Intel won't bother Nvidia this year because the Arc A780 GPU never existed

Intel won't bother Nvidia this year because the Arc A780 GPU never existed

Intel's Arc GPUs are slowly rolling out around the world, and with the initial launch in China now in Team Blue's rear-view mirror, speculation abounds as to where and when we'll see the next Arc graphics cards. Most of what we've seen so far has been related to the Arc A3 series; cheaper and less powerful cards to compete with budget offerings from Nvidia and AMD.

But of course the most exciting GPUs are always the most powerful, which is why the Arc A7 series has been highly anticipated, with speculation that Intel's ACM-G10 GPU array will battle it out against Nvidia's RTX 3000 series. . But it turns out that the long-awaited Arc A780, which would have been the most powerful Arc GPU, was never going to come out.

Ryan Shrout (opens in a new tab), who handles graphics marketing for Intel, confirmed via Twitter that there is no incoming A780 card, and not only that, but he also claims that Intel didn't even intend to make a.

This means that the high-end offering of the first wave of Arc GPUs will be the A770 and A750, which have been officially announced and are intended to compete with the RTX 3060 (although exact specs have yet to be released). Intel recently showed off these cards, revealing a minimalist reference design with two fans, but we've yet to see them properly in action.

Despite some rumors to the contrary, there is no such thing as an Intel Arc A780 and an A780 was never intended to exist. Let's settle this debate. 🤣July 16, 2022

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Opinion: Nvidia really doesn't need to worry about Intel anymore

Currently, the only discrete desktop GPU that Intel has for sale is the inexpensive Arc A380. We know that the A770 and A750 are coming; Pilot leaks also suggest we'll see a low-profile A580 and A310. It's not a particularly impressive list, and the lack of an Arc A780 to combat Nvidia's excellent RTX 3070 is a knock.

It's no secret that Intel has had trouble getting the Arc series off the ground; delays due to COVID-19 and global chip shortages slowed things down considerably, and even after launch the Arc A380 encountered performance issues. There is no public roadmap; To me, it seems like Intel doesn't have much of a plan.

While there is no way to confirm this, I personally suspect that Shrout's statement might contain a half-truth. It seems unlikely that Intel ever planned to compete with the RTX 3070; Even if it wasn't called the A780, targeting the RTX 3060 as the top end of its new GPU lineup seems a bit weak. Intel may have simply realized that it couldn't get enough performance out of the ACM-G10 GPU to compete with Nvidia's more powerful cards.

To top it off, Intel now really needs to launch these desktop GPUs quickly. Nvidia's Lovelace and AMD's next-generation RDNA 3 graphics cards will launch in early September. So Intel desperately needs to complete its first-gen Arc launch within the next month if it wants to secure any significant market share.