It seems that Intel is finally ready to share more details on its Arc Alchemist GPUs, announcing a suitably (if perhaps a touching unimaginatively) named ‘Intel Arc Event’ scheduled to take place on March 30, 8AM PT. Unfortunately, the company won’t be talking about its desktop graphics cards during the showcase, and will instead focus on its DG2-based discrete graphics for gaming laptops.
In an Intel community blog, the company’s graphics software engineering director Lisa Pearce shed light on the reason behind releasing laptop graphics cards before desktop models. “By beginning to launch our mobile products first, we aim to bring all our technologies (CPU, graphics, media, display, I/O, etc.) to bear to deliver great experiences,” Pearce says.
Pearce also shares that the Intel Arc A370M will be the first GPU from the company to make it to market. In terms of benchmarks, Pearce claims the graphics card can offer “up to a 2X improvement in graphics performance vs. integrated graphics alone while maintaining similar form factors.”
Intel kindly shared its methodology for its benchmark data, in it which pitted an Arc A370M against a Core i71280P with Iris Xe integrated graphics while running Metro Exodus at 1080p medium settings. It’s worth nothing that there was a 12W power discrepancy between the two test systems, so we’ll have to wait until we get our hands on an Arc powered system before we come to any solid conclusions.
#IntelArc graphics marks a new stage of the game. Join us on March 30 to get a first look at our newest discrete graphics for laptops. https://t.co/jT0p7ABqQ7 pic.twitter.com/vkachqurw6
— Intel Graphics (@IntelGraphics) March 15, 2022
Previous rumours suggest that Intel plans to release three performance tiers, with its A300 series at the low-end, A500 cards filling the mid-range, and A700 GPUs acting as the company’s contenders for the title of the best graphics card. However, it’s currently unknown whether this applies to both desktop and mobile models, but we’re excited to see what exactly Intel has cooking up in its fabs and labs.