Finally, desktop graphics processing units with Intel’s Arc A380 architecture have arrived in the United States.
At long last, Intel’s Arc A380 is available for purchase in the United States. With an expected release date of August 22, you can pre-order ASRock’s Challenger Arc A380 6GB desktop graphics card on newegg.com. It hasn’t sold out yet, which is astounding.
Intel and its CEO Pat Gelsinger have had reason to be concerned about the state of the Arc GPU product line for some time now. It is unclear how this new card will alter the tides, given that Intel is expected to lose $3.5 billion and that analysts have suggested it sell off its discrete GPU unit.
Gunnir’s Arc A380 GPU has been seen on the Chinese market, and now ASRock is offering it, too. Meanwhile, MSI has developed a small, low-power variant of the graphics card specifically for laptops and small desktops. The A380 competes with the AMD Radeon RX 6400 and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1630 as one of the more affordable GPUs in the Arc range.
This GPU is niche, but Arc is in trouble
Interesting pricing. The Arc A380 isn’t a very impressive GPU, but it’s cheaper than both of its primary competitors at $139.99. Neither the RX 6400 nor the GTX 1630 are really outstanding, so the bar isn’t that high. In other territories, it equates to £115/AU$200.
ASRock’s A380 GPU has 6GB of VRAM, factory-overclocked performance, and AV1 video encoding. This might make it the finest budget GPU for lightweight work PCs or media-center setups, despite dismal gaming performance.
This isn’t the release needed to save Intel Arc. The improved AMD RX 6500 XT costs just $155 in the US and could offer higher performance. Intel teases the more powerful (and maybe more intriguing) Arc A7 cards, but with no US release date yet, Team Blue is still in jeopardy — even if its current-gen Alder Lake CPUs are selling well.
As part of its ever-confusing Arc rollout plan, Intel has also unveiled a line of specialised Pro GPUs. As much as we want Intel’s graphics venture to succeed, this feels like a fall when the business should be running.