Intel just held its Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) 2022 exhibition in Dallas, United States, where we got possibly our first look at the upcoming flagship Arc A-Series GPU in the flesh. Posted up in a glass box with no name or any other details, the GPU was able to be captured by @theBryceIsRt who uploaded the pictures on Twitter. We can see that this is the exact same GPU Intel teased at the end of their Arc A-Series mobile launch event in March.
— Bryce_GfxDriverGuru (@theBryceIsRt) June 3, 2022 The sleek black aesthetic is paired with a dual-fan design and the words “ARC Limited Edition” embossed on the top of the shroud. As I said, there is no other branding on the card but the design confirms it’s identical to the one seen in Intel’s launch event. Therefore, (thanks to previous reports) we can deduct we’re looking at either the Arc A770 or the Arc A780. Either graphics card will be utilizing a full ACM-G10 GPU, paired alongside 16GB of GDDR6 memory. We can also see in the pictures that the card has two power connectors, a 6-pin and one 8-pin so that rules out PCIe Gen5 compatibility. In terms of performance, the Arc flagship GPU is said to compete with NVIDIA’s RTX 3070 series and AMD’s Radeon RX 6700 series. When we’ll get to see this card actually ship, though, is still a mystery. Past leaks and rumors have indicated that drivers for Arc GPUs are not ready. There are a lot of bugs and compatibility issues with the Arc mobile chips already out there in laptops. Not only that but the Arc mobile launch itself was executed hastily which does not point to good signs for Arc desktop. Let’s just hope everything is neat and clean by the time Arc launches on desktop. Moreover, we also know that the card is supposed to launch later this summer, in the third quarter. Arc’s launch will most likely precede AMD and NVIDIA‘s similar GPU announcements, giving the Blue Team a head-start over its competitors. And Intel will need everything it can get because this release is imperative to the company. Years upon years worth of efforts, multiple failed attempts, and billions of dollars of investments have led to this moment. Arc is too important for Intel to fail and we’ll get to see it in action very soon.
