After revealing the Arc 3 A380 entry-level discrete graphics cards earlier this year, Intel has finally teased the performance of its highly anticipated Arc 7 A750 Special Edition GPU. A YouTube video (see below) posted today gives us a glimpse at the Arc 7 A750 Limited Edition, a desktop graphics card that will slot below the rumoured Arc A770. In the clip, Intel’s Ryan Shrout tests the card playing Cyberpunk 2077 at 2560 x 1400 resolution at the high graphics preset. He notes how it reaches “just under 60 fps on average” and shows how the card delivers slightly better performance than Nvidia’s Geforce RTX 3060.
If we look at the benchmarks, which — let me emphasise — come directly from Intel, the A750 Limited Edition tops the RTX 3060 by between 1.06x and 1.17x across various titles, with the racing game F1 2021 giving the biggest advantage to Team Blue. A quick note here: this was a curated list, so don’t expect every game to play better on Arc than on the RTX 3060. In fact, Shrout even admits that “the performance of Arc won’t look like this in all games.”
Prior to this video, Intel hadn’t said much about the Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition apart from revealing the desktop GPU in a brief teaser video. We still don’t have any confirmed specifications, though recent reports claim the A750 Limited Edition features 24 Xe-Cores and 12GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit memory bus.
Intel brought the A750 Limited Edition to the Gamers Nexus office, revealing a working model in the flesh for the first time. You can see that it’s a pretty long card with 8+6-pin PCIe power connectors. As much as I wish it were blue, the card is fairly attractive, with a compact shape and clean aesthetic.
The Arc A750 Limited Edition and Intel’s other desktop graphics cards are expected to launch soon, but given recent delays, I wouldn’t hold my breath. In the meantime, the chipmaker will be releasing videos, interviews, and blogs about Arc on its dedicated website.
Intel chip price increase
In other news, Intel chip prices will reportedly increase this year, according to a Nikkei report. Prices for the company’s flagship processors as well as other chips, including those for Wi-Fi and connectivity components, will raise.
Intel has supposedly told its customers about the price increases, which will likely result in high PC and laptop prices this holiday season. Some prices will reportedly increase by up to 20% due to inflation and the rising cost of materials and labour.
PC demand has rapidly declined in recent months to the point where leading chip supplier TSMC says there is an “excess inventory in the semiconductor supply chain.” While GPU prices are steadily declining, it appears that an unlikely chip surplus won’t help reduce the price of PCs and laptops.