After a long period of talking about its Intel Arc GPUs - and after already releasing some entry-level models for laptops - Intel has finally announced the release date for its first Arc desktop GPU, the Intel Arc A770. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger confirmed on stage at the Intel Innovation 2022 Day that the long-awaited GPU will be launching next month starting at $329.

In terms of specs, the Intel Arc A770 is packing 32 Xe cores, 32 ray tracing units, and 512 Intel Ce Matrix Extensions Engines, as well as 512 Xe Vector Engines. The GPU is clocked at 2100Mhz and has a total board power (TBP) of 225W. There are two variants of the Intel Arc A770 - one with 16GB of GDDR6 memory, and one with just 8GB, which also has slightly lower bandwidth.

Intel will specifically be launching the Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition, which includes 16GB of video memory. However, it's unclear whether the $329 price tag refers to that model or to the 8GB variant. During the keynote, Gelsinger claimed that the Arc A770 offers a 65% performance advantage in ray tracing over its competition, though it didn't mention what the competition is.

Live presentation with a slideshow shown claiming that the Intel Arc A770 has 65% better eak performance in ray tracing than the competition

From what we've heard, while this is the range-topper for Intel, the Arc A770 is expected to compete with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, which is certainly a powerful GPU, but sits more in the mid range of Nvidia's lineup. That makes the $329 price tag make a lot more sense, as that's exactly the same price as the GeForce RTX 3060, and if Intel can manage a 65% performance advantage at that price point, that could be enough to attract a lot of budget-conscious gamers.

The Intel Arc A770 is the only model we got to hear about at the keynote today, but Intel's Ryan Shrout tweeted that we'll also hear more about the Arc A750 later this week. This will be a slightly more affordable model, but it should still deliver strong performance and it could help Intel undercut Nvidia in the mid-range.

With the recent debut of the GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs and AMD scheduled to introduce RDNA3 graphics in early November, competition could be about to get a lot more fierce in the gaming GPU space.

Source: Intel

Via: Videocardz