Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has reiterated that the 1st Gen Arc Alchemist desktop graphics cards are on track for a Q2 2022 launch. This statement came during the company’s disappointing Q1 earnings call wherein Gelsinger all but ignored the non-availability of laptops featuring the Arc GPUs. As reported before, the Arc A350M and A370M should already be available in multiple OEM designs, but just aren’t (barring a few impractical exceptions).
The Arc 5 A550M and Arc 7 variants are slated for an early summer launch but going by Intel’s pace, we won’t be seeing them this quarter either. Finally, coming to the desktop lineup, it’d be a miracle if the company manages to put them (in sufficient quantity) on the market even by late summer.
AXG [Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group] is on schedule. We’ve already released the laptop models. In the second quarter we’ll have the desktop models. And we’ll also have more models throughout the year. We’ll be completing the product line
Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO
We’re likely looking at an early fall launch (late August/September), right alongside AMD and NVIDIA’s next-gen lineups which will very soon make the Intel parts very redundant. The top-end Arc A780 is expected to compete with the Radeon RX 6700 XT and the GeForce RTX 3070:
| SKU | Radeon RX 6700XT | GeForce RTX 3070 | Intel ARC A780 |
| Process | 7nm TSMC | Samsung 8nm | 6nm TSMC |
| Shaders | 2560 | 5888 | 4096 |
| Memory|Bus | 12GB|128-bit | 8GB|256-bit | 16GB|256-bit |
| Memory Clock | 16Gbps | 14Gbps | 17.5Gbps |
| Consumption | 230WW | 220W | 175W+ |
Read more about the Arc Alchemist GPU architecture here.
