Finally, ARC Alchemist graphics cards have official prices. This means that we can get a rough idea about its position in the market. That is, against which NVIDIA or AMD models will they be positioned in the market and will have to be compared in terms of price. Where will each of Intel‘s first generation Gaming GPUs sit? Will they be able to give a good return per euro invested?
For some time now we have had a suspicion that the chips for Intel’s ARC Alchemist desktop and laptop range would be the same. If we think about it and look at the situation of NVIDIA and AMD, we will see that the top-of-the-range chip of each of them does not have a portable version, but all the others do. Of course, it is not the same chip, but versions optimized to work with lower temperatures and power consumption.
These are the prices of the ARC Alchemist
Through a simple slide we have been able to see what the initial range of the ARC Alchemist will be and as you can see the most powerful is the A770 , the hypothetical A780 that was supposed to be the top of the range of the first generation of graphics cards from Intel has completely disappeared. It is a GPU with a power close to the RTX 3060 Ti and the Radeon RX 665 0, both 8 GB , but the Intel graphics will also come with a 16 GB configuration. Said graphics card will be around €400 in price.
The second of the ARC Alchemist prices that can be guessed is that of the A750 , a trimmed down version of the 8GB A770 that will be a bit lower than the first, but over €300 . Its power is similar to an RTX 3060 or a Radeon 6600 . It should be noted that both models would use the standard card design that Intel presented a few weeks ago and that you can see in the header image that presides over this news.
As for the third graphics card on the list that we can consider as gaming is the A580, whose price will be between 200 and 300 euros . This is not based on the same chip, but the same architecture as the other two. So it may take a little longer to see it. Its raw power and bus with video memory is just half that of the A770. Its positioning is in front of the NVIDIA RTX 3050 in terms of power.
Chess move by Intel?
Although it is true that their ARC Alchemist are late, the important thing for them is to gain market share and it is very clear that the vast majority of users are going to buy a graphics card for less than 400 euros. Especially with the crisis that is upon us, where the money is going to be invested more in other more fundamental things on a day-to-day basis.
As for the comparison of consumption and performance, apparently the ARC Alchemist architecture is not the most efficient and possibly requires higher clock speeds to be able to match NVIDIA and AMD in the same price segment. On the other hand, it seems that Intel has left aside the Ray Tracing factor for the moment. For the simple fact that due to the cost in frames that it turns out to activate it, it is not very popular and preferences are changing in favor of being able to play games at a good resolution and speed. The ARC Alchemist supports this technology, but we do not know if comparatively at the level of NVIDIA or AMD.
In any case, we are still surprised not to see a custom model from graphics card manufacturers. Do they exist or should we wait some time?
