For those who still doubted these would ever actually launch, Intel is ready to roll. Following the recent reveal that the Intel Arc A770 graphics card would launch at $329, there's follow-up news on its sibling. The Arc A750 will join the A770 launching on October 12 and it'll cost an astonishing $289.
Furthermore, Intel has clarified that the $329 price tag will be attached to the 8GB version of the A770. The company's own limited edition card with 16GB will cost more, but not a lot more. That one will cost $349 and also be available from October 12. There's no word yet on pricing for the Arc A580, but we're told to expect that in due course.
The price tag tells you what section of the GPU market this first run of higher-end Arc cards will be targeting, but Intel is taking how much these things cost very seriously.
Resetting the market
During its most recent briefing with the press, Intel talked about "resetting the market" when it comes to GPU pricing. This tech, it says, is getting more and more expensive and Intel is the last big company that can really do anything about it. As such, Intel is doing whatever it can to try and bring prices back down. Whether it works out only time will tell, but it's refreshing to hear off the back of Nvidia's CEO happily declaring Moore's Law dead while rolling out its own $1,500 graphics cards.
Of course, the Arc A770 and A750 are not designed to compete with Nvidia's highest-end GPUs, not even AMDs. It's starting lower down, which frankly makes total sense. Look at the most used GPUs on Steam and you'll see as clear as day that gamers are still using mid-tier cards in their droves. That Intel is pushing out a 16GB card for $349 in itself is extremely impressive.
Until we get these in hand for testing, we've only got Intel's own data to go on. But we're told to expect RTX 3060-ish performance from both but at a lower price. The performance-per-dollar ratio is something Intel is very proud of, claiming it's 53% better on the A750 and 42% on the more expensive A770.
Arc is real and it's coming soon
There are those out there that didn't think these GPUs would ever see the light of day, and recent rumors about the future of the graphics division at Intel did nothing to improve that. But these are very real products that will on sale to real people very soon.
Those who buy an A770 or A750 will also get some free games to play on it, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Gotham Knights. Arc is obviously designed to go hand-in-hand with XeSS, Intel's AI upscaling technology, but isn't a necessity. The first XeSS game is already here, with Shadow of the Tomb Raider recently seeing it added. And you can try it out on your existing GPU.
Perhaps most interesting of all is that Intel hinted it isn't done with whatever the launch hardware is. Responding to a question on why the two launch GPUs are rated for 225W, there was an indication that there's still more that can be unlocked. It has high compute horsepower and there is, apparently, space for future improvements through driver updates. Who knows what that means but at least for now, Intel seems to be right behind its new hardware.
Partner cards may well begin to appear around the October launch date, and it's expected that third-party A770's will be of the 8GB variant. Intel wouldn't be drawn on any further details, so it'll be interesting to see what appears. To find out more as we wait for the grand launch, you can check out the extensive video collection on Intel's YouTube channel.