While we do know a little bit about Arc desktop GPUs and what SKUs we’ll be seeing in the future, they are still mostly a glooming question mark due to the uncertainty of the launch. Speaking of which, Intel has officially said that Arc A-Series will hit desktop in Q2 of this year. However, a new report is now contradicting that statement, suggesting that the cards have been delayed till potentially early Q3 2022.
Arc A-Series delayed
The rumor comes from renowned leaker Enthusiast Citizen, a credible source within the industry who has reported accurately on Intel Arc news in the past. Taking to the Chinese platform, Bilibili, the leaker posted an image with a long message mentioning how despite the first Arc A-Series GPU already being out on mobile, the higher-end SKUs from the same lineup along with desktop GPUs have been delayed till the very end of Q2 or early Q3 2022. Enthusiast Citizen stated that they didn’t know why the GPUs are being delayed but one doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to connect the dots. The delay in question is likely a product of the horrible Arc A350M launch that happened at the end of March. Despite the GPU being “available now”, it’s only available in one country in the world—South Korea—and the drivers are a buggy mess with underwhelming performance. Intel likely wants to get its act together in order to execute a better launch for Arc desktop GPUs since that is what everyone really cares about and it’s Intel’s one chance to prove themselves once and for all. Therefore, rumors about a delay seem to be pointing in the right direction. Moreover, Enthusiast Citizen also mentioned exactly what desktop GPUs Intel has planned for launch in late Q2/early Q3, which we’ll talk about now.
Arc A-Series rumored desktop lineup
In terms of the desktop range, the leaker claims that Intel is working on four different models. These include the A770, A750, and A580 with the ACM-G10 GPU, while the Arc A380 with ACM-G11 GPU is the only card aimed at the entry-level category. Intel’s Arc A770 graphics card leaked for the first time yesterday, confirming its existence, whereas the Arc A380 has already appeared in numerous leaks. Only the Arc A750 and Arc A580 cards have yet to be discovered, although they may pop up around rumor town shortly. There are four models in total, A770, A750, A580, and A380. The strongest A770 is probably a 3060Ti or so. So the A770 may not be the top, and there may be some A970 or other models in the back, but lol Yes, A770M is 16GB VRAM, A770 seems to be smaller than this number, the specific size is not clear, it may be | 86 or 10G, A750 and A580 are 8G VRAM video memory should be correct, there is no other news for the time being. Airbus (not) A380 maybe a dessert card. My personal guess is that the memory is at 60, and the performance should be stronger than the RX 6400. – Enthusiast Citizen (translated from Chinese) Concerning the performance segment of the A-Series desktop lineup, the leaker says that the Arc A770 is aiming for performance faster than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, or around the RTX 3070, as previous rumors had suggested. But what is surprising is that the A770 is said to feature either 10GB or 8GB memory, despite almost all previous rumors indicating that is has 16GB instead. Even more fascinating is the fact that the A770M, the mobile version of the same GPU, is actually said to feature 16GB of VRAM! It could be possible that only the “Limited Edition” GPU Intel has teased (which we believe to be the Arc A770) actually comes with 16GB of memory while the standard variant is kitted with 8/10 GB. Furthermore, there are talks of introducing an even higher category in the form of the Arc A970 series down the line, but take that with the biggest grain of salt possible. Intel first needs to orchestrate the launch of Arc 700 and Arc 500 series before it can even think about one-upping itself with Arc 900. The Arc A750 and Arc A580 will have 8GB of GDDR6 memory, while the Arc A380 will rock 6GB of GDDR6 memory and will compete against the GeForce RTX 3050 because its performance is better than the AMD Radeon RX 6400. The Arc A750 is one that we haven’t heard a lot about and this could be the 448 Execution Units variant of the ACM-G10 that leaked a while ago. Intel’s decision to go with TSMC’s 6nm process node was commendable because it presented the company with a host of untapped potential. While the efficiency side seems to be taken care of, Intel still needs to put in unprecedented effort to unlock the full performance their Arc GPUs are/will be capable of. The Arc A770 graphics card performed slower than the RTX 3060 in yesterday’s leaked OpenCL benchmark, indicating that the drivers are still not optimized and that much work remains to be done. For Arc to become the global phenomenon Intel is hoping for, the company needs to step up and bolster its defenses on all fronts. Right now, drivers are not ready, clearly the hardware is also not ready, and somehow Intel’s distribution channels are also not ready as the one Arc GPU that has launched has worse availability than the PS5 at launch. With NVIDIA and AMD’s next generations of GPUs right around the corner, Arc’s relevancy is hanging by a loose thread, and all we have to see is if Team Blue can knit it back up before it’s too late.
