Intel is going ahead with its planned launch of Intel Arc A7 desktop graphics cards, confirming pricing for the Arc A750 and A770 Limited Edition (LE), having already confirmed the price and release date for the standard A770.
While the latter card sits in the middle at €329, the LE variant, which has a 16GB VRAM upgrade, over the standard model's 8GB, will cost €349, while the A750 has a very cheap MSRP of €289. There is also an LE version of the A750, but the differences seem to be only cosmetic. (Pricing and availability of these cards outside of the United States have yet to be confirmed.)
Intel is comparing the A770 to Nvidia's RTX 3060 Ti and the A750 to the RTX 3060, and the performance comparisons have been great so far, especially since the Arc cards are significantly cheaper than similar offerings from Nvidia and AMD, but of course we will reserve judgment until we can test them ourselves.
The Limited Edition models are essentially the same as Nvidia's "Founders Edition" cards, made and sold directly by Intel, with a sleek dual-fan design. The A770 LE will have RGB lighting, but apparently the A750 won't, which is probably a way to keep the price down. It's unclear if LE cards will actually be "limited" per se; Intel hasn't said that it will only make a set number of these GPUs.
Analysis: Intel's pricing is so aggressive that Nvidia should reconsider
Intel is certainly getting bold with Arc now, scheduling these cards to launch on the same day (October 12) as Nvidia's €4090 flagship RTX 1,599. It should be a busy day already, with the Amazon Prime Early Access sale, Microsoft Surface reveal event, and Google Cloud event all happening on the same day.
After Pat Gelsinger's cheeky comments about the high price of new Nvidia cards and Team Green's insistence that GPU prices aren't going down anytime soon, it looks like Intel is ready to strike, and I personally couldn't be happier about it. it's. .
Competition breeds innovation, as they say, so Intel could be about to give the GPU market a much-needed boost when it comes to delivering competent gaming performance at a very competitive price—assuming, of course, that the cards Arc do meets our expectations.
Nvidia clearly plans to keep its prices pretty high; We don't know what lower-end cards it might have in store at the moment, like the RTX 4060, but it seems likely that we'll see some generational price increases. Considering these Arc cards are already cheaper than their RTX 3000-series counterparts, Nvidia will have to respond with price cuts if it wants to stay relevant in the budget space.
The war for the best graphics card will probably never end, but with Intel entering the fray, I think the best budget GPU field is about to get very, very interesting. It's almost shocking, considering Arc's terrible development time; I was very critical of this myself, but it finally looks like the blue team is ready to fight, and I can't wait to see what happens next.