The GPU showcased in the tweet turns out to be Arc A770 as pointed out by Videocardz. To recap, Intel’s Arc A770 features 2 configurations (8GB + 16GB) where the ‘Limited Edition’ variant ships with 16GB of G6 memory. AIB partners have been given to choice to manfuacture the 8GB variant ‘if the want’. The Xe Core/ RT Core count stands at 32 each. You can read more about the official specifications of the Arc GPUs here. Raja mentions that the GPU is ‘getting ready for launch’. A release is extremely close, however, we still do not have an approximate date.
— Raja Koduri (Bali Makaradhwaja) (@RajaXg) September 11, 2022
The Issues
The promised launch is set to end just 20 days (Q3 2022). Some Arc GPU(s) have launched in the US, however, the mainstream market has no other choice than to import from the ‘few select retailers‘. Secondly, the Arc microarchitecture affects data transfer heavily as it relies on transferring data in large bursts making ReBar a necessity. The icing on the cake is that NVIDIA and AMD are just about to launch their next-Gen GPUs. Furthermore, the last-Gen offerings from both giants are hitting record lows in terms of pricing.
Hope For the Future
As a company, all these issues should mean massive losses in profit along with with reduced market confidence. Despite these hardships, team blue has persisted this far and they’re aiming for the long term. Recently, information came up that Intel’s team is already working on Battlemage (Arc B series) & Celestial (Arc C Series). Better yet, Arc reportedly offers better RT performance than NVIDIA. It wont be long until we see an Intel GPU in our build, however, team blue has to improve their drivers. Even if a GPU is packed with immense raw power, it wont work properly unless provided with adequate driver support. Its like owning a Bugatti (Fast GPU), but you have never driven a car (Bad driver, literally). Yeah, we’re definitely competitive or better than Nvidia with ray tracing hardware. ~Tom Peterson
