Mark October 12 down in your diaries, graphics fans, as Intel confirms it will launch the much-awaited Arc A770 GPU priced at just $329. The news came direct from Intel boss, Pat Gelsinger, during his keynote address at the Innovation event being held right now.
Arc A770 is a powerful mid-range solution, going by specs, as it uses Intel’s ACM-G10 die measuring 406mm² and occupying 21.7bn transistors. Arc A770 takes the best bits of that design by utilising all 32 available Xe cores, leading to a traditional 4,096 shaders. You can learn more about the architecture right over here.
Arc A770 has decent in-game core frequency and, unlike other cards, will be available with either 8GB or 16GB of VRAM. Intel says most will arrive with the lower capacity from add-in board partners, presumably with the $329 fee being the starting price, with 16GB reserved for the Intel-branded A770 Limited Edition GPU and select others. It is not known how much the LE will cost at this juncture.
Talking specs further, we can tell Arc A770 LE carries a 17.5Gbps memory clock by working backwards from the 560GB/s bandwidth figure. Plumbed with a total board power of 225W and with due knowledge of the other specifications, Arc A770 LE looks set to battle it out against AMD and Nvidia’s mainstream cards such as the GeForce RTX 3060 and Radeon RX 6600 XT. That being the case, $329 is very competitive… if performance is up to scratch.
Enthusiasts after a more affordable solution won’t have long to wait. Intel graphics evangelist Ryan Shrout has gone on record to suggest Arc A750 is also coming soon. As a recap, Arc A750 LE uses the same ACM-G10 die as Arc A770 LE but reduces performance in most parameters whilst keeping board power the same. Expect it to produce 80 per cent of the head honcho’s performance, and it’s likely built from TSMC 6nm-produced dies that don’t make the A770 grade. There’s no 16GB option, which may hinder performance at higher resolutions. A tantalising price would be $249!
Given the aggressive pricing, an educated guess intimates Intel is willing to forgo profit – when you die size is bigger in millimetres squared than your retail cost in dollars, something is amiss – at the expense of mindshare and market penetration from late-to-arrive Arc. Good news for the consumer.
Looking competent in regular rasterisation and ray tracing while having, we believe, decent framerate-boosting technology in the form of XeSS, a new, value-driven player has entered the game this fall. Exciting times ahead.
