Intel startled PC gamers earlier this week by selling its top Arc A770 GPU at $329, matching Nvidia’s retail price for the RTX 3060. While finding an RTX 3060 for $329 is still challenging, Intel is now undercutting Nvidia’s popular GPU with a $289 starting price for its A750, a card it says can compete with the RTX 3060.
We’re still waiting for impartial Arc A750 evaluations, although Intel did share 48 benchmarks last month that showed it should be able to top or come close to Nvidia’s RTX 3060 performance in recent games. Intel pitted the A750 against the RTX 3060 in 42 DirectX 12 games and six Vulkan games, and the results are good.
With its Arc GPUs, Intel is obviously looking for performance per dollar and budget PC gamers, which will be especially fascinating if the firm can really ship its cards at their suggested retail pricing. The Nvidia RTX 3060 is intended to start at $329, but finding one in stock at that price is still difficult. Right now, Amazon has an MSI RTX 3060 listed for $399 and a Zotac RTX 3060 listed for roughly $379, but nothing close to $329. It’s a similar tale at Newegg, where you’ll only find reconditioned or open-box cards for about $329.
The first Intel A750 and A770 cards will be available on October 12th.
However, it is yet unclear whether card makers, other than Intel, would develop the next Arc GPUs. On their website, Intel mentions a number of partners, the majority of whom are OEMs. Only Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI manufacture GPUs, but they also manufacture laptops. Intel has its own Limited Edition Arc models, but no third-party board partners have been announced.
At $349 for a 16GB Arc A770 that may theoretically outperform an RTX 3060, Intel may run out of cards if supply is as constrained as Nvidia’s Founders Edition versions. “We don’t know whether we’re going to have a supply or a demand issue,” Intel colleague Tom Petersen said during a news conference. “I’m hoping we’ll have a demand issue since they’ll definitely sell out quite soon.”
With pricing and availability dates for Intel’s Arc GPUs officially out, the only thing left to see is if Intel can actually equal or surpass Nvidia’s RTX 3060 at a lower price point.
