Intel has officially launched its first Arc desktop graphics card in the form of the A380 in China. The chipmaker claims up to 25% more performance than rival AMD’s Radeon RX 6400 at a lower price point. Furthermore, it is being marketed as a price-effective GPU for FPS and eSports fans, offering over 60 FPS in the most popular titles.
The support page for the Arc GPUs is up, detailing the minimum hardware requirements of the new parts. Although the 1st Gen Arc lineup should virtually be compatible with all PCIe Gen 3 capable motherboards, Resizable BAR or Smart Access Memory will be limited to just three of the latest Intel platforms.
| CPU | Motherboard |
|---|---|
| 12th Gen Intel Core Processors | Intel 600 Series motherboard with Resizable BAR support enabled |
| 11th Gen Intel Core Processors 10th Gen Intel Core Processors | Intel 500 Series motherboard with Resizable BAR support enabled Intel 400 Series motherboard with Resizable BAR support enabled |
These include the 12th Gen Alder Lake, 11th Gen Rocket Lake, and the 10th Gen Comet Lake processors and their accompanying chipsets/motherboards. Support for AMD Ryzen systems may be added at a later date. It’s funny that Intel uses the term Smart Memory Access for rBAR on its official support page as that’s simply AMD marketing lingo rather than being a technical phrase.
Motherboard Requirements
- Full-size PCI Express 3.0 (or newer) x16 slot
- Resizable (Re-Size) BAR
