A major board partner (like ASRock, ASUS, or MSI) has reportedly stopped the production of Intel’s Arc graphics cards, citing quality reasons. This report was published by Igor’s Lab, according to whom the chipmaker is having difficulty finding board partners for its discrete GPU lineup. Premature drivers paired with limited production capacity have put the shade on Intel’s Odyssey.
To make matters worse, Intel hasn’t given any price guarantees to its partners or covered the costs for RMAs, returns, or other replacement policies. This is something both NVIDIA and AMD cover via various agreements for all their AIBs. The lack of experience surrounding Intel’s approach to its Arc graphics cards is another unknown variable making OEMs uneasy, and unless the chipmaker provides concrete guarantees to its partners, it won’t get very far in the DIY market.
According to Igor, at least one major board partner has completely halted the production of the Intel Arc GPUs due to “quality concerns“. If any more AIBs follow through with the same strategy, then Intel will have a real problem on its hands, and be reduced to a limited quantity of reference SKUs.
Just like the actual production of video cards, most AIBs have almost completely stopped the marketing campaigns for the Arc Alchemist family with Intel’s own PR slowly fizzling away after the repeated delays. And unless there’s a hard launch in the West, don’t expect things to change.
Source: Igor’s Lab
