- The Intel Arc A770 lands on 12th October
- The GPU is priced rather competitively at $329
- The GPU’s performance is comparable to an Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti
UPDATE:
Following publication of this story we have heard back from Intel in South Africa and we have been told that there has not been any confirmation of the Intel Arc GPUs arriving in South Africa.
Original Story
A new challenger in the GPU game has been waiting in the wings for some time now and next month its first GPUs hit the market.
That challenger is of course Intel and its Arc GPUs which have been given an official release date of 12th October and a starting price of $329. This was announced by Intel chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger at the Intel Innovation event being held this week.
While there is yet to be independent testing done on these GPUs, the on-paper specs look rather restrained and we mean that in a good way. For example, as Ars Technica reports, the Intel Arc A770 – which is the beefiest GPU of the bunch – is comparable to an Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti.
The GPU features 4 096 shader units, 16GB of GDDR6 memory and sports a boost clock of 2.1GHz. In addition the Arc A770 supports a feature called Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) which is an upscaling technology that uses artificial intelligence much like Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling and AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution. This should help Intel’s GPU achieve higher frame rates while rendering at a lower resolution and then upscaling that image.
Of course, games need to support XeSS and that should arrive in more than 20 games by the end of the year.
It’s unclear whether Intel’s GPUs will become available in South Africa in October but we’ve fired off a question to the brand’s local representation to find out.
Intel is entering the GPU market at an interesting time considering the cryptocurrency mining sector has all but collapsed. The brand’s presence could help to stoke the fires of competition in the mid range and force AMD to be more innovative and Nvidia to perhaps bring its prices down.
