After months of teasers and hype, Intel have just launched the first of their discrete Arc GPU’s. The A-series cards currently available are the A350M and the A370M, and are the least powerful in the Arc lineup, with roughly only twice the power of their integrate Xe graphics.
Despite this however, they support DirectX12 and have dedicated ray-tracing hardware.
The A350M is the very bottom of the Arc 3 series, fitted with six Xe-cores and six ray-tracying units, while the A370M bring the counts for both up to eight.
The intent for the two Arc 3 cards is to be used in highly portable devices, with the ability to offer more graphics power than integrated graphics with only a 25W-50W power range.
Credit: Intel
The Arc 3 release is just the tip of the iceberg of Intel’s new GPU range, with the Arc 5 and Arc 7 series cards due for launch late this year, as well as a release of desktop GPUs under the same branding. Furthermore, currently not available is Intel’s XeSS AI super-sampling system that was one of their main demos at the 2022 CES. The software is designed to upscale the resolution of games on the spot. Intel have stated that it is due for release at a similar time to their Arc 5 and Arc 7 GPUs.
While there is no indication of how the new cards will perform against their main gaming GPU rivals, Nvidia and AMD, Intel have consumer experience as a top priority.
In an interview with The Verge, VP and GM of Intel’s client graphics products and solutions, Roger Chandler stated that the company is “focused on delivering a good experience.”
“There are going to be some benchmarks where we lose and some benchmarks where we win.”
They company have stated that for now, their products are designed to allow users to access great performance rather than compete with flagships.
“We’re not going to be scaling it to, like, the absolute ultra performance, that type of thing… “It’s really kind of that mainstream performance where you can a really solid gaming experience [and a] great creator experience.”
Credit: Intel
They have confirmed the same with their desktop GPU’s which won’t be ready to “address the ultra-enthusiast segment” until their third generation.
However, the Arc graphics cards have added features up their sleeves beyond pure power that make them competitive on the market, such as AV1 hardware acceleration support for faster video encoding, Intel Deep Link technology for power sharing optimization and the Arc Control app, which is similar to Nvidia’s GeForce experience.
The Arc 3 cards are currently found in the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro, and are set to appear in many more devices across different brands, with prices starting at $899 USD.
