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Intel Arc Graphics launches for laptops, desktop GPUs later this year

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Intel Arc Graphics is finally here, as Intel officially enters the discrete GPU game and here's the details.

The first set is the Intel Arc A-series for laptops, with Arc 5 and Arc 7 coming in "early summer". Desktop / Workstation dedicated GPUs will be available sometime "later this year" with no clearer date yet being given. So unlike NVIDIA and AMD, they're not jumping in at the deep end first, doing a trickle roll-out starting at the lower end. This is an interesting step, which will enable them to really get their drivers in good shape before the possible masses flock towards their higher-end offerings later in the year.

Click shots to enlarge:

Specs sheets:

Model Number A350M A370M A550M A730M A770M
Microarchitecture Xe HPG Xe HPG Xe HPG Xe HPG Xe HPG
Lithography Type
TSMC N6 TSMC N6 TSMC N6 TSMC N6 TSMC N6
Status Launched Launched Announced Announced Announced
Xe-cores 6 8 16 24 32
Render Slices 2 2 4 6 8
Ray Tracing Units 6 8 16 24 32
Intel® Xe Matrix Extensions (Intel® XMX) Engines 96 128 256 384 512
Xe Vector Engines
96 128 256 384 512
Graphics Base Clock
1150 MHz 1550 MHz 900 MHz 1100 MHz 1650 MHz
TGP
25-35W 35-50W 60W-80W 80W-120W 120W-150W
PCI Express Configurations
Up to PCI Express 4.0 x8 Up to PCI Express 4.0 x8 Up to PCI Express 4.0 x16 Up to PCI Express 4.0 x16 Up to PCI Express 4.0 x16
Device ID
0x5694 0x5693 0x5692 0x5691 0x5690
Memory Size
4 GB 4 GB 8 GB 12 GB 16 GB
Memory Type
GDDR6 GDDR6 GDDR6 GDDR6 GDDR6
Graphics Memory Interface
64 bit 64 bit 128 bit 192 bit 256 bit
Graphics Memory Bandwidth
112 GB/s 112 GB/s 224 GB/s 336 GB/s 512 GB/s
Graphics Memory Speed
14 Gbps 14 Gbps 14 Gbps 14 Gbps 16 Gbps

You can see their full stream below:

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Some of the features supported:

  • Intel Xe Matrix Extensions (XMX) AI engines provide more compute capability for accelerating AI workloads. These AI engines have 16 times the compute to complete AI inferencing operations when compared to traditional GPU vector units, which can increase performance in productivity, gaming and creator applications.
  • Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) is our solution that leverages the power of Intel Arc graphics’ XMX AI-engines to deliver high-performance, AI-accelerated upscaling. XeSS is a novel upscaling technology that uses deep learning to synthesize images that are very close to the quality of native high-res rendering. XeSS is coming in the summer and will be supported on all products with Arc A-Series graphics.
  • Intel Arc A-Series GPUs are the first in the industry to offer full AV1 hardware acceleration, including both encode and decode, delivering faster video encode and higher quality streaming while consuming the same internet bandwidth. We’ve worked with industry partners to ensure that AV1 support is available today in many of the most popular media applications, with broader adoption expected this year. The AV1 codec will be a game changer for the future of video encoding and streaming.
  • We’ve integrated Intel® Deep Link technologies to enable Intel Arc GPUs to work seamlessly with Intel CPUs and integrated graphics for a performance improvement across gaming, creating and streaming workloads. Intel Deep Link enables dynamic power sharing, intelligently distributing power across the platform to increase application performance up to 30% in creation and compute-intensive applications.1 With Hyper Encode and Hyper Compute, Deep Link allows multi-engine acceleration in transcoding and AI tasks. More details are available in our product fact sheet.

At the end of the announcement, they also teased their first discrete desktop GPU in a limited edition:

"Today marks the first step in our journey. You’ll see Intel Arc graphics continue to improve and evolve, with new features and an ever-expanding ecosystem coming throughout the year. And for desktop enthusiasts, our Intel Arc graphics add-in-cards will be coming this summer. We are excited, and we hope you are too. It’s going to be a big year for Intel Arc graphics." — Roger Chandler is vice president and general manager of Graphics and Gaming Team at Intel Corporation.

Honestly, I'm excited. A third vendor properly jumping into it to mix things up, we've been stuck with just AMD or NVIDIA for far too long. Plus another vendor with open source drivers on Linux too, that's great. Some of the big main features will be supported on Linux too of course like Ray Tracing. As expected, all their testing and presentations are focused on Windows. When it comes to their new Arc Control software though, I doubt that will be supported on Linux, just like the other vendors don't give us their fancy control panels.

See more on the Intel press release.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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The comments on this article are closed.
11 comments
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denyasis Mar 30, 2022
Looks interesting. I hope they keep at it for a while. I don't plan on upgrading this anytime soon, but I'd be excited to consider an Intel card ( along with AMD and Nvidia)
jrt Mar 30, 2022
Since Intel is relatively Linux friendly it's nice to have competition to AMD on the graphics side that's not Nvidia!
Purple Library Guy Mar 30, 2022
Should you be telling us about these discreet GPUs right on the open interwebs? That's not very discreet!


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 30 March 2022 at 4:22 pm UTC
BalkanSpy Mar 30, 2022
More competition in the GPU market can only be beneficial to us consumers.
KohlyKohl Mar 30, 2022
QuoteWhen it comes to their new Arc Control software though, I doubt that will be supported on Linux, just like the other vendors don't give us their fancy control panels.

Only thing these provide of any value are the game profiles. The way native Linux gaming is going, I doubt it would be worth the effort anyways.

Though, if there are more Native Linux games in the future and larger user base I would like to see that feature brought over to Linux.
PublicNuisance Mar 30, 2022
My big hopes for these is that they will work with FLOSS distros like Trisquel. Current Intel onboard graphics do where AMD GPU's don't due to needing closed source firmware from the kernel. Right now if I want to go FLOSS my GPU options are Nvidia GTX 780 on Nouveau or Intel onboard, neither of which are great for gaming.
Cybolic Mar 30, 2022
Wait, "The Witcher"? That game is 15 years old!
anewson Mar 30, 2022
good lord I have Iris Xe on 12th gen i7 and I'd be happy to see HALF those framerates they're claiming for my hardware for most of those games... granted I'm on linux but surely that doesn't explain such a difference
peta77 Mar 30, 2022
I just hope they can provide adequate performance without these monstrous power usages the current nvidia and amd gpus have... that would be a real progress on gpu market and i'd replace my geforce with one of those...
mrdeathjr Mar 30, 2022
AV1 hardware encode.........still with lower models like arc 3*



**av1 decode and encode support in lower mobile gpus, meanwhile crappy mobile gpus ported to desktop like rx 6500 xt launched in 2022 dont have decode and encode support 

selling gtx 1050 2gb with a few usage




Last edited by mrdeathjr on 31 March 2022 at 7:56 am UTC
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