Liveblog: Intel reveal first Arc GPUs, the Arc A-Series for laptops
Also tease a sleek-looking desktop graphics card coming this summer
The first Intel Arc GPUs are finally here, and they are… for laptops. That might not please anyone hoping for relief from ongoing stock woes in the desktop graphics card market, but the mobile Arc A-Series chips are built for gaming all the same – and the first Arc laptops are launching today. That’s all via the livestreamed launch event that finished mere minutes ago, and that you can find liveblogged below.
Specifically, the laptops going on sale today will have one of the two entry-level ‘Arc 3’ models in the range, the Arc A350M and the Arc A370M. The latter was shown running above 60fps at 1080p in various games, including Hitman 3, Apex Legends, and Genshin Impact. It cracked 115fps in Valorant, too. The more powerful GPUs, from the Arc 5 and Arc 7 families, are set to launch this summer; we can expect these to come closer to beefier rival mobile chips like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 and AMD Radeon RX 6800S.
As for the long-awaited Arc desktop GPUs, those are now due for summer 2022 as well, after missing their earlier Q1 window. No names or specs were given in the mainly laptop GPU-dominated livestream, but it did end with a brief glimpse at a “Special Edition” graphics card from the desktop range. It’s a pretty slick design too, with tapered edges, dual fans and what Patrick Bateman would call a tasteful thickness.
The laptop GPUs were also confirmed to support various features we’re expecting from the desktop cards, including hardware-based ray tracing and XeSS, which is Intel’s take on DLSS-style upscaling. Though it’s hard to say how well XeSS-upscaled games will look versus native resolution, as Intel only chose to compare native 1080p against upscaled 4K. Like, yeah? Of course a game will look better when it’s upscaled to twice the res?
More encouragingly, a bunch of new games were confirmed to get XeSS support, joining early adopter Hitman 3. Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Death Stranding Director's Cut, Ghostwire: Tokyo, Chivalry II, GRID Legends, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt, Chorus, Enlisted, Super People, The Settlers and more will work with Intel’s performance-boosting tech. One last caveat, however: XeSS is also launching in the summer, so those Arc 3 laptops will have to go without it for the time being.
Our live coverage of this event has finished.
mattevansc3 says: Did he just say 50 X instead of 50 times?Yep, this is a thing executives do. It's odd.
mattevansc3 says: So with the comparison being made to Xe in the presentation, I’d the Arc 3 more of a iGPU competitor than say a competitor to a 3050 mobile GPU?Quite possibly, though the mobile 3050 isn't particularly powerful itself...