The rest of the Intel Arc A700 series GPU prices: A750 lands under $300 on October 12th

Intel’s high-end line of graphics cards is getting closer to launch, and that means we’re getting more answers to key market questions about pricing, launch dates, performance, and availability. Today, Intel answered more of these A700 series GPU questions, and they’re paired with claims everyone Card in the Arc A700 series bounces back to Nvidia’s 18-month-old RTX 3060.

After Intel announced a price of $329 for its A770 GPU earlier this week, Intel clarified that it would launch three A700-series products on October 12: The aforementioned $329 Arc A770 -Dollar, which has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory; an additional Arc A770 Limited Edition for $349, which jumps up to 16GB GDDR6 with slightly higher memory bandwidth and otherwise shares identical specs; and the slightly weaker A750 Limited Edition for $289.

If you missed the memo on this sub-$300 GPU when it was announced, the A750 LE is essentially a binned version of the A770 chipset, with 87.5 percent of the shading units and ray tracing units (RT ) are on, along with an Ever – so slightly downclocked boost clock (2.05 GHz, compared to 2.1 GHz on both A770 models).

Intel has previously confirmed that new Arc A700 Series GPU purchases made through January 2023 will come with a bundle of downloadable games and software, including this year’s remake of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Gotham Knightsand more.

Prior to independent benchmarks, GPUs have a confusing “performance-per-dollar” metric

In a conference call with the press, Intel officials declined to clarify initial ship numbers for its first three A700-series GPUs, except to suggest low inventory for the larger-memory A770 LE: “I suspect we’ll sell that out are going to be very fast,” Intel Graphics Fellow Tom Petersen told Ars. He was reluctant to clarify whether he expects an early sell-off of Intel’s A700 GPUs: “We don’t know if we’re going to have a supply problem or a demand problem. I hope we have a demand problem.” He then confirmed that Intel plans to produce its own GPU models over time, rather than discontinuing “LE” production while demand may still exist.

Unfortunately, Intel compounded the GPU availability question by not confirming which add-in board (AIB) partners would be part of the October launch of the A700 series. Petersen sidelined that can by suggesting these third-party GPU manufacturers would make their own announcements, then mentioned an interest in expanding its list of Arc-powered AIBs.

Intel’s latest presentation includes gaming benchmark measurements that directly compare the 8GB A750 to an EVGA model of the RTX 3060 that has 12GB of GDDR6 RAM. Intel’s test results have not yet been independently verified by Ars Technica. The chart above and several others use a confusing “performance-per-dollar” metric to obfuscate raw comparisons in frame rates without listing raw frame rates or clear percentage differences.

But Intel seems determined to make that performance-per-dollar metric pretty loud in its A700-series promotional efforts, as it has announced that the high-end A770, priced at $349, is “42 percent ” brings more performance per dollar. on average than an RTX 3060, which retails for an average of $418. The same fuzzy math selling point suggests that the $289 A750 is “53 percent” more average performance per dollar than the same RTX 3060 model.

We look forward to someone in the Ars comments section breaking down this incomplete algebra formula to determine the indeed Performance gap between each product, at least according to their own internal testing methodology. Perhaps consistent with previous Intel comments, the A750 is around 3 to 5 percent faster than the RTX 3060.

Intel continued to concede the Arc series’ biggest teething problem in its first generation: The drivers and hardware of the A700 series so far haven’t done a fantastic job of outperforming the RTX 3060 in DirectX 11 performance. Although Intel claims that some DX11 games have near-identical or even superior performance on the Arc A770 compared to the RTX 3060, its proponents concede that Nvidia has a generally tangible lead over these older games.

When asked about how each GPU compares to the higher-rated RTX 3060 Ti, Petersen backtracked, apparently again sticking to the price gap between GPUs: “The pricing for the 3060 Ti is just crazy, so we didn’t want that include our analysis,” he said. As I mentioned earlier, the RTX 3060 emerged with a sharp drop in performance compared to the 3060 Ti — however, if Intel manages to deliver meaningful improvements in general screening, specific ray-tracing workloads, and XeSS Achievement of assisted image reconstruction will come at a price – to-power metrics can pay off for anyone looking to buy an Nvidia alternative (as long as it’s in stock at your favorite retailer anyway).

We’ll have more on the A700 GPU series at Ars Technica soon.