Intel Arc GPUs are slowly spreading across the world, and with the initial launch in China now in Team Blue’s rearview, there’s a lot of speculation about where and when we’ll see the next Arc graphics cards. Most of what we’ve seen so far has been about the Arc A3 series; cheaper, lower-powered cards to compete with budget offerings from Nvidia and AMD.
But of course the most exciting GPUs are always the most powerful, so the Arc A7 series was highly anticipated, with speculation that Intel’s ACM-G10 GPU would battle Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series. But it turns out that the long-awaited Arc A780, which would have been the most powerful Arc GPU, was never released.
Ryan Shrout (opens in new tab)which handles Intel’s graphics marketing, confirmed via Twitter that there is no A780 board received – and not only that, but also claims that Intel never had any plans to make one.
This means that the high-end offering on the initial wave of Arc GPUs will be the A770 and A750, which have been officially announced and are believed to compete with the RTX 3060 (although exact specs have yet to be published). Intel showed off these cards recently, revealing a minimalist reference design with two fans, but we haven’t really seen them in action yet.
Despite some rumors to the contrary, there is no Intel Arc A780 and an A780 was never planned. Let’s just settle this debate. 🤣July 16, 2022
Opinion: Nvidia really doesn’t have to worry about Intel now
Currently, the only discrete desktop GPU Intel has for sale is the budget Arch A380. We know the A770 and A750 are coming; Driver leaks also suggest we’ll see an A580 and a A310 low profile. It’s not an especially impressive list, and the absence of an Arc A780 to counter Nvidia’s excellent RTX 3070 is a blow.
It’s no secret that Intel struggled to get the Arc series off the ground; delays due to COVID-19 and global chip shortages have slowed down massively, and even after the launch of Arc A380 encountered performance issues. There is no public roadmap – to me it seems like Intel doesn’t have much of a plan.
While there’s no way to confirm this, I personally suspect that Shrout’s statement may contain a half-truth. It seems unlikely that Intel has Never planned to make a competitor RTX 3070; even though it wasn’t called the A780, targeting the RTX 3060 as the higher end of its new GPU range seems a little weak. It’s possible that Intel simply realized that it couldn’t squeeze enough performance out of the ACM-G10 GPU to compete with Nvidia’s more powerful cards.
To top it off, Intel now really needs to release these desktop GPUs fast. Nvidia’s Lovelace and AMD’s RDNA 3 Next-gen graphics cards are expected to launch in September, so Intel desperately needs to complete its first-gen Arc launch next month if it wants to secure significant market share.