvidia RTX 40-series Ada Lovelace GPUs and AMD RX 7000-series RDNA 3 GPUs coming in the near future. All signs point to AMD and Nvidia tackling the high-end and enthusiast performance segments first. That means Intel should have months to name Arc products in the budget and mid-range markets.
We plan to have a full review of the A770 and A750 ready in time for the official launch date, so check back at that time.
