According to a new post on Weibo, Intel AIB partner Gunnir has released a stock clocked lower tier variant of the Arc A380 called the Index. Most notably, this model ditched his 6-pin power connector entirely, greatly improving GPU compatibility on lower-end systems.
Compared to the factory overclocked Photon variant, the physical form factor of the card is almost unchanged. The card is physically a few millimeters thicker, but features a more basic greyish color scheme and no LED lighting at all.
The most noticeable difference between Photon and the new Index is in card specs. The Index has no factory overclocking at all and caps the stock frequency flat at 2000MHz. This is a deficit of 450MHz compared to the factory overclocked Photon.
But on the contrary, Index completely do away with the 6-pin auxiliary power connector found on Photon. This could be an advantage for Index as it reduces its power limit to the PCIe limit of 75W and allows users to install GPUs in low-end systems without an auxiliary power connector.
For most gamers who really want an Arc GPU in the first place, Photon with the extra power and frequency headroom is still a great card. But for those looking to put his Intel GPU in a system with a lower-end power supply, the Index does the job well.
In summary, the Arc A380 is Intel’s new entry-level discrete GPU, featuring 8 Xe cores, 8 ray tracing units and 128 matrix Xe vector engines. With a 75W TBP running on a PCIe 4.0 x16 interface, the stock frequency peaks at 2000mHz.
In our review of the A380, we found its performance to be mediocre at best, somewhere between the GTX 1650 and RX 6500 XT. But the biggest problem right now surrounds Intel’s immature discrete graphics drivers, which may make the A380’s gaming his performance very unpredictable. In some titles the A380 performs very well. In other titles, competitors such as the RX 6400 and GTX 1650 do not, but the A380 is completely non-functional.
Thankfully, the Gunnir Photon version of the Arc A380 doesn’t cost much at $139.Currently this card is only available in Asia (opens in new tab) As far as we know — but if Gunnir decides to start the index in America, we expect the card to be priced even lower than the Photon versions with lower clock speeds and TDP. Be aware of the unpredictable nature of the Arc A380 at this time as we continue to work out kinks.
