After months of waiting and even speculation of their cancellation, the Intel Arc A770 GPU is finally heading to retail.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger made the announcement via a recent tweet where he confirmed that he received his own personal A770 from Intel graphics head Raja Koduri. As part of the tweet, he confirmed that the company was now "getting [the] first batch of A770 cards ready for retail."
The release of the Arc A770 to retail represents an important step for Intel, which has been experimenting with releasing their own discrete GPUs at least since the late 2000s with the canceled Intel Larabee GPGPU chip. Indeed, this latest attempt itself was off to a rocky start. The first release, the entry-level Arc A380 experienced driver issues and faced poor reviews when it shipped first in China.
The latter's poor reception led to rumors that Intel would be halting its latest discrete GPU efforts. This was backed up by reports that the company would exit more businesses in 2023. Koduri however, shrugged off the rumors last week and now, Gelsinger is promising that the Arc A770 is ready for retail.
It's still not clear when and where the Arc A770 will hit retail. The A380 was China-only after all, and it hasn't been confirmed whether the A770—Intel's first gamer-centric discrete graphics card—will hit that market first, or if it will launch simultaneously in other markets. (Read: Intel Arc GPU leak hints at budget pricing for the new cards)
That said, some creators have already received A770 graphics cards. YouTuber Marquess Brownlee recently posted a video showing what he claimed was the "world's first" PC build featuring an Intel Arc A770 on YouTube.
The other question is in regard to Intel's timing. The recent crash in crypto prices, as well as Ethereum's move away from a GPU-hungry proof-of-work model to a proof-of-stake model, has sent the prices of discrete graphics cards crashing. Does the Intel Arc A770 still make sense when video cards of similar performance from AMD and Nvidia are now cheaper than ever?
Still, additional competition in the GPU space is always good. If Intel plays its cards right, gamers may have another compelling choice when it comes to shopping for discrete graphics cards.
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