Intel has revealed the final key data of the Arc-A (lchemist) gamer graphics card. On paper, the fastest competes with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 Ti.
With the Xe graphics architecture, Intel wants to return to the graphics card market, which was last served in 1998 with the Intel i740. But Intel is by no means a graphics newcomer, because most processors contain state-of-the-art integrated graphics units. However, due to tight budgets in terms of chip area and power consumption, they were just not suitable for playing in chic 3D worlds. The first line of Arc graphics cards, whose code and product names start with the letter A like the fantasy character Alchemist, is now set to change that. The second generation then stops at B for Battlemage. Similar to the in-house core processors, Intel divides the Arc series into the Arc 7, Arc 5 and Arc 3 model series in descending order of performance.
China first
The entry-level Intel Arc A380 model has been available in China for a few weeks, and sales are also starting in North America.
Intel intends to serve the rather high-priced market in Europe soon with the Arc A580, Arc A770 and Arc A780 mid-range cards. Exact dates and prices have not yet been determined.
Breadcrumb Trail
Following the previous motto of the publications, Intel scattered a number of breadcrumbs and repeatedly gave small insights into the architecture, software and performance of the Arc cards, but without allowing a comprehensive picture of both the planned models and their specifications.
This has now changed in the latest Intel blog post and the four cards mentioned have been described quite extensively.
The top model Intel Arc A770 will start with a computing power of 17.4 TFlops, which is comparable to Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 Ti or AMD’s Radeon RX 6800. However, this parameter does not alone determine the performance of the cards, the more expensive RX 6800 is far faster than Nvidia’s model.
However, Intel itself had compared the Arc A750 internally with Nvidia’s RTX 3060 middle class in an earlier blog post and attested it only a lead of 3 to 5 percent even in the specially selected DirectX 12 and Vulkan benchmarks – older APIs such as DirectX9 however, are capped. Arc A750 and RTX 3060 play in the same TFlops league in terms of computing power, in real terms the RTX 3060 is usually between AMD’s Radeon RX 6600 and RX 6600 XT – they cost between 300 and 400 euros. If Intel wants to gain market share, the newcomers to the Arc series should at least not become more expensive.
| Graphics cards: Intel’s Arc-A series | ||||
| Surname | Arc A770 | Arc A750 | Arc A580 | Arc A380 |
| architecture | X^e HPG | X^e HPG | X^e HPG | X^e HPG |
| production | TSMC N6 (6nm) | TSMC N6 (6nm) | TSMC N6 (6nm) | TSMC N6 (6nm) |
| FP32 ALUs (“Cores”, “Shaders”)) | 4096 | 3584 | 3072 | 1024 |
| processor units | 32 X^e Cores (512 EU) | 28 X^e cores (448 EU) | 24 X^e cores (384 EU) | 8 X^e cores (128 EU) |
| Ray Tracing Units | 32 | 28 | 24 | 8th |
| Matrix vector units | 512 XMX | 448 XMX | 384XMX | 128 XMX |
| base clock speed | no | no | no | no |
| Type. boost | 2.1GHz | 2.05GHz | 1.7GHz | 2.0GHz |
| Max Boost | no | no | no | no |
| Computing power (FP32-TFlops) | 17.2 TFlops | 14.7 TFlops | 10.4 TFlops | 4.1 TFlops |
| storage type | GDDR6 | GDDR6 | GDDR6 | GDDR6 |
| storage amount | 8 (16) GB | 8 GB | 8 GB | 6 GB |
| memory speed | 17.5 Gbps | 16 Gbps | 16 Gbps | 15.5 Gbps |
| storage interface | 256 bits | 256 bits | 256 bits | 96 bits |
| memory transfer rate | 560 GB/s | 512 GB/s | 512 GB/s | 186 GB/s |
| system interface | PCIe 4.0 x16 | PCIe 4.0 x16 | PCIe 4.0 x16 | PCIe 4.0 x8 |
| display engines | 4 (DP2.0, HDMI2.0*) | 4 (DP2.0, HDMI2.0*) | 4 (DP2.0, HDMI2.0*) | 4 (DP2.0, HDMI2.0*) |
| video decoder | AV1, H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP9 | AV1, H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP9 | AV1, H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP9 | AV1, H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP9 |
| video encoder | AV1, H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP9 | AV1, H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP9 | AV1, H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP9 | AV1, H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP9 |
| power connections | 8-pin + 6-pin | 8-pin + 6-pin | no | no |
| Type. Power Consumption (“TDP”) | 225 watts | 225 watts | no | 75 watts |
| Miscellaneous | DirectX 12 Ultimate, X^eSS AI upscaling | DirectX 12 Ultimate, X^eSS AI upscaling | DirectX 12 Ultimate, X^eSS AI upscaling | DirectX 12 Ultimate, X^eSS AI upscaling |
* the chips only support HDMI 2.0, but the cards can redirect display ports 2.0 to HDMI 2.1 with an extra component (protocol converter, PCON).
Arc Limited Edition
Among other things, there will be a so-called IBC version of the Arc A770. IBC stands for Intel Branded Card and therefore roughly corresponds to the reference cards or Founders’ Editions at Nvidia. Intel wants to market the IBCs as a “Limited Edition” and manufactures the cards developed by in-house teams in a factory in Malaysia itself. They should also set a standard for the cards of the board partners.
The A770 Limited Edition should also be available in a version with 16 GB of memory – at least in this respect, Intel’s Arc graphics cards are bulky, because the smaller models also have 8 GB, only the A380 entry-level cards have to be content with 6 GB of graphics memory.
